Quality education in black schools of South Africa

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which secondary school teachers in the Western Cape of South Africa thought their schools were offering quality education. From their responses, it was clear that quality education is in short supply given that internationally recognised indicators such as human and physical resources are either inadequate or non-existent. For education to contribute to national and economic development of a new South Africa, the problem of school infrastructure needs to be addressed urgently if a new South Africa is to be of meaning to all South Africans. Failure to do so will be allowing Black South Africans to continue living in a non-advantaged past South Africa which will be detrimental to their future as well as that of their country and nation.     

The scientific heritage of Portuguese secondary schools: a historical approach

Portuguese schools hold important collections, most organised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This scientific heritage, however, is still to be discovered. This article focuses on the creation, development, and role of natural history collections in Portuguese secondary schools, between the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, that is, before and after the introduction of laboratory-based teaching in science education. Material culture is thus used to expand the current narrative of science teaching in Portugal, by tracking these kinds of collections. Contrary to the current view on science teaching in Portuguese secondary education, in this article I argue that by focusing on collections, and more generally on the material culture of secondary schools, a new picture emerges that contradicts the traditional discourse emphasising the scarcity of appropriate school buildings, infrastructure, and equipment. A brief overview of the current state of Portuguese natural history teaching collections is also provided, drawing attention to their vulnerability, given the absence of a general policy or guidelines orienting its conservation.     

The public schools as a work environment

This study examined the perceptions of elementary and secondary school teachers, and school board members, of the school as a work environment. The Work Environment Preferencess Scale, an instrument based on Weber's components of bureaucratic organizations, was administered to all the teachers and board members of a small Maine school district. Board members, then secondary teachers, preferred bureaucratic organization and principles. Implications for education are discussed.     

论中小学管理中教师的职能

教师职能既是研究的弱点，又是实践的难点。中小学管理中教师职能研究可以完善教育管理理论和教师理论，改进教师教育，提升学校管理效能。教师的基本职能是由常规工作规定的，特别职能是由非常规工作规定的。就教师职能的一般分析，包括基于道德层面的为人师表、法律层面的教书育人、系统层面的承上启下和过程层面的责其始终等四种职能。就实践看，我国中小学教师职能在指导思想上必须强化示范、指导和自治职能，弱化规范、指令和监督职能。     

Practical work: Its effectiveness in primary and secondary schools in England

We report here on the first of two evaluations of a national project (Getting Practical: Improving Practical Work in Science—IPWiS) designed to improve the effectiveness of practical work in both primary and secondary schools in England. This first baseline evaluation of the effectiveness of practical work is based on a study of a diverse range of 30 practical lessons undertaken in non‐selective primary (n = 10) and secondary (n = 20) schools prior to the teachers undertaking a training intervention designed to improve their effective use of practical work. A multi‐site case study approach employing a condensed fieldwork strategy was used in which data were collected, using audiotape‐recorded discussions, interviews, and observational field notes. The analysis, based on work by Millar et al. and Tiberghien, considers what students do and think relative to what their teacher intended them to do and think. In both primary and secondary schools, the widespread use of highly structured “recipe” style tasks meant that practical work was highly effective in enabling students (n = 857) to do what the teacher intended. Whilst tasks in primary schools tended to be shorter than in secondary schools, with more time devoted to helping students understand the meaning of new scientific words, neither primary nor secondary teachers' lesson plans incorporated explicit strategies to assist students in making links between their observations and scientific ideas. As such, tasks were less effective in enabling students to use the intended scientific ideas to understand their actions and reflect upon the data they collected. These findings suggest that practical work might be made more effective, in terms of developing students' conceptual understanding—an aim of the IPWiS project—if teachers adopted a more “hands‐on” and “minds‐on” approach and explicitly planned how students were to link these two essential components of practical work. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 1035–1055, 2012     

Refuting Myths,Making Electronic Links with the World: writing in secondary schools in the Eastern Province,South Africa

Older pedagogies that separate learning English in South African schools into LI and L2 inevitably bring in their train judgements of ESL achievements as relatively fixed in quality and as less good in kind than those of L1 users. New curriculum emphases on the dynamic creativity of human language‐learning potential entail more positive and success‐oriented criteria for assessing additional language learning. Electronic links with students in Canberra, Australia and with a Californian Professor of Writing showed Standard 7 students from the Eastern Province as already competent in writing communicatively in English. However, disabling myths still threaten to impede progress towards equity of educational outcomes in South Africa.     

