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The World Bank’s neoliberal agenda and inclusive education in post-apartheid South African schools
Get PDFGlobally, the World Bank’s neoliberal agenda has reframed inclusive education through its investment projects and inclusive policies, thus begetting unevenness and social inequalities. Accordingly, in South Africa, the World Bank’s neoliberal investment projects and inclusive policies exacerbate the exclusion of learners in schools. The critical theory framework is adopted as a lens to explore the extent to which the World Bank’s neoliberal education agenda meets the end goals of democracy and social justice in post-apartheid South Africa. A critical analysis of the World Bank’s inclusive education policies points to a neoliberal agenda that fosters liberalisation instead of human rights; a policy that propagates privatisation instead of universal education; learners’ emancipation barricaded by investment projects that favour deregulation instead of regulation; and illusive social change due to neoliberal public policies in post-apartheid South African schools. Ultimately, the authors argue that the World Bank’s incoherent, inconsistent and ambiguous neoliberal education agenda does not speak to its intended recipients, namely the poor, unprivileged and excluded learners in post-apartheid South African schools. A recommendation thus put forward is that the World Bank should redirect its investment projects and revise its inclusive policies in the quest to spearhead universal and free public education
Urban memory and identity weighed against economic investment in urban renewal projects: A case of Kisumu City, Kenya
Get PDFThere have been limited efforts in using collective memory in representing public spaces and implementing urban renewal projects to maintain uniqueness. This article aims to investigate the role of urban landscape in shaping memories and proposes recommendations that reinforce urban landscape identity. This article postulates that a city’s individual and collective memory is important in maintaining its uniqueness in terms of urban landscape identity. A qualitative research design was adopted. Photo elicitation interviews (PEI) were used to investigate the features that triggered memory of the participants and were important in contributing to the image of Kisumu City. There were ongoing and completed urban renewal projects within Kisumu City, Kenya at the time of the study. 12 PEI participants were purposively selected in addition to four officials from the County Government as key informants and four professionals were interviewed. Field investigation by the researcher was carried out through mapping and photography. The study revealed that the old railway station as human-made element was instrumental in memory through historical development while socio-cultural activities at Kisumu Sports Grounds and social interaction at public Central Square were also highly regarded in memory development. Despite the important interplay of natural, human-made and social interactions in the formation of memory, place and identity, there was also a very positive response from residents on the new look of the city. The physical upgrade and cleaning of the city and its public spaces, which also means greater safety, was well appreciated from a socio-economic point of view
Challenges for women\u27s leadership in organisations, from the perspective of judge and prophetess Deborah
Get PDFThis article presents a contextual and biblical approach to the phenomenon of women’s low participation in topmanagement positions. Studies show that the difficulties women face in organisations are related to biases thatassume a natural inferiority of women compared to men. These biases have uncritically been assimilated into theculture, including the work environment, and to overcome them, it is necessary to create scenarios of individual andcollective confrontation, in order to recognise women’s capacity to exercise authority and power. The biblical narrative of judge and prophetess Deborah and her editorial process in the 8th century BC provide clues for confrontation and transformation by naturally portraying a woman exercising authority in a patriarchal setting, relating to men on an equal footing, and being recognised and respected through attitudes of listening, care, and empathy
Editorial
Get PDFOnly time will tell whether the current edition speaks knowingly into our “now”. By now, you know that these articles have gone through an extensive blind internal-and-external double peer-reviewed process and eventually got an A or B grading by their peers in the field. Now, after the release of yet another edition, it is perhaps wise to make a few remarks on what lies between the lines as we discern our times. What is this new knowledge we all aspire to be associated with
Secondary school students\u27 perceptions of the 21st -Century 4Cs in Zimbabwe
