This study explored the experiences in identifying and meeting the developmental needs of novice teachers at one primary school in Durban. The researcher’s assumption was that mentoring and teacher development are a norm at schools. It is argued that in order to keep in touch with current educational trends and to maintain a sense of renewal and inspiration teacher development is an important issue within the changing context of education in South Africa. This is evident in the new policy developments such as the National Policy Framework for Teacher Education in South Africa and Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD). The process of mentoring may be regarded as a form of teacher development, hence mentoring and teacher development cannot be regarded as two separate processes, they occur in relation to each other. Furthermore, novice teachers enter the profession with certain expectations and often experience a gap between the reality of teaching practice and their ideals. In the context of this background and within a qualitative interpretive paradigm this study drew on the experiences of novice teachers and educational managers in one school. For the purpose of data collection, semistructured interviews were used which allowed participants to discuss their experiences and interpretations of mentoring and teacher developmental needs and to express how they regarded situations from their own point of view. Data collected from the document analysis was merged with the data collected from the interviews. The findings indicated that the developmental needs of novice teachers were multifaceted such as: mentoring and induction must take place initially; a yearning to be socially accepted by the serving staff; a need to be heard regarding their experiences and developmental needs; to be informed on how to construct learning area work schedules, lesson plans and assessment tasks to suit the requirements at this school, especially in the initial days of there employment and the management of diversity and strategies to implement inclusive education. The study concluded that although the management and leadership of the school played a meaningful and supportive role in the professional and personal competence of the novice teachers, led by the principal who was encouraging and supportive, there was still room for improvement in the practices of leadership and management in attempting to identify and meet the developmental needs of novice teachers. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This is a case study that focused on the stakeholders' experiences of school financial management and how the challenging experiences were addressed in the face of Free Primary Education (FPE) programme. In order to answer the research questions, individual interviews at face-to-face basis and document analysis were utilised. The data was collected from the two principals, six educators and four parental representatives of the two primary schools participated in this study. The findings of this study revealed that the two primary schools experienced a severe lack of funds that emanated after the implementation of the FPE programme. The other important issue disclosed was that the government has to communicate with parents of learners and community members stating which basic educational needs are covered by the state funding and which are not catered for. This is hoped to bring understanding to parents and community members that the educational expenses of their children should be a shared responsibility with the government. The findings of this study warrant the following recommendations that the government has to develop a new policy for parental funding as a way of subsidising the government funding. There should be a fund raising policy for all primary schools. The FPE programme, as it does not cater for all educational basic needs. It would be better to call it 'Educational Support Programme' (ESP). The government subvention should be increased from R5.00 at least to three quarters of the former school fees before the implementation of the FPE programme. The findings of this study have implication to the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) to review and evaluate the FPE programme so that the revealed gaps and suggestions made in this study should be used as a way forward to improve this programme to suit quality education to be provided to all Basotho children. In addition, this should be followed by provision of sufficient funds to cater for and cover all the financial needs of an individual school. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

The aim of this study is to describe how the National Certificate (Vocational) Financial Management at the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Level 4 is enacted in the classroom and to analyse some of the data gathered regarding the enactment. The study is premised on the assumption that to teach the NC(V) curriculum takes on a new meaning (a new role) for its implementers (college lecturers) as the curriculum, in the form of outcomes, has both theoretical (academic) and practical (vocational) parts. Hence, the college lecturer is expected to lecture using a specialised practice of pedagogy. Data were collected from video and audio recording from ten lessons of the NC(V) Level 4 Financial Management class. Thereafter, a series of interviews were conducted with the college lecturer, who taught the class, as well as interviews with two senior lecturers and the Head of Department of the college. The theoretical framework used in this study is framed using the theories of Basil Bernstein and of Lev Vygotsky. The study will use these theories as tools to analyse the data collected, based on the assumption that these theories underpin sound pedagogic practice. Furthermore, the works of some academic writers have been used to provide some background information about the demands being placed by the global market and on the college lecturers, as well as the current status of the colleges and their attempts in embracing the new curriculum – NC(V). The data reveals that the enactment of the curriculum is almost devoid of the most distinguishing characteristic of the NC(V), namely the vocational part of the curriculum, as well as the lack of training for the college lecturer in meeting the expectations of the curriculum in both the academic and practical components. The end result is that the demands of both the government as well as industry to alleviate the skills shortage South Africa is facing, may not be fulfilled. Lastly, the analysis of the data also indicates that in the absence of support structures, be it in the form of supervision or mentorship, the enactment of the NC(V) could result in students not receiving the overt curriculum as per the policy guidelines. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

