Doctoral Degrees (Office of the Dean: Education)
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Item Open Access Phenomenological study of practitioners’ lived mathematical play practices in an early childhood care and education setting(University of the Free State, 2022) Baloyi-Mothibeli, Seipati Lydia; Okeke, C. I. O.; Ugwuanyi, C. S.Globally, research indicates growing interest in mathematics-related play in early childhood settings; this is also the case in the informal settlements of Mangaung in the Motheo District. This interest has its roots in the poor performance of learners in mathematics when they reach formal education, particularly in the foundation phase. The aim of this study was to carry out a phenomenological investigation of practitioners’ lived mathematics play practices in early childhood care and education settings. The study is located in Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory, which maintains that children acquire knowledge best if there is scaffolding and mediation by more knowledgeable others. Vygotsky defined the more knowledgeable other as someone who has a better understanding or higher ability levels than the child on a particular task, process, or concept. Therefore, language and environment play a major role in the child’s process of new knowledge creation. Vygotsky believed that knowledge is first acquired interpersonally, as the child learns from others, then internalises knowledge; the process takes place in the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Vygotsky explains ZPD as the distance between what children can do by themselves, and what they can achieve with competent assistance by more knowledgeable others. Additionally, the study employed an interpretive qualitative research paradigm and a phenomenology design. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and journal entries by the researcher. A purposeful sample of 10 practitioners who were teaching in five early childhood care and education setting took part in the study. Data generated were analysed through the lens of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and a thematic approach, through which subthemes emerged. The finding of this study is that practitioners’ lived mathematics play practices in ECCE settings were compromised, as they are not adequately qualified in this context. It is concluded that, through proper teacher development programmes and obtaining adequate qualifications, practitioners’ lived mathematics play-based learning can be enhanced. Therefore, it is recommended that local higher education institutions design and offer a qualification that is adequate for ECCE practitioners, and which incorporates curriculum content that is supposed to be taught to children in this environment to enhance mathematics play-based learning.Item Open Access Enhancing an enabling learning environment for learners with visual impairment in a rural Lesotho school(University of the Free State, 2022) Ramatea, Mamochana Anacletta; Khanare, Fumane PortiaIdeally, an enabling learning environment (hereafter, ELE) is more important if it reflects improvement in the learners‘ learning and their general wellbeing. School should be enabling environment that nurture the holistic development of learners. However, in rural communities in Lesotho, learners with visual impairments remain a bone of contention because the effects of poverty, poor infrastructure, lack of trained teachers and inconsistency in the implementation of inclusive policies and practices have increased. The majority of literature on visual impairment highlights its severe impact on learners‘ education as a global concern. Literature reports numerous challenges faced by Learners with Visual Impairment (LVIs), especially those in Lesotho rural schools. The right to education for all, including learners with visual impairments accentuates agency to enhance an enabling learning environment for learners with visual impairments in Lesotho. In particular, teachers are placed at the forefront and have significant roles to play to ensure that schools are enabling space for all the learners. In response to lack of research in this area, this doctoral study sets out to explore pathways that can enhance an enabling learning environment for learners with visual impairments in the rural school in Lesotho. This qualitative study was situated within the interpretive paradigm, guided by a participatory case study research design that facilitated generation of data with the participants. To respond to the key research questions of this study, the researcher employed two methods for generation of data, namely the online focus group discussions (OFGDs) and photovoice - a participatory visual art-based method (PVA). Data were generated with ten participants, involving both male and female teachers, and who were purposively and conveniently chosen, first because of their knowledge on the phenomenon under study, and secondly, based on their experience of more than three years of teaching within the Lesotho rural mainstream school that admits LVIs. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data. The findings in the current study revealed rural secondary school teachers‘ diverse understanding of an enabling learning environment (ELE) for LVIs. These are linked the value of the environment, learners' equal access to education, enabling learners‘ diverse needs, and capacities. The findings also show that the enhancement of ELE for LVIs in rural schools is constructed through a school-based collaborative support and point to the importance of a school collective agency to enhance LVIs‘ learning environment. Furthermore, the findings revealed factors that enable and constrain the enhancement of ELE in rural school in Lesotho. Three themes that emerge as enablers indicate the importance of involving LVIs as agents with capability to influence their learning, enhanced interpersonal relationships, and resourceful materials to enhance ELE for LVIs in rural schools of Lesotho. However, ELE constraints include factors such existing poverty in rural schools, poor school infrastructure, to insufficient teaching and learning resources, ineffective inclusive education policy and ill perspectives on visual impairments in school and rural communities. The study concludes by suggesting that enhancing ELE for LVIs need a more nuanced understanding withing the rural context. Such understanding can facilitate more collaboration among rural schools about how to enhance ELE for LVIs. The researcher recommends for a meaningful