Get PDFThe volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future world has highlighted the importance of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity and innovation (4Cs) in today’s classrooms. Framed by the Partnership for 21st-Century Learning (P21) Learning and Innovation theme, the study investigates the perceptions of the 4Cs by secondary school students from four schools in Zimbabwe. Two hundred and thirty-six (236) students participated in this quantitative study. Data were collected using online and paper questionnaires. Exploratory and first-order confirmatory analysis revealed a four-factor model with excellent fit indices. The second-order confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that the individual 4Cs were sub-constructs of a higher latent factor, Learning and Innovation (4Cs), where the students strongly endorsed collaboration, followed by communication, critical thinking, creativity, and innovation in decreasing magnitude. Age has a significant influence on critical thinking. The findings highlight the need for teachers to embed critical thinking and creativity acivities within collaborative and communication learning activities
The school management team’s role of defining the school vision and mission at a South African rural school
Get PDFSchools in the rural context of Limpopo Province, South Africa have a plethora of challenges, which have a negative impact on learner achievement. This paper argues that for schools to triumph over the obstacles, effective school leaders are necessary Such leaders must define and communicate a clear vision and mission and work with stakeholders to achieve them. With these assumptions, this paper explores how members of the school management team (SMT) of a rural school in the Limpopo Province define and communicate their school’s vision and mission. Through the qualitative research method underpinned by the interpretive paradigm, a case research design was adopted and a single high school sampled to participate. Data were generated from semistructured interviews with seven SMT members, a focus-group discussion with six teachers, and an observation of the research site. The findings revealed that most participants could not articulate the school’s vision and mission. In addition, stakeholders were not involved in the processes of defining the vision and mission and communication methods in this regard were also ineffective. Lastly, the SMT viewed the vision and mission as fixed and did not review them. Based on these findings, I conclude that SMT members must understand that the vision and mission could serve more than a visual purpose when designed as guiding principles to direct smaller objectives within the organisation
PiE Editorial March 2024 42(1)
No full textSchool violence is a problem which occurs internationally and confronts all authorities with seemingly invincible obstacles that impede their education. There are also constant reports on shocking violence in American schools where people are killed by shooting, while the German authorities have already commissioned two large research projects to investigate the problem and propose solutions. French authorities have also taken steps to protect their educators.
Why has what is so grotesquely abnormal become normal for us in this country? This question, posed by Graça Machel (2021), South Africa’s former first lady and anti-gender-based violence (GBV) advocate, is what comes up when one studies the official statistics and the incessant news reports on violence in education in South Africa.
How does this ‘grotesquely abnormal’ situation exist in a society based on Ubuntu? If I am, because you are, and we both become the product of each other’s actions and decisions, how does it square with the brutality of daily life and the threat to the futures of children, teachers, students and ultimately the broader community? This suggests that there is a lack of knowledge on the nature and effects of school violence on various role players.
Our invitation to scholars to reflect on the scourge of violence in educational settings, created an opportunity to contemplate the causes and consequences, but also ways to ameliorate the situation. All the scholars also touched on what the meaning of school violence might be and they made use of extant international and national literature.
Meg Milligan, Bhekuyise Zungu and Kanessa Miller Doss explore the trends as well as the underlying psychology, the lifelong psychological impact and the ways culture and other environmental factors can temper it. They attempt to understand how this problem developed into the current constantly worsening national crisis in South African schools. They examine aggression and violence from its origins through the process of evolution, biological and psychological coevolution. They also look at the problem from a historical perspective, describe many of its relevant forms and note its disproportionate occurrence across populations. Lastly, they identify challenges and provide recommendations.
Sifiso Sibanda gives an overview of the extent to which violence has ravaged schools, colleges, and universities by way of a qualitative content analysis of online newspaper articles and social media news.
Two other authors look at specific consequences of school violence. Rudzani Israel Lumadi applies the lenses of social justice theory and the interpretive paradigm to investigate the impact of school violence on learners’ aspirations, participation and performance in secondary schools. Mochina Mphuthi’s systematic literature review and document analysis assess the possible role of the Life Orientation curriculum in curbing the learner behaviour that perpetrates school violence. Life skills such as communication, managing emotions, and conflict resolution are suggested as means of developing healthy relationships.
