To be or not to be an academic: South African graduate students’ vocational choices

In the post-apartheid era, South African universities are striving to attract and retain diverse faculty, as mandated by the 1998 Employment Equity Act (EEA). While the focus on faculty is critical to the transformation agenda, it is informative to step back and consider the factors that influence graduate students’ decisions regarding joining the academy. This qualitative study explores the educational experiences and vocational decisions of 50 masters and doctoral students from the EEA's “designated groups,” who are poised to become academics. Factors influencing graduate students’ vocational choices should be taken into consideration as universities strive to attract more diverse faculty.     

Shifting selves: The emergence of new identities in South African schools

This is an exploratory study on the nature and extent of racial integration in South African schools in the post-apartheid period. While there is vigilant media attention to occasional, dramatic incidents of racial conflict in white schools, there is very little research on the ways in which student identities are framed, challenged, asserted and negotiated within the dominant institutional cultures of former white schools. The research findings suggest that student identities are shaped and framed within stable institutional cultures that remain impervious to change despite the changing demographics of the student body; but that even under these conditions student identities are constantly being questioned and recast as black and white students begin to engage each other in the daily routines of institutional life.     

“Girls are not free”—In and out of the South African school

Interviews conducted with township girls in South Africa show enduring experiences of sexual violence both in and out of the school. Fear of boys and men were articulated in relation to boyfriends, male teachers, men in the township neighbourhood and men in the home. While the girls attempted to exercise agency in arresting their fears, these appeared to be too limited in the context of great structural and social inequalities and the pervasiveness of gender norms through which male sexual violence is asserted. The implication for increasing girls’ exercise of agency is raised as a human rights issue.     

Assessment policy in post-apartheid South Africa: challenges for improving education quality and learning

The South African education system has witnessed significant changes since 1994 when the democratically elected government began the process of dismantling the inherited apartheid order. The primary focus of the transformation process was to address the twin imperative of equity and quality in education, particularly for the historically marginalised black population. A key aspect of this transformation process remains the development of alternative assessment policies. This paper reviews the changes focusing on the stated rationale as well as their underlying assumptions and implications for practice. It argues that the changes have in many respects addressed the most obvious effects of the previous apartheid systems. However, it notes that, notwithstanding the policy intentions, assessment policy since 1994 has favoured a measurement focused-approach in the classroom, which has hindered a shift towards an assessment for learning approach. This, it argues, is partly fuelled by the abiding belief in and commitment to classroom testing and examinations as well as external national assessments as the key criterion for reforming learning and teaching practices in the classroom.     

Academics as rent seekers: distorted incentives in higher education,with reference to the South African case

The behavior of academics and academic institutions is examined through the concept of rent seeking, in which organizations or individuals expend resources to obtain ‘artificially contrived transfers’. International ranking systems, publication-based incentives, and grant awarding processes, all encourage and reward rent seeking behavior: participants engage in distorted, costly behavior to obtain rewards, including public funds, without regard to the social value of these activities. This may be especially damaging in developing countries. Detailed examples from South Africa's higher education system illustrate such behavior and its relation to policy. The paper concludes by sketching an outline of some possible solutions.     

Building Communities of Peace: The South African Experience

While political conflicts in many countries have resulted in large-scale destruction and loss of life, South Africa has been successful in avoiding a violent conflict following the demise of apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been seen as an important mechanism contributing to South Africa's successful management of its political challenges. Yet, the legacy of apartheid continues beyond the work of the TRC, and several social problems such as poverty, unemployment, crime, and substance abuse continue to affect many South African communities. Psychology is uniquely poised to assist in addressing these social problems and in contributing to the development of a community of peace. Academic psychology departments have responded by implementing an undergraduate programme aimed at training professional counsellors to respond to community needs in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper surveys the present political landscape in South Africa, examines the work of the TRC as a psychological change catalyst and peace building mechanism, and calls attention to the role of psychology in contributing to national development.     

South African teachers’ ability to argue: The emergence of inclusive argumentation

This paper explores the argumentation ability of ten science teachers in two South African schools on opposite ends of the resource spectrum. Toulmin's model is used to analyse individual contributions in six group discussions. The findings show that levels of argumentation improve with teachers’ involvement in the development of teaching resources and the closeness of the argumentation task. The nature of the arguments is permeated by inclusiveness, thus precluding the use of rebuttals, traditionally a requirement for high-quality arguments. Based on the ubuntu worldview, a model of inclusive argumentation is proposed with implication for teaching and a scheme of assessable levels of argumentation.     

