Portraits of Black schooling in South Africa

This research captures the personal experiences of Black student teachers at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa, who were asked to write about one significant experience in their schooling careers. About 1,000 such individual stories, collected between 1991 and 1996, were analyzed and recast as broader portraits of Black schooling in South Africa before and after the transition to democracy in 1994. Five major themes were identified in these stories: (1) violence at school, (2) authoritarian climate at school, (3) learning as memorizing, (4) difficulties in schooling related to poverty, and (5) difficulties in schooling related to the language medium. The methodological strategy was influenced by the Dutch school of phenomenological pedagogy that takes the ordinary life-world as a starting point for inquiry. The findings of this research suggest that new education policies, to be effective, must take account of very significant continuities in students' experiences through the political transition.     

Black South African freshmen's experience of first coitus and contraception

The purpose of this study was to investigate Black South African freshmen's experience of first intercourse and contraception. The study found that many students do not use contraception during first intercourse and that peers were reported as the primary first source of learning about sexual intercourse as well as the preferred source. Freshmen who are contemplating, anticipating or deferring the transition from virginity to non-virginity are an important target group for campus safer sex programmes because safer sex behaviours could be encouraged before a high risk sexual behavior pattern develops.     

South African Black Teachers and the Academic Paper Chase

Teachers in South Africa are under great pressure from the state to improve their qualifications, one of the state's strategies for improving education standards. The pressure is felt more acutely by black teachers who were previously allowed to teach with lower qualifications than their white counterparts. In‐service teachers, irrespective of their age or length of experience, are required to obtain the school leavers’ certificate post hoc to earn a salary commensurate with their duties. Their duties are heavy: the pupil‐teacher ratio is about 45:1, and teachers teach between 42 and 50 periods a week, without many basic facilities. Consequently, many teachers are neglecting their pupils to concentrate on their studies. The call for qualifications can be viewed as a component of the South African state's reform initiative, and, as such, is yet another cosmetic amelioration of black people's status because it does not address their needs.     

Integrated Education and Black Development in Post-apartheid South Africa: Critical analyses

With the integration of the education system in liberated South Africa, social development expectations should be justifiably high, especially for the country's long-oppressed black majority. The concretisation of these expectations is being, or will be, determined by a myriad of converging and diverging possibilities and difficulties. This article focuses on the problems of education and development in post-apartheid South Africa, with a sustained emphasis on the importance of looking beyond the current political triumph. The new areas of constant and consistent focus must become, the author proposes, the disturbingly uneven terrains of educational attainment and long-term socio-economic development. By stressing the urgency of these cases, the article highlights actual possibilities as well as the magnitude of hindering factors in educational development that are still affecting millions of lives in the new South Africa. The article ends with a call for the pragmatic reconstitution of South Africa's development education actualities to make this country a prosperous space for all South Africans now and into the future.     

Temperament and the Cognitive Modifiability of Academically Superior Black Adolescents in South Africa

TEMPERAMENT is characterised as the relatively stable dimension of human functioning, while intelligence is increasingly seen as a dynamic process. This study investigated the relationship between temperament and cognitive modifiability in an academically successful but disadvantaged South African population. For 92 adolescents in the Soweto Gifted Child Programme, the relationship was determined between their ratings on the Teacher Temperament Questionnaire and their performance on the Learning Potential Assessment Device and other measures of cognitive ability and learning. The Task Orientation and Personal‐Social Flexibility temperament dimensions were directly related to learning, academic performance and cognitive change. A more complex relationship was suggested for the Reactivity dimension, in that more intense and reactive subjects tended to perform better in unstimulating situations, while under more facilitative learning conditions, a higher performance level tended to be associated with a lower reactivity level. The findings support the possibility of an interaction between temperament and cognitive growth and demonstrate the usefulness of considering these individual difference variables in combination with each other.     

Adjustment of Black Students at a Historically White South African University

The adjustment of black African students to what, under apartheid, were white universities has long been a concern for South African educators. Dimensions of adjustment to university were examined for 339 African black and white freshmen attending a historically white South African university, using the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire. No significant differences were found between black African and white participants on academic adjustment or institutional commitment. However, black African participants reported significantly poorer levels of social adjustment, and somewhat poorer levels of personal-emotional adjustment. Further investigations found relationships between academic performance, race and additional variables hypothesised to be associated with adjustment.     