With the advent of democracy in 1994 and the repeated calls by the South African public for the renewal and reconstruction of the education system there has been a radical shift on school supervision from inspection to whole school evaluation. The new system of school supervision is carried out under the auspices and in terms of the National Policy on Whole School Evaluation. The application of the said policy however has not been without its own problems. Teacher unions have in some circles resisted its application in their schools. Trained departmental officials had to be chased away from some of the schools that were targeted for evaluation and this incident generated heated national debates in the public domain and within educational forum (Natal Mercury 28 May 2002). This study takes a cue from these widespread debates about the implementation of the Whole School Evaluation Policy within the school context. It explores in details the implementation strategies of the WSE policy, how the policy is conceived and perceived by those to whom it is applied. The study looks at the reception of this policy and the experiences gained by those educators who were evaluated with a view to suggest areas for development and reinforcement of good educational practices. These experiences were captured through the use of interviews, policy analysis and questionnaires. Responses were then analysed and interpreted with a view to make recommendations on how best the policy could be applied at school level. The study found that Deputy Principals are neglected in terms of training. This affects policy implementation at school level where their involvement in school management is substantial. The study also found that there is a serious lack of a shared basis of cooperation between schools and their district offices in respect of implementing WSE. The study further indicated a serious lack of co-ordinated effort on all levels of the system in the application of the WSE policy. The application of WSE has no visible support from major role players especially at district level. The absence of key structures and personnel such as district support teams and WSE coordinators as suggested by policy, impacts negatively on the implementation of the policy at the school level. Having considered all available options and the contextual factors within which the policy is applied in our schools this study advances a variety of recommendations that could be applied to improve implementation of the WSE Policy in schools in KwaZulu-Natal. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

This dissertation is concerned with the implications of the theory of structuration for education. Central to the theory of structuration, is the idea of structuring social relations across time-space, in virtue of the duality of structure. Anthony Giddens, who coined the term 'structuration', acknowledges the call for a decentering of the subject but reaffirms that this does not imply the evaporation of subjectivity into an "empty universe of signs". Rather, social practices, "biting into time and space", are considered to be at the root of the constitution of both subject and social object. However, the value of structuration theory lies in the fact that it helps to illuminate problems of educational research. The points of connection are to do with working out the logical implications of studying a 'subject matter' of which the researcher is already a part and with elucidating the substantiative connotations of the core notions of structure and action. The polarisation in thinking about education is only one symptom of the classic and fundamental tension in social theory between those explanations which stress structure and those stressing action, between deterministic and voluntaristic views of behaviour, between a concern with statics and one with dynamics, between man viewed as subject and man viewed as object. The theory of structuration has implications for education in that it has pointed to a possible resolution of this dualism. The oppositions of society and individual, determinism and voluntarism, structure and action and so on are dealt with by denying that they are in opposition. Social structures are both constituted by human agency and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution. In societal terms, actors, since they know how to behave, contribute through their actions to the continuous production and reproduction of the social structure of rules. Yet in every action there is the potential for actors to participate in changing the 'rules' or structure which they may know and realize in further action. In this way Giddens is able to deal with a recurrent difficulty in sociological theory accounting for both continuity and change. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, 1989.