Reforming the Racial Curriculum: curriculum change in desegregated schools in South Africa

This article analyses curriculum changes that have accompanied the reform movement to desegregate private and religious schools in South Africa. In a context of racially segregated State schooling, the 'open' schools have admitted students of all races to what were previously white schools. An examination of the curriculum practices of these schools reveals different patterns in terms of the extent to which schools have modified their practices to acknowledge their black enrolments, and their different approaches to the political crisis in South Africa. The article suggests that the assimilationist practices of most of the open schools illustrate their limits as a reform movement; but it suggests also that they are the only schooling venture during this period that has engaged with issues of desegregation in South Africa in a sustained way.     

Public understanding of science as a separate subject in secondary schools in The Netherlands

This paper describes and analyses an attempt to introduce the public understanding of science as a subject in its own right to be taught to all students in upper secondary education in The Netherlands. The aim of this paper is to make some of the experiences gained in this attempt, especially those related to the development of curriculum content, available to others. As the large-scale implementation of the new subject is still in progress, we focus on the initial stages of the introduction, covering the period 1994-1998. This period includes: (i) the launching of the initiative by a departmental advisory committee; (ii) the subsequent formulation of attainment targets; (iii) a curriculum development project that produced four teaching units tested in classroom experiments and meant as specimens to guide and inspire the authors of schoolbooks; and (iv) the publication of the first schoolbooks on the new subject. We conclude that in spite of its status as a separate subject, the current version of the course does not yet have a clear identity that distinguishes it, in the eyes of students as well as teachers, unmistakably from the traditional science subjects in the school.     

Building citizenship in fragmented societies: The challenges of deracialising and integrating schools in post-Apartheid South Africa

Soon after the collapse of Apartheid, the new government in South Africa set about restructuring the educational system, which was previously segregated by race, class and language. This paper argues that the deracialisation and integration of schools in South Africa has been difficult to achieve and as a process, uneven in different parts of the country and in types of schools.     

浅谈中等职业学校英语教师的素质与课堂管理

教师素质,是指教师在其职业生活中,调节和处理与他人、与社会、与集体、与职业工作关系所应遵守的基本行为规范或行为准则,以及在这基础上所表现出来的观念意识和行为品质。中职学校英语教师的素质应该理解为中等职业学校英语教师在课堂教学以及各种教育教学活动中所表现出来的各种观念意识和行为品质。中职学校英语教师的素质与课堂管理有什么关系?怎样利用中职英语教师的素质更好地为中职英语课堂服务?     

Career guidance needs assessment of black secondary school students in the transvaal province of the republic of South Africa

