Crain Soudien

Decentralisation and the construction of inclusion education policy in South Africa

This paper critically reviews the ways in which the policy of education decentralisation in post‐apartheid South Africa results in both forms of inclusion and new forms of exclusion. Drawing on a two‐year research project carried out in three provinces in South Africa, it shows how in the governance of schools, new forms of exclusion are being generated. It thus throws into sharp relief the policy effects of education decentralisation in South Africa, illuminating through case study data the disjuncture between policy intention and effect. It argues for the need to re‐examine some aspects of post‐apartheid education policy given the historical apartheid legacy. It suggests that often, in practice, policies of education decentralisation may exacerbate rather than reduce inequities in society; they may exclude more than include.

‘We Know Why We're Here’: the experience of African children in a ‘coloured’ school in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract With the abolition of formal apartheid in education in South Africa there has been a movement of children classified African into schools which were previously reserved for Indians, ‘coloureds’ and whites. While this development has yielded a number of highly positive outcomes, of concern, has been the difficulty host schools have encountered in dealing with the social, cultural and economic backgrounds which entering children have brought with them. Significantly, host schools previously classified ‘coloured’ have had as much difficulty as white schools in dealing with social and cultural difference. This article is based on research conducted in a working‐class community in Cape Town which has admitted a large number of children classified African. Drawing on extensive interviews with African boys and girls, it looks at the problems which they have encountered and how they have dealt with these problems in giving voice to their identity. The argument which the article seeks to make is that youn...

Instructional technologies in social science instruction in South Africa

This study describes the results of a survey and a description of instructional technologies in place in the social sciences in South African Universities. Lecturers in the social sciences reported a well-established practice of information and communication technologies (ICTs) use for general purposes (although frequent use tended to be for email and searching the Internet). They had a high self-efficacy in terms of using ICTs both generally and for teaching and learning, and a high enthusiasm for the use of ICTs for teaching and learning. Half the lecturers had started using ICTs recently with the introduction of learning management systems (LMSs) whereas the other half had established practices that preceded the mainstreaming of LMSs across universities. Only about a quarter of the respondents felt able to develop and update ICTs themselves which indicates that support is a necessary part of teaching with technology. In terms of different types of use the focus was on putting content on the web and course administration. Use of ICTs for teaching of skills (whether information literacy, problem solving or critical thinking) was infrequent. There were different types of ICT use across the different sub-disciplines. Lecturers reported factors which constrained their use of ICTs for teaching and learning, such as inadequate technology, pedagogical issues (e.g. plagiarism), and students opting out of lectures when materials were available online. It is argued that user studies in are relevant to the future delivery of educational material, in terms of removing barriers to use and targeting training and supportive activities.

Learning and equitable access in the Western Cape, South Africa

Silent exclusion, when children register and attend school but learn little, is a critical feature of educational access in South Africa. Several international studies (e.g. TIMMS, SACMEQ) have shown that despite high levels of investment, South African schools perform poorly in relation to other countries at similar levels of income. Equitable access is yet to be achieved with wide variations in the quality of access between sub‐populations. This paper focuses on levels of learning achievement and comparisons between grades, schools, and populations of children in the Western Cape. Since outcome data is available over time changes can be followed and equitable access explored.

The asymmetries of contact: an assessment of 30 years of school integration in South Africa

The essential argument made in this paper is that contact in the South African school is structured around fundamentally asymmetric relations of ‘knowing’ between groups. Three distinct periods are delineated, the first of which (1976–1990) contained the most substantial ideas and contributions to debates and actual steps taken with respect to social difference. The subsequent two periods (1990–1994 and 1994–present) failed to draw on the experience acquired during the first period. The impact of these developments has been to draw politically and culturally weaker groups into the world of the dominant, but in a consistently subordinate position. Significantly, however, distinct repertoires of ‘knowing’, shaped by the political and social conjuncture, developed at different times. The discussion draws attention to problems with the appropriation of hegemonic forms of multiculturalism—assimilation—for explaining how contact and ‘knowing’ are managed in the South African school.

