Managing teaching and learning in South African schools

This paper examines the significance of leadership and management in enhancing classroom practice and improving learner outcomes in two provinces of South Africa. It is increasingly recognised, internationally and in South Africa, that managing teaching and learning is one of the most important activities for principals and other school leaders. Managing teaching and learning is one of the core modules in South Africa's new national qualification for school principals. Drawing on case studies of eight schools, mostly in disadvantaged contexts, the paper shows that managing teaching and learning are often inadequate, and largely fails to compensate for the social and educational problems facing learners and their communities.     

Immigrant students’ shifting identifications in South African schools

The easing of legal and unauthorized entry to South Africa has made the country a new destination for Black immigrants. As this population continues to grow, its children have begun to experience South African schools in an array of uniquely challenging ways. For these immigrant youth, forging a sense of identity may be their single greatest challenge. There is however, very little research on the ways in which immigrant student identities are framed, challenged, asserted and negotiated in South African schools. Accordingly, this study asks how do immigrant students speak about their identifications in light of their negotiation of the school and social spaces in South Africa. Utilising the theoretical frameworks of understanding immigrant identities and identity pathways, this research study attempts to understand the unique experiences of Black immigrant youth inside South African schools. Findings were multi-fold in nature. First, although immigrant students’ ease of assimilation into the chosen reference group was to some degree sanctioned by their phenotypic racial features, their attempt at ‘psychosocial passing’ was politically motivated. Second, immigrant students did not readily classify according to skin pigmentocracy. Third, the majority of immigrant students heightened their ethnic self-awareness in forming their identity, but also assumed hyphenated identities. Fourth, immigrant students were not seen as having an identity, but rather as being ‘plugged into a category with associated characteristics or features’. Fifth immigrant students forged a ‘continental identity’. And sixth, the self-agency of immigrant students was twofold in nature; not only did they want to improve their own condition, but there seemed to be an inherent drive to improve the human condition of others.     

School resources and the gender reading literacy gap in South African schools

The importance of reading literacy as a foundation for academic success is widely acknowledged. What is less well understood is why gender patterns in reading literacy emerge so early and continue throughout learners’ educational careers. This paper adds to this literature by investigating the gender patterns of reading literacy (why girls outperform boys) in South African primary schools and whether changes in the schooling system can result in favourable changes in this gender reading gap. Compatible with international trends, girls in primary schools were significantly better readers than boys during the period of investigation. We found strong links between material and human resources and achievement in reading. The link between increased resource availability and improved educational outcomes was stronger for girls than for boys and therefore increased the female academic advantage. This finding remained consistent across socioeconomic levels. The implication is that either the school resources available in South African primary schools are more suitable for teaching girls how to read or that girls appear to be able to make use of the available resources more effectively to improve reading. Policy interpretations are discussed in the context of improved resourcing of schools.     

Perspectives of teachers on differentiated teaching in multi-cultural South African secondary schools

South African teachers encounter numerous challenges in the creation of differentiated activities to include diverse learner needs in effective teaching and learning. These challenges include the inability to identify learning barriers and adapt the curriculum, teaching and assessment methods according to the learning styles and readiness levels of learners. The study aimed to explore secondary school teachers’ (n = 262) perspectives on the implementation of differentiated instruction in public secondary schools (n = 27), using qualitative and quantitative approaches. The results indicated that teachers cannot always assist their learners when they need them; show them how to solve problems; or allow learners to work on their own. In addition, various limitations, such as inadequate teacher training, large class sizes, workload, undisciplined learners, lack of resources and parental involvement, second language instruction, inadequate support services and socio-economic barriers contribute to the use of teacher-centred methods. The study recommends that intervention programmes in the form of workshops on how to create differentiated activities should be prioritised in the professional development of teachers.     