The aim of this study was to explore the reading life histories of three Intermediate Phase (IP) language educators, and how their histories influence their teaching, as part of a larger University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) reading project. Using the life history research approach, the manner in which the participants learnt to read at home before starting school, in Primary and High School and how they were trained to teach reading was examined. By observing their lessons and interviewing them, the effects that their experiences have had on their current teaching methods and their readiness to implement the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in their phase in 2013, was explored. Research has shown that the literacy levels in South Africa (SA) are reason for great concern. There seems to be an overemphasis on decoding skills with limited exposure to all aspects of comprehension in the lower grades. Thus SA learners struggle to cope as they go on to higher grades where they are expected to read for meaning and read to learn. These problems may be associated with the inadequate training and limited knowledge of teaching reading of many SA educators. Educators who participated in this study seem to define reading as primarily decoding text to speech and view comprehension as a separate entity. In addition to this they do not have a full understanding of the complexities of the comprehension process. By exploring the participants’ experiences of learning to read, their training in teaching reading, and current classroom practices, the effects of the former two were visible on the latter. This study contributes to the larger research project as the participants’ misconceptions and preconceptions created by their own mediocre schooling, substandard and outdated training and inadequate continuous development, were analysed so these could be addressed in workshops designed by the UKZN reading project team. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

Recently, in the Department of Education, there have been many changes which put demands on new skills and expertise. Since changes are "actioned" through the curriculum, it is critical (i) to investigate what the curriculum provides to meet the new demands (ii) to check with learners whether the curriculum empowers them with skills so that they could be employable or generate their own employment. Therefore, the researcher decided to look at the perceptions of learners about relevance of the high school curriculum and to get some recommendations from the learners since they are the ones who are to benefit from the curriculum. This study was done empirically through questionnaires. After the research had been concluded the researcher realised that there was need to improve the high school curriculum in the Eastern Cape generally and specifically the North Eastern Region. A lot can be gained by this region if the high school curriculum can be improved. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1999.

Abstract available in pdf file.

This study explores participants' experiences of stuttering in their lifeworlds over time through the lens of self-identity formations. The critical questions raised are: How do participants form their self-identities in their lifeworlds over time in relation to stuttering? In the context of their self-identity formations, how do they negotiate stuttering? A narrative life history methodology was used with intention to access personal, temporal and social dimensions of experience. Seven adult participants, two female and five male participants, with histories of living with stuttering since childhood, were invited to share their stories. Their personal experiences are embedded in diverse lifeworlds in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, a context making a sociopolitical transition from apartheid to democracy. The data was produced through retrospective accounts of their experiences via a series of dialogical interviews. Issues of empathy, power, and positioning and quality in the research process are problematised. The data was analysed at three levels. The first level of analysis entailed a narrative analysis of interview data, represented as seven individual research stories. The second level of analysis is a cross-case analysis using the seven research stories for the purposes of theorising. The outcomes of the third level of analysis are abstractions and explanatory concepts which respond to the critical questions in a general way. The genesis of two self-identity trajectories, self-identity as DisOther and self-identity as Able/Potential are traced over time. The biographical, contextual and social forces shaping self-identity formations and participants' actions in negotiating stuttering are illuminated. The self-identity trajectories are unique in the context of each biography. However, the relative prominence of self-identity formation as DisOther across cases in school years was evident. In contrast, self-identity as Able/Potential became prominent, during adulthood, for some participants. The experience is rendered as complex and fluid through a set of abstractions and explanatory concepts. These concepts foreground the changing and multiple relationships between self-identity formations, the influence of social forces shaping self-identity, the impact critical catalysts shaping self-identity formations, and strategic manipulation of self-identity in negotiating stuttering. In particular, the strategies to negotiate stuttering successfully are examined. The limitations of the study and potential application of this theoretical offering in the research, educational and clinical domains of Speech-Language Pathology are discussed. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