A site of struggle: Black academics at historically white universities in South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the identities of three black academics at historically white universities in South Africa. Three portraits that highlight politics within the professoriate as constituting a site for struggle are crafted. The wish is to shift the present focus in the South African literature by addressing the variety and complexity of black academics' everyday involvement in their oppression, demonstrating how that works. The analyses are set against the background of globalisation and the transformation of higher education worldwide. It is argued that the future of tertiary education in South Africa and elsewhere is likely to be influenced by battles within the academy about issues of diversity in regard to race, class and gender. Its outcomes are far from predictable.     

A Comparative Study of Black South African Children from Three Different Contexts

This study compares family characteristics and developmental outcomes of black children (N = 300) from 3 rural contexts in South Africa: the homeland, the resettlement, and the white-owned farms. Parents in the homeland were more likely to be married and had more education, less household crowding, and lower mobility than parents in the other 2 areas, and higher occupational status than parents from the farms. Child outcomes paralleled these differences in material resources and family stability. Children from the homeland scored higher than children from the resettlement or farms on head circumference, vocabulary, quantitative skill, and self-concept, with no significant differences between the latter 2 areas on these outcome variables. Children from the homeland also scored higher than resettlement children on weight, copying skill, and height, with children from the farms measuring lowest on height. Child outcomes were highly intercorrelated in all 3 residence areas, but correlations among family variables, and between family and child variables, showed different patterns across areas. Parent education, occupation, and crowding were the most consistent predictors of physical development, cognitive development, and self-concept. Family mobility and marital status, however, showed different relationships to other family variables and to child outcomes across the 3 environments. These results highlight the importance of studying children in multiple environmental contexts, because family characteristics are not associated uniformly across residence areas.     

Passing through professionalism: South African Black male teachers and same-sex desire

ABSTRACT

Framed using queer theory and intersectionality theory, this paper unpacks the various ways in which Black South African male teachers who engage in same-sex relations negotiate and manage their identities in a context deeply riddled by the history of apartheid. Eight male teachers were interviewed using a life history methodology. Consistent with many international studies on the work experiences same-sex identifying teachers, the paper argues that the interviewed male teachers draw on a passing act in order to manage their identities in school contexts characterised by a culture of heteronormativity. This adopted passing act mainly draws upon the enactment of hyperprofessionalism, a localised form which safeguards same-sex ‘desiring’ teachers against possible homophobia. While this form of passing grants teachers significant respect and power, leading at times to the disruption of homophobia, not all teachers enjoy this power. Some teachers are forced out of their schools by threatened managers. The paper calls for more interventionist work at both basic education and higher education levels in South Africa in order to make schools more inclusive and welcoming for all students and teachers.     

自由下的奴役生活--美国内战后南方的黑人妇女生活研究(1863-1920)

美国南方黑人妇女在内战后开始的是一种自由下的奴役生活.在职业方面,她们中的大多数只能从事家庭服务工作,低等而且低薪;在社会地位上,她们受到性别和种族的双重歧视.随着20世纪初黑人社区的完善、职业结构的变化和黑人的自我觉醒,南方黑人妇女联合起来,为争取种族和性别的双重平等而斗争.     

初探非洲黑人音乐对南北美洲音乐文化发展的影响

非洲音乐文化是黑人文化的生根组成部分.非洲黑人音乐文化在欧洲音乐文化的阴影和夹缝中顽强地生根、发芽,直至放出绚丽的光彩.其对南北美洲音乐文化发展影响颇深,并在与其他音乐文化相互交融的过程中产生出更多各具特色的音乐文化.南北美洲国家和地区的音乐文化都深深地打上了黑非洲音乐文化的烙印.     

Black Families and Schooling in Rural South Carolina: Families' and Educators' Disjunctive Interpretations of Parental Involvement

The positive impact on children's educational trajectories when effective home-school partnerships are established has been extensively documented. This article shares findings from a 13-month research study in a rural, southern community in South Carolina that sought to investigate the nature of the “partnerships” formed between educators and families, while challenging stereotypes and misperceptions that prevent such partnerships from unfolding. In doing so, the researcher makes visible the experiences of Black families, students, and schools in communities rarely studied—poor, rural Black communities in the southern United States. The researcher uses the actual words of the teachers and parents to make visible the disjunctive interpretations about one of the major themes from the study, parental involvement as relationships. Finally, the researcher offers implications for educators and parents as they do the work necessary to form relationships that really benefit students.