collaboration of all the stakeholder, parents, teachers, learners, and government, public and private organisations. In addition, there is a growing need to consider the enhancement of ELE not from the perspective of the individual agent but emphasising collective agency to enhance schools in relation to learners‘ holistic development and growth. Notwithstanding its tensions, the researcher concludes that participatory arts-based methods can be a powerful to enable rural participants to identify their own agency, as well as reflecting on broader opportunities for a collective agency to enhance ELE, and therefore making inclusive education a reality for LVIs in Lesotho and beyond.Item Open Access School clusters as sites for instructional leadership: a case of the better schools programme of Zimbabwe(University of the Free State, 2015-07) Makaye, Jeriphanos; Jita, L. C.English: Inter-school collaborations or clustering has a long history, dating back to the 1940s in Nepal and Great Britain and it has spread across many parts of the world. Zimbabwe is no exception to this trend of adopting inter-school collaborations as a reform strategy for improving teaching and learning in schools. This innovation, which was initially meant to bring together disadvantaged rural schools, has spread to include urban schools. Despite its promise, however, the utility of clusters or inter-school collaborations in terms of improving the quality and efficacy of teaching and learning remains a matter of scholarly debate and inquiry. The present study adds insights to the debates on the utility of clusters for improving teaching and learning in schools. The efforts to improve teaching and learning in schools are what this study defines as instructional leadership. Whilst many studies have been conducted to understand instructional leadership practices at either the school or district levels, very few of these studies have explored instructional leadership within a school collaborative or cluster specifically. This study took the challenge by exploring whether and how the Better Schools Programme of Zimbabwe (BSPZ), an example of a school cluster or collaborative, serves as a site for instructional leadership for the participating schools and teachers. The investigation took a pragmatic stance and adopted a mixed methods approach in order to take advantage of the strengths of both the qualitative and quantitative approaches. Using a multiple case study of four BSPZ clusters in the Masvingo district of Zimbabwe, the study employed a sequential explanatory mixed methods design where a sample of 101 participants responded to a questionnaire on the range and depth of instructional leadership practices and artefacts that are used by their clusters, as well as their perspectives on the utility of clusters for improving teaching and learning. In the qualitative phase of the study, purposively selected groups of participants that included two heads of school (or principals), two teacher leaders and two ordinary class teachers from two of the selected clusters were interviewed and observed. The qualitative phase was designed to confirm the participants’ perspectives and get an inside picture of how instructional leadership operates in practice within the clusters. The study has established that school clusters do carry out some activities that qualify to be classified as instructional leadership for the teachers in the participating schools. The drive for the instructional leadership programme of the clusters, however, is very moderate at best, and considerably weak in terms of its conception and influence on teaching and learning in schools. The dominant practices of instructional leadership at the cluster level include the administration of cluster tests, supervision of classes, as well as the conduct of some professional development workshops for the teachers. Significantly, the study also established that instructional leadership within the clusters is sometimes distributed, albeit by default, to include teacher leaders and other non-formal school leaders. The incentives for participation in general and for leadership of teaching and learning within the clusters are rather poor to non-existent, something that needs the urgent attention of educational leaders and policymakers in Zimbabwe. The study concludes by arguing that school clusters, especially the BSPZ clusters, are in a relatively good position to provide opportunities for instructional leadership to schools and teachers even though it is inevitable that their leadership activities will vary based on the will and capacity of each cluster. The study thus recommends the involvement of local school authorities, such as districts and provincial authorities in providing much needed support to ensure effective instructional leadership within the school clusters. Further research on the agendas of school clusters and how they are carried out in different contexts (and countries) is needed in order to understand how it may be possible to institutionalise instructional leadership practices within such school collaboratives or clusters.Item Open Access Improving academic performance in a rural school through the use of an asset-based approach as a management strategy(University of the Free State, 2014-07) Myende, Phumlani Erasmus; Nkoane, M. M.; Hlalele, D. J.English: The aim of this study was to investigate how academic performance in a rural school can be improved using the asset-based approach as a school management strategy. In other words, the study anticipated developing an asset-based approach strategy through which the management in a rural school can improve academic performance. This was done through finding strategies of identifying and mobilising community assets. With this done, the study further sought to find out what the school management can do to set conditions conducive to the utilisation of the asset-based approach within the selected school. The last part of the study focussed on what could be the possible challenges for the approach and how the school management may address such challenges in order to use the approach to improve academic performance. Arguing that the asset-based approach has gained currency and has worked in educational psychology, community development studies, HIV and AIDS research, and economics, this study couched this approach within educational leadership and management and it treats improvement of academic performance as one of the issues school managers have to address in their daily work. The study acknowledges that indeed rural