Poverty & privilege: Primary school inequality in South Africa

The strong legacy of apartheid and the consequent correlation between education and wealth have meant that, generally speaking, poorer South African students perform worse academically. Although racial segregation has been abolished for 18 years now, schools which served predominantly White students under apartheid remain functional, while those which served Black students remain dysfunctional and unable to impart the necessary numeracy and literacy skills students should be acquiring by this level. The present study provides an overview of this dualistic nature of the primary education system in South Africa, with special attention paid to the bimodality of student performance. It argues that there are in fact two different education systems in South Africa and thus two different data-generating processes. These two sub-systems can be seen when splitting student performance by former-department, language, or socioeconomic status. The implications of such a dualistic schooling system are also elucidated, with special emphasis on government reporting and econometric modeling. The recently released SACMEQ III dataset is used for the econometric modeling. The study finds that when modeling student performance separately for the wealthiest 25% of schools on the one hand, and the poorest 75% of schools on the other, there are stark differences in the factors influencing student performance. Only five of the 27 factors are shared between the two models for mathematics, and 11 of the 30 factors for reading. This suggests a bifurcated system where the process which converts inputs into outputs is fundamentally different for each sub-system. Ultimately the paper has two logical conclusions: 1) Observing averages in South African education is uniquely misleading and overestimates the educational achievement of the majority of students, and 2) Modeling a single schooling system when there are in fact two school systems can lead to spurious results and misleading policy conclusions.     

Opportunities for a democratic pedagogy: a comparative study of South African and Swedish teachers' attitudes to inclusive education

This paper is based upon the collaboration between two research groups from Stockholm University and the University of South Africa. The main objective is to compare attitudes between South African (SA) and Swedish teachers regarding inclusive education (IE). IE in this paper is examined as a distinct part of the Swedish welfare system. The method used can be characterised as a combined, quantitative and qualitative research design with a purposive sampling. A similar adapted questionnaire was distributed in the two countries. The Swedish teachers in our data are more pro‐inclusion and more hesitating to accommodate learners with barriers in special schools. However, both the Swedish and the SA teachers in the study are hesitating towards the feasibility to implement IE practically. A team approach is concluded to be an adequate pedagogy for supporting IE both in South Africa and Sweden.     

Parental choice without parents: families,education and class in a South African township

From the 1980s and 1990s, governments around the world began to champion ‘parental choice’ over schooling. Much of the existing scholarship has been based on examples taken from the global North. In such settings, where nuclear families are common, a major theme has been the privileged educational strategies and outcomes of middle-class families. Yet this South African study gives attention to gender and family dynamics in helping to explain and understand the large number of schoolchildren travelling to attend historically better-funded schools. It argues that in a setting where the nuclear family accounts for a minority of households, it is necessary to distinguish between the financing of a child’s education and the social organization of schooling, including the caring of the child. It contributes to two literatures. First, to Western-centred educational choice literature that has tended to overemphasise nuclear families; second, to South African literature, which is yet to adequately bring into the same analytical frame the marketisation of education and gendered family dynamics.     

The complexity of human rights in global times: The case of the right to education in South Africa

The right to education has an established legacy in international agreements and debates, but has nonetheless proved difficult to achieve across the countries of the world. This paper explores why this might be so. It begins by locating the current architecture of rights in Enlightenment philosophy and the political and legal formations of modernity, exploring the paradoxical legacy this brings. It then looks more specifically at the right to education, and why it cannot be assumed that statements of rights deliver what they promise. Finally, it looks at education in South Africa to explore both the limits and the possibilities of using a framework of rights to achieve greater social justice in global times.     

Sexuality education in South African schools: deconstructing the dominant response to young people’s sexualities in contemporary schooling contexts

ABSTRACT

South African schools are tasked with providing sexuality education through the Life Orientation curriculum as a means of challenging continued high rates of HIV, unwanted pregnancy and gender-based violence. While in theory schools are well positioned to provide appropriate knowledge for reproductive health and navigating sexual challenges within a gender justice framework, research on sexuality education in South African schools indicates that this is not the reality in practice. This paper draws on a growing body of qualitative studies, with both educators and learners in South African schools, to understand the issues undermining the goal of a critical and social justice pedagogy of sexuality in Life Orientation classrooms. We argue that sexuality education has been deployed to regulate and discipline young sexualities, reinforce and perpetuate gender binarisms and heteronormativity, re-establish global northern family values of the nuclear family within a pro-family discourse, and represent continued assumptions of adult authority in a civilising mission over young people. We suggest that the failure to make critical use of Life Orientation is linked to the dominance of ‘expert’-based didactic pedagogy, and argue the possibilities of sexuality education as a productive space for young people’s active participation and agency in making meaning of gender and sexualities.     

Educational renovation in a South African ‘township on the move’: A social–spatial analysis

This article presents an account of the ways education reform has been mediated in one South African township. It suggests that the normative policy intentions of the reforming post-apartheid state have been reworked in light of the specific social configuration of the township and its schools. It employs social–spatial lenses to understand the formative interaction between the township's social configuration processes and the institutional identities of its schools and teachers. The article shows how educational reform has been renovated in light of the spatially networked processes that played out in and around the schools. It suggests that the effects of educational policy reform can best be understood by the uses to which it has been put in this localised terrain.     

