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"Mahlomaholo, Sechaba"
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Culture, Education, and Community : expressions of the postcolonial imagination
\"Lavia and Mahlomaholo re-examine how postcolonial theories might contribute to understandings about education in Culture, Education, and Community. They provide a critical space in which to interrogate the ways in which postcolonial voices are imagined and struggle to be valued, heard, and responded to. The book takes the imagination of the postcolonial and the experience of postcoloniality as its focus, acknowledging that postcolonialism is a troubling, unsettling, and ambiguous concept requiring re-visiting and re-interpretation\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments
Higher education has, to date, been unable to provide effective and lasting solutions to challenges of education, because large sections thereof continue to search for knowledge for its own sake. At best, they conduct responsive research, but on a small scale they reduce the complexity that is education to a neat unilinear process which can be studied by individual researchers in isolation. Hence, I propose the adoption of bricolage as the perspective that will better enable us to respond to the challenges mentioned above. I argue for a multi-layered and multi-perspectival research approach, conducted by teams of researchers in collaboration with participants who emerge from the research process as co-researchers. This research approach incorporates aspects of the eight moments in research, namely the traditional qualitative, modernity, blurred genres, crisis of representation, postmodernity, post-experimentalism, methodologically contested representation, and the current fractured futures. Using data from our research team, I show how we have operationalised bricolage. Based on the positive educational outcomes and findings of this project, I come to the conclusion that, as higher-education bricoleurs, we are better able to respond to the complexity of education in a coherent, logical, focused and original manner.
Journal Article
Creating Sustainable Early Childhood Learning Environments: A Transformatory Posthumanist Perspective
[...]The World Health Organisation (2018, p. 1) has argued that \"if we change the beginning of the story, then we change the whole story.\" [...]the articles herein address real-life problems using versions of actions and participatory action research involving communities larger than the school- or learning-centred interaction of stakeholders, and thus giving them more traction. According to her, the early years are an ideal moment for children to form initial attitudes towards different groups of people. [...]the early years are regarded as a means for social and economic transformation, according to the South African National Development Plan.
Journal Article
Early school leavers and sustainable learning environments in rural contexts
In this paper, I show by means of Yosso's community cultural wealth theoretical framework how equal numbers of early school leavers (ESLs) from the rural and the urban parts of the North-West province cite similar reasons for their early departure from school. The conclusion drawn from this scenario is that, irrespective of their diverse backgrounds and locations, they all seem to be affected in similar ways by conditions in their respective schools and social milieu. The above conclusion indicates that there is nothing intrinsically inferior or backward about rural learners and their settings. What seems to be different though may be how they are excluded with regard to curriculum practices that do not address their specific circumstances directly. On the basis of this conclusion I suggest that these curriculum practices be customised to the needs and conditions in the rural settings towards the creation of sustainable learning environments so as to stem the high rates of learner attrition therein. This must be done with the intention of giving rural learners opportunities similar to those afforded to learners from urban backgrounds. To date, rural learners have been deliberately and / or inadvertently excluded and marginalised; thus, to remedy the situation I propose the creation of sustainable learning environments in rural schools as well.
Journal Article
13 - Creating Effective Postgraduate Learning Environments: An Analysis of an Intervention from Realist Social Theory
This paper analyses two illustrative reports of the external examiners on some of the manuscripts of the twenty postgraduate students who graduated at the University of the Free State between 2013 and 2014. The students were part of the twenty-eight PhD and twenty-two MEd students as well as fifteen supervisors working in a cohort approach within the Sustainable Postgraduate Learning Environments research project. The two reports are analysed in order to document, understand and illustrate how the Sus- tainable Postgraduate Learning Environments facilitate good academic performance. The focus is mainly on the working together of the actors’ emotional and cognitive aspects. The argument is that the two reports refer to two different sides of the same process, implying that improvements in the students’ academic performance are influenced by the extent to which they are validated through a caring learning environment. However, it should be noted that even poor academic performance seems to be a reflec- tion of the problems in this interaction. Both students and supervisors are affected in the same way. The paper uses Margaret Archer’s theory of social realism to generate an understanding of how the interaction between the students and the supervisors on the one hand, and between cognition and emotion on the other hand, produce particular academic performances that are central in the creation of sustainable postgraduate learning environ- ments. The argument put forth is that agency and structure can and should not be collapsed into each other, even though the two co-constitute each other. Tolerance of their separation enables individual agents to take charge of their own lives despite the constraints of their situations to construct particular meanings; hence, their good academic performance beyond the dictates of their contexts.