This study investigates the career guidance needs of 600 Black secondary school students. It also examines how Black secondary school principals perceive the guidance programs in their schools. The results indicate sixteen categories of career guidance needs which should receive priority in planning guidance services for this population. The students consistently felt their needs were not being met. Not less than 60% expressed a need for additional help with finding jobs and careers, understanding the guidance program, developing self-understanding, career awareness, exploration and planning, interpersonal relationships, value clarification, selection of courses and acquisition of decision-making skills in sharp contrast to the help they feel they have received. Career guidance in Black South African schools has not received proper attention for a long time. It has only been in recent years that this phenomenon has attracted the attention of educationists (Cloete and le Roux 1978). Students have always experienced difficulties when making decisions about their careers. Tenuous choices seemed to be a result of the students' lack of sufficient knowledge regarding themselves (i.e. their abilities, attitudes, interests and values) as well as vocational careers, school preparatory subjects and courses leading to those careers, educational and vocational opportunities available to them and financial assistance (Prediger et al., 1973). Self-understanding is the single basic goal of school guidance programs. Through self-understanding, students can begin to know, appreciate and utilize their aptitudes, interests, values and limitations. It improves analytical and critical thinking, growth and development. Students who understand themselves are characterized by their ability to make more rational educational and vocational plans. McDaniel and Shaftel (1956) maintained that every individual should be helped to study and understand himself as a unique person and to respond to the pressures and stimuli of the time and place in which he lives; Holland (1973) suggested that one needs appropriate and accurate information about oneself as well as the occupational field in order to make a realistic choice of vocation. Self-understanding and acceptance is a pre-requisite for the process of choosing an occupation. Super (1957) observed that along this road to self-knowledge every young person needs assistance and that success in understanding oneself is a sine qua non for the development of independence and decisionmaking skills. Interests are important in that they can help students begin thinking seriously about educational planning, vocational exploration and eventually about career development. Ginzberg (1966) believed that many young people do not know enough about the world of work to be able to translate their interests and capacities readily into occupational choices. Hoppock (1967) holds the view that one develops interest in an occupation because one has been exposed to it before. The same is still true today. Many young people are unaware that the choices of subjects they make and the activities they participate in at school can influence vocational choices which will affect their future lives. Super (1957) further contends that probably no other decision a young person makes is as crucial for happiness in life as his or her choice of work, including the educational preparation for it. Carlyle says that ‘it is the first of all problems for man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe’. Illuminating the importance of work in one's existence, Karl Marx said ‘man becomes man through his work’. Boy and Pine (1971) speak of work as ‘a therapeutic and personally integrating experience’. A careful look at the secondary educational system of South Africa reveals emphasis on an academic curriculum that is designed for college-bound students though not all Black students go to college. For most, secondary school is the terminal point in their formal education. This being so, the secondary school curriculum ought to provide them with sufficient self-knowledge concerning their aptitudes, interests, aspirations and skills to become successful and productive members of society. Napier (1972) contends that a society which fails to nurture the capabilities and talents of its youth fails in its obligation to them and to itself. As Tyler (1970) has observed, high school students are generally concerned about becoming independent adults, getting jobs, marrying, gaining status with their peers and helping to solve the ills of the world. Generally speaking, this is also true for South African youth. To assist them with these concerns, career guidance is essential for Black South African secondary school students today. With the help of adequate career guidance, every student should leave the school system equipped with the ability to think critically and make realistic personal decisions and plans for their future. However, this need students have for career guidance in their schools is sometimes overlooked. It is also conceivable that the degree to which individual students need guidance should vary. Differences in need seem to depend largely on differences in physical maturity, socioeconomic and cultural forces, and personality characteristics. Available evidence suggests that although there may be a common set of students' needs their priority for certain students varies and shifts in accordance with age, sex, experience and geographic location (Prediger et al., 1973; Crites, 1974, Carney and Barak 1976). According to Herr and Cramer (1979) guidance has been defined ‘as that part of pupil personnel services — and therefore of elementary and secondary education — aimed at maximal development of individual potentialities through devoting school-wide assistance to youth in the personal problems, choices and decisions each must face as he moves towards maturity’. There seems to be a consensus among guidance authorities that the following major services constitute the guidance program: the inventory service, the information service, the counselling service, the placement service and the follow-up and evaluation services. These services are an intergral part of the total school curriculum and they facilitate the instructional program as it attempts to help each student attain the maximum level of his or her potential. Research studies (Super, 1949 and 1968; Holland, 1973; Boy and Pine, 1971; Hoppock, 1967, Napier, 1972) indicate that out of an effective guidance program grows the capacity and freedom of the participants to contend more assertively for their beliefs and plan and execute strategies for making vocational decisions more efficiently and effectively. It is, therefore, imperative that each student be helped to reach the highest level of his or her potential as a human being. The present study sought to investigate the career guidance needs of Black South African secondary school students and the degree to which these needs are being met by the present guidance services in the schools. In addition, the views of the principals of the selected schools regarding the present status of guidance services were sought.     

South Africa: The need for a radical restructuring of specialized education in the new South Africa

Sigamoney Naicker, a lecturer in Specialized Education in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Western Cape, provides an analysis of specialized education after one year of the first democratic government in South Africa.     