This study is a critical exploration and post-structural explanation of how and what teachers ' know about students. The intention has been to explore teachers' knowing beyond taken-for-granted iterations, beliefs and conceptions of those they teach and to theorise the nature of teachers' knowing. The route to insight involved deploying critical ethnography to produce data over a six-month period. The study site, a secondary school I named Amethyst, is an apartheid-era creation. Since 1990, political change has introduced uncertainties of various sorts and has destabilised the ethos and culture of the school: conflicts between teachers and students, conflicts amongst students' peers, students' participation in activities that are unacceptable and harmful, severe lack of funds to meet the financial needs of the school and lack of human and teaching resources. It is within such an uncertain space that I produced data to interrogate teachers ' knowing about students. At the site, data production was impeded by various confounding factors that eroded trust between the participants and me (the researcher). Traditionally, an ethnographic approach entails three kinds of observation: descriptive observations at the beginning, followed by focused observations narrowed to the concerns of the study and finally, selective observations to consolidate focused observations. For the data production process to continue, the researcher-researched relationship had to be assessed and reconfigured from a critical perspective. In this study the above-mentioned observations have been renamed and reconceptualised from participants' perspectives as: an innocuous phase, an invasive phase and a reciprocity phase. Furthermore, an explication is provided of how research reflexivity shaped the reconceptualisation and the data production processes. Usual forms of data production were abandoned and replaced by a conscious effort to reveal my story to participants eventuating in the form of an exchange of data - my story for their stories. Reciprocal participation enabled data production to be completed and two sets of data were generated: teachers ' stories and students ' stories. Eight teachers ' stories derived from teachers' to teachers' students' teachers' interviews were woven into texts whilst fourteen students' autobiographical accounts comprising lived ex peri ences were re-presented as they narrated them. Juxtapos ing stud ents' accounts with teachers' knowing has yielded three revelations. Firstly, unveil ing how teachers constitute students through knowing them in particul ar ways. Second ly, it reveals how students' constitution as subjects at home and at school a llow them to be known in parti cular ways and thirdl y, revealing the ways students consc iously prevent teachers from knowing about their li ved ex peri ences. The analyses of both sets of stories have dee pened understanding of teachers' knowing, taking it beyond teachers' persona l be lief systems. Plac ing both sets of data und er a criti cal gaze has yie lded three ways of teacher knowing (so li cited, un solic ited and common) and fi ve kind s of teacher knowing (rac ia li sed, gendered, cultu ra l, c lassed, and profess ional). From th e analyses, I have inferred that teachers' knowing about students, when j uxtaposed with and med iated by students' li ved experi ences, is flawed, incomplete, parti al, complex, contradictory, and uni-dimens ional. I put fo rward a th es is predicated on two abstractions from th e anal yses: one, that teachers ' knowing is dangerous because it prope ls teachers towards act ions that can result in d isastrous consequences for students; and two, that not knowing is use ful because it is a more criti ca lly and soc ia lly j ust approach to teaching as it a llows teachers to functi on without succumbing to marginali sing the non-traumati sed and those without chall enges at the persona l level. In effect it tran slates into practices that treat all students equally in an academic settin g, so that in one in stantiati on, students are dri ven to stri ve for academic ac hievement in stead of focusing on emotiona lly debilitating di stractions th at cannot be resolved by teachers' knowing, understanding, and empathy. Not knowing, I argue, offers viable poss ibilities for working with students whose li ves are compromised by low socioeconomic cond iti ons and pro bl ematic family re lati ons. This in vers ion of common-sense instincts about teachers ' knowing and not knowing IS theorised by deploying a topologica l metaphor, the Mii bius strip, to demonstrate that teachers' knowing and not knowing about stud ents are not polar oppos ites on a continuum, but are paradoxically, cohabitants of a common space, refl ections of each other, res iding in each other. Additiona lly, I charge that teachin g and caring, mediated by knowing, form the foundation of teachers' work, and argue that at Amethyst, teaching and caring cannot be activated simul ta neo us ly within an indi vidual teacher. Kcy words: critica l ethnography, teachers' knowing, paradox of knowin g. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008.