Journal Article
A socially inclusive teaching strategy for fourth grade English (second) language learners in a South African school
Background: Learners from predominantly less priviledged South African schools encounter English as a language of teaching and learning for the first time in Grade 4. The transition from the use of home language to second language, namely English first additional language, is complexly related to the learners’ inability to read text meaningfully. This complexity is traceable to the reading materials, actual teaching practices and learners’ cultural underpinnings. Learners’ inability to read text meaningfully impacts negatively their academic performance in general. Aim: This article demonstrates how a socially inclusive teaching strategy is used to enhance the teaching of reading in a second additional language to Grade 4 learners. Setting: A one-teacher public school situated on a remote private property with bad access roads. Learners from neighbouring farms walked long distances to school. The teacher’s administrative work and workshops often clashed with teaching and learning that received very limited support. Methods: The principles of the free attitude interview technique and critical discourse analysis were used to generate and analyse the data. Socially inclusive teaching strategy that is participatory action research-oriented and underpinned by critical emancipatory research principles guided the study. Results: The use of socially inclusive teaching strategy helped improve reading of English text significantly. Conclusion: Socially inclusive teaching strategy can help improve learning and teaching support materials, teacher support and learning.
Journal Article
11 - Creating Sustainable Learning Environments for Professional Curriculum Leadership through Information and Communication Technologies
This paper documents the processes and procedures followed by a team of two researchers and five co-researchers in the creation of sustainable learning environments at a school in the Free State province of South Af- rica. For this purpose, we used one school to illustrate how diverse school community members deliberately constructed a framework for the integra- tion of ICT in the development of its professional curriculum leadership practices. A conceptual framework driven through critical emancipatory theory is applied as the lens that propels us to create opportunities for self-empowerment. Grounded on this theoretical framing we then used a participatory action research to operationalize it. We generated relevant data through the establishment of a research team, which coalesced around a common vision collectively identified in pursuance of the aim of study. Data generated were analysed using Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis. The findings discussed are (i) performance through reflecting on professional curriculum practices, (ii) their actions, (iii) procedures involved therein, and (iv) strategies. The contribution we made was a tested framework for the integration of ICT in a professional curriculum context. This contribution has implications for the creation of a sustainable learning environment.
Journal Article
4 - Exploring Strategies to Strengthen Continuing Professional Development of Teachers in Rural South Africa
Professional development of teachers is a cornerstone of the provision of quality of teaching and learning in a country’s education system, affirmed by the literature, with programmes central to proposals for improving the quality of teaching and transforming education. Competencies of teach- ers in South Africa have not improved as envisaged, according to studies conducted, with many professional development programmes not yet implemented or not taking into account teachers’ perspectives. In address- ing this challenge, the aim of this article is to determine components of a strategy that could be employed to implement professional development programmes, drawing on a project conducted in two rural secondary schools in the Free State province. Data were generated from school community participants and district-based officials using a Participatory Action Re- search approach. Findings revealed six distinct components of a strategy, namely establishment of a team comprising all stakeholders; the creation of a common vision for all based on a thorough Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis; prioritizing items; drawing up of a strategic plan; monitoring procedures to determine progress made; and suggesting possible ways of improving on weaknesses.
Journal Article
Education for sustainable development in the era of decolonisation and transformation
The voices demanding the decolonisation and transformation of education have become louder, stronger and clearer. These happen when the whole of humanity has bound itself to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2015–2030 building onto the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000–2015. What is unclear to many is whether decolonisation and transformation of education on the one hand, and education for sustainable development on the other, refer to the same processes. It is also unclear whether the intents and purposes are the same, whether mechanisms and strategies to operationalise them are similar or whether we are being confronted by irreconcilable contradictions that will make the realisation of either and/or all impossible.
Journal Article