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Editorial

In this last 2011 issue of Perspectives in Education we look back and extend our appreciation for the 
collection of meritorious articles that have been published in volume 29this year. We are very grateful to 
all the referees who assisted us in selecting such a range of excellent articles interrogating key issues in 
the South African education arena. This thorough selection of articles once again contributed to the high 
quality of the journal as well as its high impact figure.

This issue highlights three articles problematising literacy education. Prinsloo examines the 
divergences between educational language policy calls and the realities of language and learning in 
South African schools. Prinsloo engages in the current discourses on the appropriateness of the numerous 
policies to the South African context. He flags the notion that the assumptions in language policy ‘erase’ 
the linguistic complexities in the country by assuming a linguistic homogeneity and stability which is 
inappropriate. Joining the discourse on language and reading, Van Staden brings the focus to the practical 
realities of the inability of many English second language (ESL) learners to read at desirable levels. Her 
investigation revealed that small-group direct instruction that explicitly targets skills such as phonological/
phonemic awareness, sight words and word identification, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and 
syntactic awareness need to be scaffolded by reading comprehension, skills reading and reading-related 
skills. Such a scaffolded approach can significantly improve the reading ability of ESL learners. The 
complexities concerning reading and writing are extended to universities by Mfanafuthi Mgqwashu, who 
views the value of reflexive pedagogy for first-year students to enhance their skills in reading and writing 
in order to become effective learners at university academic level.

The functionality of governance structures is the focus of the articles by Mbokodi and Singh as well 
as Morojele and Muthukrishna. Although the two articles focus on two different education realities, 
South Africa and Lesotho, they share the concern about the meaningful participation of stakeholders. 
Mbokodi found that many South African schools had legally constituted SGBs, but that those SGBs were 
not functional because the participating parents do not have the capacity to be partners in the governance of 
schools. Morojele and Muthukrishna engaged in theorising child participation in governance structures in 
Lesotho schools, which seems to be limited because of hierarchical and authoritarian school management. 
Although the children perceive themselves as active social agents, who deserve meaningful participation 
in school governance, teachers’ and school management teams’ authoritarian ideology and conceptions 
impede children’s meaningful participation.

Teacher agency needs constant interrogation, because of the potential influence teachers have on 
the lives of thousands of children who constitute the future of a country. Two articles in this issue focus 
on the teacher: the one on how they need to reclaim their agency and the other on how their agency can 
become destroyed by the destructive behaviour of their principals. Ebrahim, Verbeek and Mashiya 
conceptualise the value of a professional qualification for foundation phase teachers. The current concerns 
about teacher standards and accountability form the basis for the Advanced Certificate in Teaching to 
become an opportunity for teachers to gain experience by being part of a community in dialogue, instead 
of merely being the performers of imposed curriculum demands. The contrary of the development of 
positive agency is sketched by De Wet as she reflects on the professional life stories of teachers who have 
been exposed to bullying by their principals. These narratives describe how the bullying impacted on 
their professional lives. By using narrative analysis De Wet strives towards giving victims of workplace 
violence a voice to reclaim their agency against these malpractices.

The last three articles of this issue have the environment as core. Mokhele takes on the inclusion of 
environmental learning; Amory, Molomo and Blignaut analyse the usage of computer video games as 
contributing to the Game Object Model for creating an environment for expansive learning, and Naicker 
and Mestry explore distributive leadership as a vehicle to foster democracy in the school environment. 
Each of these articles views a global trend within the South African context. Mkhele’s article shows how 
the new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement’s (CAPS) integration of environmental learning is in 



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line with international recommendations of the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development. Amory 
and Molomo propagate the development of the GOM and associated models in South Africa to drive 
expansive learning cycles and individual transformation, while Naicker and Mestry use the increasing 
globally accepted distributive approach to leadership as a relevant model for twenty-first century schools 
in South Africa.

I believe that the key issues that were dealt with this year will shape the education agenda and 
discourse in the year to come and that new perspectives in education will emerge.

Rita Niemann