South African schools face many challenges as they are inundated with dysfunctional
behaviour. The research on South African schools indicates that behavioural
challenges such as disobedience, swearing, truancy violence and bullying are evident
in many school contexts. From a reductionist, individualist approach, the focus when
addressing these challenges is often on causal factors and dysfunctional individuals
rather than on ways in which people relate and interact in schools. It is however
evident from a social ecological perspective, that in order to facilitate social change,
we need to understand people’s experiences of social interaction in schools as an
important context for the enhancement of wellbeing.
The first phase of the PhD project is a base‐line exploration of the learners’,
educators’ and parents’ experiences of relating and interacting in school
communities. A qualitative phenomenological investigation was applied in
combination with a cross‐sectional descriptive survey design. 1170 learners, ages
ranging from 11 to 18 years, 150 parents and 85 educators, from 12 South African
schools, participated in the research. The participants completed written
assignments that were analysed through the application of global analysis followed
by thematic analysis. The findings indicated that enabling ways of relating and
interacting were patterned by active engagement and acknowledgement of people.
Disenabling social interaction was patterned by disengagement and disregard for
people. The findings indicated that both enabling and disenabling ways of relating
and interacting, play a crucial role in the enhancement of mental wellbeing in
schools, and suggest that schools need to focus more seriously on the ways in which
people in schools relate and interact on the everyday micro‐levels of social
interaction, as suggested by complexity theory.
The second phase of the study comprised a more in‐depth investigation into
nurturing and restraining relationships between parents, learners and educators in a
school community. A single instrumental case study design was applied to gain an indepth
understanding of the complex dynamic interactions between the members of
the school community. All the learners and educators in the school were involved during the work sessions. Nominal group technique was applied to obtain
information about their perceptions of relationships in the school community. The
work sessions were followed by focus group interviews with 18 educators, 40
learners, the management team, six members of the administrative and terrain staff
and two parents. A thematic analysis of the data indicated that nurturing
relationships could be understood with reference to connectedness: respect, care
and transparent communication; whilst restrained relationships could be understood
with reference to limited connectedness between people: abuse of power, shifting
of responsibility and disrespect for one another. The findings indicated the need for
a sensitive, empathic and non‐patronising approach to people in school communities
that acknowledge that restrained relationships are inevitably part of the human
interaction and understand schools in terms of inter‐subjective recursive processes
that pattern the relationships between the members of the school community.
In the third phase, the findings of the first two stages of the study were integrated
with theoretical perspectives and critical reflections on the findings to conceptualise
a relationship‐focused approach to the co‐construction of an enabling school
community. The approach encompasses the facilitation of continuous conversations
using identified facets of interrelatedness as focal points for the understanding of
being together in school communities on a meta‐level. It is recommended that the
implementation of a relationship‐focused approach conceptualised in this study,
should be considered as an alternative approach for dealing with the challenges
associated with human behaviour that currently prevail in schools. Further research
on the implementation of the approach in schools is recommended. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/8410 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Kitching, Ansie Elizabeth |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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