Education in the network age: globalisation, development and the World Bank

Abstract This article reviews the World Bank’s (1999) Education Sector Strategy document as a response to the challenges and the complexities of globalization and development as they relate to education. The article begins with an introduction to the Education Sector Strategy document. It moves on to discuss the nature of the new world economy, particularly its discursive shape, its form and the modalities of its reproduction. In this part of the article, the work of Carnoy and Castells (1999) and other analysts, such as Scott (1997), of what they all the networked economy, is used to show what is at stake for the developing world, and also, by implication, for the world as an interconnected community. Central to the reproductive modalities of the new economy, it will argue, are 1) entirely new education-work requirements and 2) a reconfigured and repositioned state. The article will attempt to show the implications of these for education. The article then moves towards a brief analysis of the developing world and then concludes with an assessment of the World Bank’s sector strategy. In summary, the article will argue that the Education Sector Strategy document is a critically important report but that is underestimates the complexity of the information age economy, particularly its modes of reproduction. The article will argue that the document does not sufficiently address the complexity of the modern developing world, especially the uneven and unequal ways in which its component parts articulate with the globalized order and the role of education in addressing this complexity. Critical weaknesses in the document relate to the relationship between education and work and the role of the state

Teacher responses to rationalisation: transformation and adaptation in the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract This paper seeks to understand the impact of the restructuring of the teaching corps in schools in the former House of Representatives educational system in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. As a system catering for children classified coloured and which was relatively more privileged than those (eleven others) which catered for children classified African, it has been targeted as a site from which to redistribute resources for redeployment elsewhere. The paper explores the dynamics of this process, particularly with respect to how schools are managing the process of retrenching teachers. It is especially interested in how schools are managing themselves during this restructuring. The paper seeks to argue, based on empirical work conducted in schools, that professional identity and the exercise of professionalism are important indicators in gauging how well schools will cope with educational reform and change. Drawing on studies conducted in ten schools the paper classifies schools into three categories of professionalism and argues that schools with high professional indexes manage stress more effectively than schools with lower levels of professionalism.

“Quality’s” Horizons

The latest World Bank strategy document, Education Strategy 2020 (WBES 2020, hereafter), is likely to evoke a great deal of discussion around the world because of the emphasis it places on education quality. WBES 2020 says, for example: “Growth, development, and poverty reduction depend on the knowledge and skills that people acquire, not the number of years they sit in the classroom” (p. vii). It makes a distinction, moreover, between physical access to education and the access education provides to personal growth and development.

The contribution of radical Western Cape intellectuals to an indigenous knowledge project in South Africa

This paper examines the writings of Cape Town intellectuals Ben Kies and Neville Alexander to pose the question about the possibility of an emergence of an indigenous, or to use a term which Australian social theorist Raewyn Connell has recently used, a ‘Southern Theory’ for the social sciences in South Africa. The paper is an early exploration into what the essential and constituent parts of such a theory would consist of and against this attempts to explicate the views of Kies and Alexander in theoretical terms, and it draws on recent biographical work on Alexander. For the purposes of the study within which the paper is located, delineating these views and representing them in a closer theoretical exposition is an important first step.

Nelson Mandela, Robben Island and the Imagination of a New South Africa

The purpose of this article is to argue that the Robben Island prison experience between 1962 and the early 1990s makes an important contribution to the South African debate on the nature of belonging. In this article I focus on Nelson Mandelas imagination of belonging. I show how, through the process of formal study and the informal flowering of seminars, and particularly the debates and engagements that take place, Mr Mandela and his fellow prisoners work through, often with great personal difficulty and even contradiction, the questions of their individual and collective pasts and their subjectivities, and begin to delineate and even rehearse alternative visions of what a new South Africa might look like. This ‘working through’ involved, for Mandela, difficult questions of belonging – race, nation and the political economy to sustain belonging. Who and what is the nation, and what is its content?