Informatics as a new subject in secondary schools in the USSR

Conclusion We are on the verge of the virtually unlimited development and spread of electronic computing equipment. The computer is becoming man's intellectual instrument and partner in nearly all spheres of human life and activity. The need to update the information model of the world in the form of programs and the constantly growing complexity of the environment require, and at the same time permit, a considerable rise in society's intellectual level.The laws of information processing, the methods of transition from knowledge to action and the ability to develop and analyse programs and foresee the results of their execution should feature prominently in this advance of the human intellect. The computer will be more than a mere instrument in the educational process; it will lead to the formation of a new intellectual background and a new operational environment for children's development at school and at home. This will hasten their intellectual maturity and make them more active and better prepared for professional activities and for the emergence in the worker of the twenty-first century of a new way of thinking.The goal of introducing computers into education and the approaches to this goal that are taking shape today have no precedents in history. They must be pursued with due regard to the nature, the realities and the cultural and social traditions of the society concerned.Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and head of the Experimental Informatics Laboratory of the Computing Centre of the Academy's Siberian Division. Member of the United States Computing Machinery Association; Member emeritus of the British Computer Society. He represents the Soviet Union in various bodies of the International Federation for Information Processing and has been chairman and member of the organizing committees of major international congresses. Editorin-chief ofMikroprocessornye sredstva i sistemy (Microprocessor facilities and systems). Author of more than 300 publications.     

The development of a research culture in secondary schools

This article is grounded in several types of empirical qualitative data deriving from a sample of four of the six secondary schools participating in a research partnership with the University of Cambridge School of Education. It is argued that each of the four schools has a research culture that fits within a category that can be described as either emergent, established or established-embedded. The body of the article sets out distinguishing features of each of these forms of school research culture, and goes on to discuss the implications that this categorisation holds for current governmental policy with regards to the continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers.     

The contradictions of suppression: Notes from a study of approaches to gangs in three public high schools

This article is based on data collected from two years of ethnographic gang research in three inner-city high schools. Two of the schools are situated in the same city on the West Coast, and the third is located on the East Coast. The aim of the research was to describe and analyze the range of responses of three secondary schools as they struggled to cope with the problem of youth gangs among their student populations. I argue that the common repertoire of suppression strategies used by the schools, although based on commonsense reactions to rising student violence, are futile responses to the problems of gangs and have antieducational “unintentional consequences” for the pursuance of a democratic public pedagogy. Dr. David Brotherton gained his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and is currently an assistant professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. During the early research for this article, he was a research fellow at the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Alcohol Research Group. Dr. Brotherton was also a senior analyst at the Institute for Scientific Analysis working on the Home Boy Study supervised by Dan Waldorf.     

Promoting the implementation of inclusive education in primary schools in South Africa

The British Index for Inclusion was selected to be used in three primary schools in the Western Cape Province in South Africa in order to develop a South African model to assist in the development of inclusive schools. The Index for Inclusion process entails progression through a series of five developmental phases and this paper, written by Petra Engelbrecht, professor in educational psychology and special education and senior research director at Stellenbosch University, Marietjie Oswald, lecturer in special education at Stellenbosch University, and Chris Forlin, associate professor in special education at the Hong Kong Institute of Special Education, is a reflection of the first two phases. Qualitative data were generated from the consultative process followed in the schools during the first phase and both qualitative and quantitative data from questionnaires regarding the perceptions of all school community members on the inclusive practices or lack thereof in their schools during the second phase. The authors drew out the following five themes from the three sets of data: an inclusive school philosophy; democratic leadership, structures, processes and values; collaboration; addressing learner diversity; and resources. Petra Engelbrecht, Marietjie Oswald and Chris Forlin, all of whom were working on a UNESCO-funded project to trial the use of the Index for Inclusion in South Africa, suggest that these themes provided invaluable insights into both the common and unique complexities, the problems and the assets of the different school communities. The themes are discussed in detail in this article, raising fascinating issues for the development of inclusion in different contexts around the world, and will be used to inform the three remaining phases of the Index for Inclusion process.