The idealism of education policies and the realities in schools: the implementation of inclusive education in South Africa

Inclusive education as a global movement emerged over the past 30 years to ensure quality mainstream education for all learners. Since 1994 the newly democratic South Africa also had expectations as well as the political will to change education by adjusting legislation and policies. However, the vision of a truly inclusive education system in South Africa has been difficult to achieve and results regarding the implementation of inclusive education remain questionable. There has been a growing realisation that the advent of democracy was not in itself a sufficient condition for the elimination of historical and structural inequalities in education with as recurring theme the dissonance between the government's socio-political imperative for change and economic realities. This article focuses on the development of policy and guidelines on inclusive education in dynamic interaction with the complexity of realities in South African schools with a special focus on the policy recommendations regarding the development of full-service schools. The constant comparative analysis of the two phased case study of a full-service school in a rural town revealed interesting results illustrating the complexities regarding the implementation of inclusive education and the challenges and opportunities in bridging the gap between the idealism of policies and the realities in schools.     

A review of challenges in South African education and possible ways to improve educational outcome as suggested by decades of research

Despite many positive developments in South Africa (SA), the education system and educational outcome face many challenges and require further improvement. This is reflected by elevated school dropout rates and suboptimal annual pass rates in various grades (Grades 7–12). Over the years, a plethora of studies has identified methods through which academic performance/educational outcome can be improved. However, from a practical point of view it might be difficult to implement these methods in for example a classroom or school, particularly because these methods are mainly discovered upon thorough online literature searches, and therefore published methods to improve educational outcomes are not always within reach of schools or teachers. Our aim is thus to provide a review paper that contains a collation and overview of the possible methods that can be used by various education stakeholders in order to contribute to better educational outcome. Essentially, we are attempting to answer the questions, “What does decades of research tell us about possible ways in which educational outcome can be improved in SA? Can we use these methods in the classroom or school?” This review therefore demonstrates (1) demonstrates various ways education stakeholders/influencers (teachers, learners, parents, government, non-governmental organisations and school governing bodies) can contribute to improved educational outcome, and (2) provides a useful overview of these methods that can be used within or without the classroom.     

Sexuality education in South Africa: Three essential questions

Sex education is the cornerstone on which most HIV/AIDS prevention programmes rest and since the adoption of Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), has become a compulsory part of the South African school curriculum through the Life Orientation learning area. However, while much focus has been on providing young people with accurate and frank information about safe sex, this paper questions whether school-based programmes sufficiently support the needs of young people. This paper is based on a desk-review of the literature on sex and sexuality education and examines it in relation to the South African educational context and policies. It poses three questions: (a) what do youth need from sexuality education? (b) Is school an appropriate environment for sex education? (c) If so, what can be said about the content of sex education as well as pedagogy surrounding it? Through reviewing the literature this paper critically engages with education on sex and sexuality in South Africa and will argue that in order to effectively meet the needs of youth, the content of sexual health programmes needs to span the whole spectrum of discourses, from disease to desire. Within this spectrum, youth should be constructed as “knowers” as opposed to innocent in relation to sex. How youth are taught as well as how their own knowledge and experience is positioned in the classroom is as important as content in ensuring that youth avoid negative sexual health outcomes.     

The scholarship of research in teacher education in a higher education institution in transition: Issues of identity

This paper examines perceptions of professional and organizational identity of teacher educators in a ‘new’ University of Technology in South Africa, resulting from several recent mergers of colleges of education and colleges of technology mainly serving formerly disadvantaged students and schools. The findings show that most staff consider teaching and research as dichotomous. Research activities are seen to satisfy the institutional requirements for securing research funding and producing publications. Professional identities could be strengthened by a faculty-wide debate on the specific profile of teacher education in a University of Technology, resulting also in an agreed research ethos. Peer support in collaborative research groups with a focus on own practice is seen as an opportunity to strengthen research expertise.     

Institutionalising racial segregation in the South African school: the School Board Act, 1905

ABSTRACT

This essay attempts to show how the Social Darwinist thinking of white racial superiority, and so, ultimately, white supremacy, came to be institutionalised in law in South Africa. It looks specifically at the making and institutionalisation of the School Board Act (SBA) of 1905 of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. It argues that the SBA contains one of the first constitutive moves that are made in the South Africa that is to emerge with the Act of Union in 1910 with respect to classification, ranking, and ordering in the country’s long history of race-making. It precedes better-known pieces of legislation such as the Population Registration Act of 1950 which the apartheid government institutes almost 50 years later. Through the SBA, “race” as a social fact is entrenched in legal and juridical terms. The essay examines how this process is institutionalised through legal judgements provided by the courts of the Cape Colony.     

The developmental history of labor education in South Korea from a sociopolitical and economic perspective

Although there is a considerable body of research regarding the relationships between the sociopolitical and economic transition and its implications for the education system in South Korea, there is little known about how sociopolitical and economic factors affect labor education practice in South Korea. The premise of the study is that the development of labor education is driven not only by workers’ needs but also by the state's policy to increase productivity while keeping the labor movement and political expression under control. Since many educators often overlook the importance of labor education by excluding it from adult education, very few studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between sociopolitical and economic factors and labor education in South Korea. The purpose of the study is thus to examine the effect of particular combinations of social, political, and economic forces on the development and expansion of labor education in South Korea during the period between the 1960s and the 1990s. The results of the study can be compared with studies of other countries that underwent a similar pattern of political and economic transformation.