Silence,sexuality and HIV/AIDS in South African schools

In South Africa where there is a very high HIV infection rate among teenagers and young adults, it is surprising to find that students and teachers are very unwilling to talk about the possibility of being or becoming HIV positive. While AIDS messages dominate public discourse, there is a silence in schools about the personal in relation to AIDS. This article seeks to explain the reluctance of learners to test, talk about and disclose their HIV status, by examining silence within a broader context. It draws on gender theories to show the connections between the silence of AIDS and broader, society-wide gender inequalities. A focus on ‘silence’ adds a neglected gendered phenomenon to the understanding of the AIDS pandemic. Silence is a feature of gender relations that prevents the negotiation of safe sex, the exploration of the self and the expression of vulnerability and hence the building of trust and respect. Conversely, silence contributes to intolerance and fuels prejudice. When interventions consciously attempt to break the silence, they make a major contribution to reducing the likelihood of HIV transmission and to promoting gender equality.     

Respect and responsibility: Teaching citizenship in South African high schools

Respect is a core concept in citizenship debates. South African high school educators often draw upon respect as a key value within citizenship education. Their teaching of this value is often conflated with promotion of the practice of responsible citizenship. The constructions of respect and responsibility in these situations are imbued with assumptions around authority and power relations, such that learners’ are expected to take responsibility for demonstrating respect for in an unequal rather than reciprocal understanding of respect. Thus, negotiations of different kinds of respect are highlighted. The need for schools to embody a culture or ethos of respect is noted if learners are to be expected to recognise and adopt respect as a key element to citizenship in theory and in practice.     

Bullying, violence, and risk behavior in South African school students

OBJECTIVES: To examine the prevalence of bullying behavior in adolescents from Cape Town and Durban, South Africa, and the association of these behaviors with levels of violence and risk behavior. METHOD: Five thousand and seventy-four adolescent schoolchildren in grade 8 (mean age 14.2 years) and grade 11 (mean age 17.4 years) at 72 Government schools in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa completed self-report questionnaires on participation in bullying, violent, anti-social and risk behaviors. RESULTS: Over a third (36.3%) of students were involved in bullying behavior, 8.2% as bullies, 19.3% as victims and 8.7% as bully-victims (those that are both bullied and bully others). Male students were most at risk of both perpetration and victimization, with younger boys more vulnerable to victimization. Violent and anti-social behaviors were increased in bullies, victims and bully-victims compared to controls not involved in any bullying behavior (p<.01 in all cases). Risk taking behavior was elevated for bullies and bully-victims, but for victims was largely comparable to controls. Victims were less likely to smoke than controls (odds ratio .83, p<.05). Bully-victims showed largely comparable violent, anti-social and risk taking behavior profiles to bullies. Bully-victims showed comparable suicidal ideation and smoking profiles to victims. CONCLUSIONS: Results were in keeping with Western findings. Involvement in bullying is a common problem for young South Africans. Bullying behavior can act as an indicator of violent, anti-social and risk-taking behaviors.     

Enhancing learning in South African schools: strategies beyond outcomes-based education

This paper addresses the problem of post-Apartheid South African schools as ineffective learning environments, and the question whether there are strategies for enhancing learning that are more effective and that might be more easily and successfully implemented than an outcomes-based education. Because of historical and situational constraints, an outcomes-based education has limited potential for enhancing learning there. We argue that there are other factors, notably proximal variables such as teaching strategies that focus on the setting of learning goals and the provision of feedback and reinforcement to students, and the quality of teaching itself, that could more effectively enhance learning in South African schools, and that could be more successfully implemented. The paper thus aims to recommend and justify a policy decision in South African education to limit the implementation of an outcomes-based education to only those selected aspects that have been shown to enhance learning most effectively, and to implement other effective strategies for enhancing learning that might be more successfully introduced into schools.     

Knowledge about Inquiry: A study in South African high schools

This paper reports a study on South African learners' knowledge about scientific inquiry using the Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI) Questionnaire. The sample consisted of 105 grade 11 learners from 7 schools across the socio-economic spectrum in a South African city. A rubric for scoring the VASI Questionnaire was developed and refined during the process of coding and is presented. Results showed that the learners held more informed views than that reported in previous international studies, except for particularly naive views regarding multiple methods of investigation. The results are discussed in terms of the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) that was taught from 2003 to 2010 in South African schools. This curriculum was founded on outcomes-based principles, valuing process skills rather than content. The study found that examples provided in the RNCS document correspond closely to the aspects of inquiry as described by the National Research Council. It is argued that the RNCS contributed to the more informed views about inquiry found among South African learners in this study.     