One particular type of school violence, namely bullying, has become pervasive among learners and between teachers and learners. Usually, when analysing an act of bullying, we distinguish among the victim, the bully and the bystander. However, yet another role exists – a bully-victim. Kebogile Mokwena explores and explains reasons why some learners assume the dual roles of victim and perpetrator. From this article, one can deduce that there are many manifestations of violence in education.
Inevitably, gender also comes up when talking about bullying and other forms of school violence. Shakila Singh and Sherri Lee Gopaldass David’s article draws on a qualitative study on the experiences of school violence among boys at a primary school in KwaZulu-Natal. They argue that it is necessary to focus on boys’ own perspectives, the demands they have to face and an understanding of the complex social and cultural contexts within which they navigate the everyday world of school.
The study by two other authors, Angel Dlungwane and Viljay Hanlall, focuses on Black girls and the implicit nature of gender-based violence (SRGBV) that affects them in township high schools. The aim is to look beyond the connection between masculinity and gender-based violence to the specific acts, as well as multiple and qualitatively different pathways to the enactment of GBV. It is important to understand these dynamics if school violence prevention interventions are to be effective. The discussion of the concept of implicit violence underlines the complex nature of the school violence phenomenon.
Corene de Wet undertakes a qualitative media study within an interpretative research paradigm to expand our knowledge of sexual violence perpetrated against learners in South African public and private schools. She employs media reports from South African English newspapers to explore the link between violence and personal, structural and cultural sexual violence in schools as well as to consider possible rectifications of the abnormal situations.
Cina Mosito and Zandisile Sitoyi are the first of several authors who take a closer look at the effect of school violence on teachers’ well-being. They apply an interpretative phenomenological research design to examine three teachers’ experiences of school violence. In the same vein, the article by Charity Okeke and Windvoël Simphiwe apply the routine activity theory to investigate factors that specifically influence learners to target teachers. It also highlights teachers’ coping strategies to improve their teaching experiences.
The case study presented by Roy Venketsam introduces another aspect of school violence, namely the role of leadership. He discusses the case of teachers who had been victims of violence, either directly or indirectly, yet received no support from school leaders. Nicholus Tumelo Mollo turns the spotlight on what legislation says about teachers’ right to safety from violence, as well as the functionaries’ explicit duty to act to protect them. Highlighting a different view, Pierre du Plessis’ article explores the perceptions and experiences of school principals and school governing bodies in rural areas regarding school violence. It highlights the improvement of management, school effectiveness and professional conduct of teachers as ways of curtailing violence.
On a more positive note, Roelf Reyneke reports on a quantitative study conducted on safe parks. Results show that safe-park activities enhance learner safety, improve community well-being, reduce gangsterism, and decrease discipline problems.
The last article deals specifically with violence in higher education. Mlamuli Hlatshwayo explores a broader philosophical conception of violence in the education system. He explores the deeply embedded and well-entrenched epistemic violence in higher education because of the dominance of Eurocentric thought in curriculum design. He also touches on the lasting effects of decolonisation.
In 2017, Sayed, Badroodien, Hanaya and Rodríguez wrote a chapter titled, “Social cohesion, violence, and education in South Africa”, in a book edited by Seedat et al. (2017). The submissions by authors tended to take a superficial view of violence and produced explanations of the concept that they gleaned from the extant literature (particularly in South Africa) and from public discussion in newspapers on social media and in meetings organised by education authorities. The recommendations made to improve the situation and curtail the different types of violence and in the end to reduce their presence in education institutions to an insignificant level also suffer from the lack of sound information on the issues.
Like the article by Milligan et al. in this volume of Perspectives in Education, this chapter by Sayed et al. (2017) suggests that a simplistic and superficial view of the nature of the problem and possible solutions is not going to improve the situation. They analyse the concepts ‘social cohesion’ and ‘violence’ in education and they argue convincingly that education must be located in an environment where there is social cohesion (cohesion is not threatened by violence). Social cohesion can diminish the frequency and intensity of educational violence and contribute to a better future for all.
It would seem that the phenomenon of violence in education can only be addressed by intensive studies, looking at it through various lenses and developing strategies to counter it by using possible approaches from various fields of study. It is clear that the problem can only be addressed successfully if studied intensively as a complex phenomenon requiring innovative solutions. For now, it remains a daunting challenge for all academics and role players in education.
