Please read the abstract (Summary) in the 00front part of this document) / Thesis (PhD (Education Management))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Please read the abstract in the section, 00front, of this document / Thesis (PhD (Education Management))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Education Management and Policy Studies / PhD / unrestricted

South Africa has experienced three significant curriculum reforms since 1994. The first of these replaced the ‘apartheid’ curriculum with C2005 based largely on Outcomes Based Education. In the second stage C2005 gave way to the National Curriculum Statements, a simplified version of C2005. Finally, the NCS was replaced with CAPS. This research study investigates the perceptions, attitudes and experiences of teachers implementing these curriculum changes. It focuses in particular on Foundation Phase in 2012, the year in which CAPS was implemented in that phase. It took the form of an interpretive case study, using qualitative data generating and analysis techniques. Principals and selected teachers of two primary schools in Grahamstown – an ex-Model C school and a performing ‘township’ school - were the respondents of the study. Data were generated chiefly through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, supplemented by document analysis and observation. The findings revealed that the teachers in this study are frustrated and angry about the frequency of curriculum change in South Africa. Respondents are particularly critical of OBE and the NCS. While they welcome the need for a departure from ‘apartheid’ curricula, they feel the pedagogical underpinning of the NCS – with its emphasis on learner-centredness – disempowered them as teachers. Hence, they welcomed CAPS which seems to return to content – rather than skills and attitudes – and re-instates the teacher as the chief giver of knowledge and manager of learning.

A country’s competitive advantage is linked to its educational outcomes. South Africa, as a developing country wants to shift from being a resource based economy to being a knowledge based economy. To enable such a shift, schools must be able to graduate learners who are adequately prepared for the demands of institutions of higher learning. Schools, therefore, must become centres of excellence and a culture of performance must be prevalent in schools. The National Development Plan as outlined by the National Planning Commission (2011) identified education as one of the pillars from which South Africa’s economy will be driven. However, recent studies have rated South Africa’s education system as one of the worst among middle income economies and sometimes even worse than many low-income African economies. To bridge that gap, there is a need to drive schools to be centres of excellence. This study sought to identify factors that influence a performance culture in schools. In order to achieve this objective, literature was scanned and five factors that influence a performance culture were identified (organisational school climate, teacher attitude, school managerial processes, organisational school value and organisational school structure). These factors were initially identified and used by Marcoulides and Heck (1993) in a corporate organisation and later adopted for testing in a school setting by Gomez, Marcoulides and Heck (2012). A school in Johannesburg East district was sampled through convenience sampling and data was collected through a questionnaire which was administered to the principal, teachers and staff, school governing board members, parents and alumni of the school. The total sample was 120 and a total of 94 questionnaires were returned giving a response rate of 78 percent. Descriptive statistical techniques were performed to establish the mean and standard deviation of perceptions among the respondents. Inferential statistical techniques were used to measure and ascertain reliability through Cronbach’s alpha, comparisons of responses through t-testing and ANOVA, association through correlation and hypotheses were tested through multiple regression analysis. All the variables were found to be valid and reliable. Furthermore, statistical results revealed that in the sampled school, even though all the five factors had an association among each other, only organisational school culture and organisational school value had an association to the dependent variable, performance culture. Organisational school value, however, was found to be the only variable of great influence to performance culture at the sampled school. The ideologies and activities that represent the values, therefore, influence the performance culture of a school.

Staff, previously employed by Public Technical and Vocation Education and Training (TVET) Colleges, migrated (transferred) to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in terms of Section 197 of the Labour Relations Act. This treatise investigates the legal consequences of the migration of the staff from the fifty (50) TVET Colleges to DHET and focuses on the different categories of staff. The conditions of service of all the categories of staff before migration are compared with that after the migration. Meaningful recommendations are made about negotiations that should take place in the respective bargaining chambers in order to ensure a smooth transition that will prevent unnecessary legal consequences in future. The treatise furthermore analyses the legal consequences of staff, employed by temporary employment services to perform outsourced functions at TVET Colleges, who did not migrate to DHET. The legal implications of these members of staff is debated and evaluated. The treatise also discusses the performance management system and the changes from the integrated quality management system of lecturers to the performance management development system of public servants. TVET Colleges absorb the employment costs (as a separate employer) to ensure that there is growth in the Full Time Equivalents of Ministerial programmes, funded by DHET. The treatise makes meaningful recommendations to the new employer (DHET) with regard to the appointment of staff to conduct ministerial programmes and the overtime remuneration of current staff that willingly agree to work overtime but are not fairly remunerated by DHET. The treatise also considers the second phase of the migration process, namely the development of a blueprint organogram and the development of job descriptions for the different functions identified on the organogram. The process should ideally be followed by a restructuring process where staff are placed in identified functions and must be capacitated to perform the functions adequately. This process will ensure alignment of functions in the fifty TVET Colleges. Finally, the treatise notes the issue of workplace discipline at the TVET College and the definition of the workplace. It offers a proposal to the DHET to negotiate with the unions about defining the workplace as this has a legal consequence for attaining the objective of sound labour relations. It make meaningful recommendations about the overlapping regulatory requirements applicable to the TVET College as a legal person and DHET as an employer.