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.     

Reflections from University Students in a South African Gay and Lesbian Society

This exploratory study examines the experiences of 20 gay and lesbian students and their involvement in a gay and lesbian Society at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. This study occurred under the theoretical framework of McCarn and Fassinger’s (1996) model of sexual minority identity formation. Participants ranged in age from 20–31 years old and included 17 men and three women. Eighteen were White, 1 was Colored, and 1 was Euro-Asian. Participants discussed positive and negative effects of belonging to the Society, counseling services available on campus, patterns of victimization, and cultural norms regarding gay men and lesbians in South Africa. Recommendations for counselors, staff, educators, and administrators are provided.     

Guidelines to assist the implementation of differentiated learning activities in South African secondary schools

Despite previous research and recommendations in South Africa, secondary-school teachers still encounter economic, social and cultural challenges in implementing differentiated learning activities in the classroom. The diversity of learners with learning barriers inevitably leads to an increase in workload for the teachers. This article draws on data generated from the research conducted in South Africa and from questionnaires completed by secondary-school teachers who identified existing challenges to implementing differentiated learning activities, as well as on student teachers who implemented three differentiated learning activities (for the slow, average and gifted learners), and reflects on their experiences of good and bad practices. The literature review and specialists' views were integrated to determine how to overcome the challenges that the implementation of differentiated learning faces. Several challenges to the implementation of differentiated learning were highlighted by the research. The research indicated that a total of 97% of teachers never or seldom use a flexible curriculum and extra time to accommodate the diverse learning needs of learners. This article provides guidelines on how to implement differentiated learning activities in secondary-school classes and offers ideas on how to start with differentiated teaching.     

Schools reaching out: Comprehensive parent involvement in South African primary schools

Abstract

Legislation to reform schooling in a democratic South Africa has focused attention on the rights and responsibilities of parents as empowered stakeholders in education. However, it is argued that comprehensive parent involvement is a prerequisite for improving the culture of teaching and learning in schools. Against the background of a literature review which examines legislation affecting parents, this article draws on a qualitative inquiry of parent involvement in a small sample of public primary schools in South Africa selected by means of purposeful sampling. The findings indicated that the schools were doing more to involve parents than is legally required. Strong leadership from principals together with formal organisation of parent involvement has established parent-friendly schools, regular home-school communication and innovative parent volunteering. Certain reservations to parent involvement were detected in principals' attitudes. The study suggests that, together with enabling legislation, schools can develop valuable initiatives to make parents more active and equal partners.     

Gender violence in schools in the developing world

This paper explores gender violence in schools in what is commonly known as the ‘developing world’ through a review of recent research written in English. Violence in the school setting has only recently emerged as a widespread and serious phenomenon in these countries, with the consequence that our knowledge and understanding of it is embryonic; much of it remains invisible or unrecognized. Informed by research from elsewhere, we use theories of gender/sexual relations to provide a more coherent understanding of the issues, to point to absences and open up spaces for further research with the potential to contribute to strategies through which it might be addressed. We start by clarifying the purposes and the broad position adopted in writing this paper. Then, we trace the conceptual connections between gender/sexual relations and gender violence in schools, acknowledging the importance of locating understanding of the phenomena within the context of the school’s culture, its structures and processes. We organize the review using two overlapping categories: implicit gender violence, which relates to the everyday institutional structures and practices, and explicit gender violence, which relates to more overtly sexualized encounters. Both categories cover gender violence perpetrated by students on other students, by teachers on students, and by students on teachers. In the final section, the theoretical connections (and distinctions) generated by the research allow for a critical overview of the strategies that have been used to address the problem to date.     

关于中小学学校文化建设的思考

随着基础教育课程改革的大力推进和素质教育的深入实施,中小学学校文化建设正成为优化学校教育软环境,有效提升基础教育质量的关键。然而,由于理论认识不足或思想重视不够,导致一些中小学学校文化建设仍停留在浅层的学校环境建设和校园文化活动开展层面,而没有真正通过学校价值观这一核心内容的培育和引领,使学校在精神文化、制度文化、行为文化和物质文化等方面得到整体构建和有效开展。