Editorial
Get PDFPerspectives in Education (PIE) seeks to stimulate important dialogue and intellectual exchange on education and democratic transitions with respect to schools, colleges, non-governmental organisations, universities and universities of technology in South Africa and globally. In this issue, we foreground discourses on topical issues in the provisioning of schooling in South Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the opening article by Doniwen Pietersen on Pedagogy of care in online teaching and learning environments at tertiary institutions, the author argues that whereas several of the technological platforms adopted during the Covid-19 lockdown had the potential to reach more students, they had also overloaded educators and pupils. It is argued that the role of university teachers should be reflected not only by the number of students engaged in class content, but also by the embodied cultural capital that students bring to online, face-to-face and hybrid learning spaces.
In the same vein, Desiree Moodley in her capacity as a writing consultant, critically reflects on the dialogue around the adopting Universal Design for Learning framework at higher education institutions in South Africa, and its implications for writing centres and for meeting individual students’ learning needs.
In the third article on students’ experiences with stories as lenses for sense-making, Deborah Lees discusses the experiences of first-year university students using storytelling as a lens to reveal identity, and to better understand their transition from school to university. Staying with the theme of student experiences at university, Róan Slabbert analysed peer-assisted learning (PAL), which over the years have been subjected to ongoing development and ultimately implementation into many so-called \u27high-risk\u27 programmes. Slabbert concluded that a statistically significant difference was found in the overall comparison between the pre- and post-intervention results after the dependent t-test was performed. Staying with education and the Covid19 pandemic, Ramgovind, Valashiya and Pramjeeth discuss Educational resources leveraged by students at a Private Higher Education Institution during the Covid-19 pandemic. They found that by understanding the educational resources (i.e. human, material and financial) that were leveraged by students during Covid-19, PHEIs can streamline decision-making regarding operations, assistance provided to students, and manage online learning in a manner that mitigates pitfalls should events similar to the pandemic occur.
Transitioning from university to the world of work is an often-neglected research area. In this section of PIE, we start by looking at beginner teachers transitioning from university graduates to fully legitimate participants in the teaching profession. Ruben Abraham, Stephen Daniels and Lucinda Du Plooy offer an insightful view on how a formal mentoring programme can assist students in the transitioning from university graduates into school practitioners. Keeping with the topic of transitioning, Dale Langsford asks the important question on how pedagogically focused conversations enable pre-service teachers to make sense of observed teaching. Moving into the classroom situation, Jacqueline Goldin, and Carolina Suransky report on their research where through there engagement with citizen science, they experienced the transformative power of affect and the relevance of emotions in education as a social and political project. In the next article, we explore the relationship between the philosophy of ubuntu and the principles of inclusive education. In their analyses, Jabulani Mpofu and Maximus Sefotho found that there is a very strong relationship between the philosophy of ubuntu and the principles of inclusive education.
In the next cluster of articles, we move into the classroom situation. In the first of this series, Ottilia Goto and Jameson Goto look at Secondary school students\u27 perceptions of the 21st-century teaching of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity and innovation (4Cs) in Zimbabwe. Their findings highlight the need for teachers to embed critical thinking and creativity activities within collaborative and communication learning activities. In the next article, Fungirai Mudhefi, Koena Mabotja and Dimakatjo Muthelo analysed the use of Van Hiele’s geometric thinking model to interpret Grade 12 learners’ learning difficulties in Euclidean Geometry. They recommend that educators should use constructivist teaching approaches that encourage learners’ conceptual understanding instead of traditional methods that promote rote memorisation of geometric facts. The third in this cluster is an article by Bongumusa Gubevu and it examines geography teachers’, parents’ and learners’ understanding and experiences of the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the teaching of that subject.