Part of the transformation of education in South Africa emphasises the need to address historical barriers that have been impeding access into institutions of learning, and the need for empowering stakeholders democratically. Improving institutional responsiveness and focusing on Science, Technology, and Engineering and increasing the number of university graduates are amongst the more prominent strategies for changing the educational, socioeconomic, and political landscape within a global context. This research, as the first cycle of an action research project, explores collaborative group work with a group of science students at a Vista University campus (that is now part of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) as a contribution to institutional, professional, and personal responsiveness. The treatise traces my development as a novice researcher within an evolving action research context that became a terrain for facilitating a collaborative approach to learning. I describe my personal experience and the experiences of my co-researchers as collaborative partners, the systemic influences considered during the study, and the process of action research that encouraged movement from feelings of apprehension and inadequacy to feelings of anticipation and excitement regarding collaborative interactive learning and development opportunities. For the co-researchers and me an action research process in an interpretivist paradigm was not just suited to an exploration of collaboration, but also evolved into a vehicle for interactive teaching and learning, in a collaborative and student-centred way. Giving voice and being listened to, having perspectives validated, engaging in learning that could accompany academic and personal growth, and an acute sense of being empowered are ingredients that participants, and institutions of learning, can continue building on and building with along evolving spirals of life-long learning and meaning making.

This thesis examined the manifestations of the various forms of racism in a South African institution of higher learning, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). The study further attempted to confront racism from the perspective of finding ways in which human relations of a diversified higher education population could be improved. As the issue at hand in this study relates to racism, critical race theory (CRT) was explored in an attempt to understand different perceptions and ways of dealing with racial inequality. CRT recognizes the complexities of racism and the construction of race as a way of justifying political, economic and social inequality (Stovall, 2006:247). This understanding played a role in making sense of perceived racial discrimination which is also connected to gender, age and social class. CRT conceptual tools, such as stories and counter stories featured strongly in the data collection process. Understanding the relationships of power, race and racism, as advocated by CRT, was vital in the process of analyzing data, reporting on the findings, and the proposed recommendations. The empirical data and literature provided insight in the design of a ‘Wheel of Humanity’ which serves as a succinct portrayal of ideas that can work in nurturing acceptable, to better, human relations. The study revealed that Meta-stereotypes influenced the perceptions of racist attitudes, behaviours and practices. As much as overt forms of racism were reported as minimal, subtle and implicit forms still exist, and are aggravated by the ‘culture of power’ that is taken for granted. The success of initiatives designed for the purposes of going beyond race, and adopting a humane approach in instilling the principles of ubuntu, depends on changing attitudes and preconceived ideas.

Please read the abstract in the section, 00front, of this document / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Bibliography: leaves [114] - 124. / The study investigates the response of a former white Model C school to externally imposed educational reforms contained in the Education White Paper (1995); the South African Schools' Bill (1996) and the South African School's Act (1996). The study examines the path of policy - making after legislation. Drawing on the work of Bowe et al. (1996) as a key text, the study investigates the dynamics of the policy process within the school. The study uses as a conceptual framework Bowe et al.'s (ibid.) argument that the policy text is multiple, and that the legislated policy text is one of a number of representations of the policy. As such, the study seeks to identify the sites of text generation and the dynamics involved in the formation and maintenance of the dominant representations of the legislated policy texts. The research examines the impact of perceptions of the external policy changes and of the institution on the manner in which the school responds to the change. The relationship between power and policy-making referred to by researchers such as Ball (1994) and Blackmore et al. (1994) is clearly evident in the response of the executive of the school to challenges to the dominant discourse. The dominant discourse is described as a discourse of "Model C" schooling: predominantly white, and relatively progressive in so far as selected black students are permitted to attend the school. Linguistic exclusivity and the limited agency in the policy process are the two main strategies used to protect this dominant discourse. The study examines the strategies of resistance to this dominance and the ways in which these dissenting voices are marginalised. The study identifies the response of the school as "adaptive accommodation" whereby the school not merely reshapes the legislated policy to fit the structure of the school, but physically restructures the school so that anticipated policy change can be contained. The study concludes that the legislated policy has failed to challenge the policy paradigm of the previous education system.

Bibliography: pages 115-119. / As the new South African national ethos is borne, education assumes the inenviable role of reconciliator and liberator amidst the programme of the redressing of past imbalances. Stakeholders everywhere are looking to the field of education for national reconstruction and nation building through the development of young minds into productive, active and creative citizens. Indeed, the responsibility that education bears is a moral one. The broad field of this dissertation identifies Literature Education as a tool for transformation within the specific context of present post-apartheid South Africa. A paradigmatic analysis of literature teaching is provided to establish a theoretical framework for teachers to critically appreciate the underpinnings of their methodological practice, within which to locate their current literature teaching trends. Making a paradigmatic shift in literature teaching implies a change in our beliefs concerning knowledge and meaning; power and authority and learning and teaching in society. The thesis posits that Literature Education must necessarily be located within a critical paradigm of teaching, so that as a critical pedagogy, it may facilitate the self and social transformation of pupils and practitioners alike. Within the critical paradigm of literature teaching, reading is reconceptualised as an interactive process between reader and text. The reader's status is elevated to meaning-maker, without whom the act of reading would be void. Adequate literary theory is advanced on Schema Theory as a model of reading analyses of a reader's or pupil's Personal-Mental Schemata. The theory of Additive Schemata is proposed as the means to effect the transformation in pupils through Schema Refreshment or Schema Alteration. The critical teacher using Additive Schemata inputs, is in a position to maximise the potential that the learner has for transformation. Transformation, however is not guaranteed as it depends on a variety of factors such as a learner's flexibility, logical reasoning and a need to be transformed. In order to validate this proposal a research project was conducted in an English Literature class, the dynamics of which are detailed in Chapter Three in their entirety. The findings reveal that Additive Schemata have a positive influence on a learner's personal-mental Schemata leading in most cases to a transformation within pupils who engaged critically with the Additive Schemata approach. The research acknowledges that a learner's point of entry is not the same as the point of departure within the Additive Schemata approach. Learners are not being introduced to a new moral order; the Additive Schemata offers learner's a new moral choice. In so doing, literature teaching, following the Additive schemata approach, embodies the central tenets of a critical pedagogy offering pupils a process that is self-liberating and socially empowering.