A number of articles explore different management-related topics. First, Jama, Buka, Naidoo, and Moloi report on research into school support stakeholders’ perceptions in identifying learning barriers and reported that findings revealed insufficient knowledge about the identification of learning barriers. Next, we look at middle leaders pursuing teacher safety against learner victimization. In their research, Darrell de Klerk and June Monica Palmer explore teacher safety against learner victimization, which is a growing concern worldwide, and this problem is exacerbated by a lack of understanding and readiness to implement policies to address this matter. Selaelo Maifala analyses the school management team’s role of defining the school vision and mission at a South African rural school. He concluded that SMT members do not understand that the vision and mission could serve more than a visual purpose and that it must be designed to guide principles to direct smaller objectives within the organisation. Concluding the management section, Jardine, Shaik, and Adendorff reported in their research on the mentoring and to be mentored in Grade R.
The last cluster of articles offers very stimulating and thought-provoking reading on three important topics. First, Obakeng Kagola discusses Foundation Phase male teachers’ experiences of teaching comprehensive sexuality education in the Eastern Cape. Next, we look at the right to education for children with autism in Lesotho as discussed by Mahlape Tseeke and Kelello Alicia Rakolobe. Beausetha Bruwer and Annalene van Staden explore the psychology of teaching deaf learners using the Bilingual-Bicultural approach\u27s theory and application to accommodate the familial and social contexts, language use, and overall development differences among deaf learners and their hearing peers, and among themselves. The last contribution in this section deals with Foundation Phase learners with visual impairments. Jossie Steyn, Mariette Koen, and Hantie Theron look at a collaborative approach among teachers to support the teaching such learners. The authors describe the research in which teachers were actively involved in the research process, and how teachers contributed to changes that promoted the inclusion and success of Foundation Phase learners with visual impairments.
We close this edition of Perspectives in Education with a thought-provoking article by Nomsa Mnisi and Thokozani Mathebula critically analysing the World Bank’s agenda to reframe inclusive education through its investment projects and inclusive policies. According to the authors this neoliberal approach results in unevenness and social inequalities. and the exclusion of learners in schools. They put forward recommendations to prevent the exclusion of its intended recipients, namely the poor, unprivileged and excluded learners in post-apartheid South African schools and instead to support universal and free public education.
We trust that you will find this edition stimulating and thought-provoking and that the views presented will stimulate discourse and research that will further grow and develop the boundaries of education.
Jan Nieuwenhuis
Edito
The admissibility of foreign convictions in bail applications in South Africa: A comment on Lewis-Springfield v s (CA&R40/2022) [2022] ZANCHC 54 (4 October 2022)
Get PDFA comment on Lewis-Springfield v s (CA&R40/2022) [2022] ZANCHC 54 (4 October 2022
Implicit gender-based violence against Black high school girls in South African township schools
No full textSchool-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) is a major obstacle to universal schooling and the right to education for girls. Inequitable gender norms and stereotypes, based on hierarchies and forms of subordination, amplify and contribute to the SRGBV. Extensive literature on gender-based violence in South African schools exists, and much of it explains the connection between masculinity and gender-based violence. There is a paucity of studies on the SRGBV in South Africa that focus on implicit nature of GBV. This paper draws upon semi-structured individual interviews and focus group interviews with girls, boys and educators at two South African township schools to examine implicit nature of GBV. The findings revealed that boys were the main perpetrators of implicit gender-based violence. The analysis showed that implicit violence took the form of joking, teasing, social bullying, alienation and spreading rumours. While in most cases, the perpetrators of the violence were boys and the victims were girls, we gained a far more comprehensive picture of how GBV was perpetrated at schools. The participants provided us with fresh insights into the complexities of GBV and highlighted the extent to which sociocultural factors have an impact on SRGBV. An important conclusion from this study is that there are multiple and qualitatively different pathways to the enactment of GBV, and it is important to understand these dynamics if school violence prevention interventions are to be effective. This study recommends an integrated, comprehensive approach by all stakeholders in the form of educational intervention programmes towards the eradication of school gender-based violence. It is vital to include boys in these programmes for them to understand the importance of healthy relationships and to break free from harmful stereotypes. Parents, educators, coaches and policymakers play a role in challenging the belief that boys and mens violence is normal