communities are not deficit, but the researcher in the study argues that research that conscietise rural people about the huge roles they can play in improving academic performance through their assets lags behind. The study further responds to the call from the Department of Education that responses to rural education challenges should be multifaceted and bring the rural people to the centre as solutions providers. The study was theoretically located within the critical emancipatory research (CER) and the asset-based approach as frameworks. The intentions were to conscietise and create a space for rural people to know their assets and further work with them in the process of establishing the strategies for using such assets towards improving academic performance in their secondary school. Through CER, there was hope that participants would be empowered by engaging in the research activities and so able to realise the capacities, skills and strengths that were found in the school and its immediate community, thereafter creating ways through which such assets are used meaningfully in the process of improving academic performance. In understanding that CER promoted equity, social justice, transformation, closeness between the participants and the researchers, spaces for dialogue and questioning of unequal power relations in the society and the conventional research approaches, this study adopted participatory research (PR), as deemed relevant to empowering participants and questioning distorted ideologies that have perpetuated deficit thinking amongst the rural people. I worked with a group of participants made up of learners, teachers, SGB members, and the school management team (SMT) members (Principal and three Heads of Department). These participants volunteered to participate but they were also purposively targeted in that they were part of the school and poor academic performance was one of the problems experienced in the school. They were amongst the people affected by the problem being investigated. Not everyone could participate in the study. The school was understaffed and it only had 11 members of the teaching staff, including four members of the SMT. All these four members participated and four post level 1 teachers (PL1) were part of the larger group that participated. As part of the group there were four members of the SGB but they were not always present during research activities. In summary, the study participants included internal members of the school. While other participants were absent during sessions, at least all sessions had 15 or more, including the components mentioned above. Different research activities were used. These included the introduction of the asset-based approach, conducting the school SWOT analysis, doing inventory capacities. After all these activities, DOI and FAI were used to facilitate discussions in order to generate data. The data was analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis. It was found in the study that assets identification and mobilisation is a difficult process in a context where the problems that would be addressed through the assets are not identified. Thus a need to identify problems is argued to be the first step of the asset-based approach, this has been called agenda-setting in this study. It was further found in this study that the SWOT analysis is not just a tool to understand the school in terms of its positive and negative features, but also a useful strategy in identifying the assets of the community. What makes it an acknowledged strategy is that it furthers the process of identifying the weaknesses and the threats towards the school and the assets identified. On understanding what each asset present in the context of the problems to be solved, the study found conducting a list of inventory capacities to be important in understanding what can be gained from all identified assets. The study therefore argues for the identification of assets through the SWOT analysis and to understand each asset’s contributions through conducting inventory capacities. Based on the assets identified, the study presents school-community assets map seen to be relevant towards improving the school in general and academic performance to be specific. While knowing the assets and their different contributions towards improving academic performance is important, the study found that a relevant setting is required to have the asset-based approach utilised as a strategy in general in improving academic performance in particular. In ensuring this setting, a balanced relationship argued for under the asset-map should be created. Adding to this, the study found that the following are relevant in making the school environment suitable for the asset-based approach: Making the school and the community a single entity; (2) empowerment for potential contributors; (3) challenging inferiority and superiority complexities; (4) avoiding “singing a solo” (leading alone) approach. To achieve the above, the study further found that leadership should be invitational and participative in the school. Power imbalances and the “brain drain” challenges are identified as amongst the challenges for the asset-based approach. Given the findings and informed by the data, the study proposes a strategy for using the asset-based approach. The strategy has four cyclical aspects that emerged in the research process and it is hoped that this can enhance the use of the asset-based approach. The study contributes into new knowledge in the form of the challenges to the asset-based approach and a simplified strategy for using this approach. Its limitation is that the strategy was not implemented and it is only based on what the participants identified as what can work in their context. Thus, I recommend action research that will try to put the strategy into practice in order to advance knowledge on its application.Item Open Access The perceptions and experiences of social representation in the Free State schools: an education management perspective(University of the Free State, 2009-05) Bowes, John Hamilton; Niemmann, S. M.English: This thesis examined the discourse of the perceptions and experiences school leaders have on cultural representativity in a changing environment and how such situations should be managed. The ideology behind social representation was justified with the notion that it has the task to level the playing field, so that all South Africans can share democracy, liberty and equality. In South Africa social representation is implemented as a permanent measure to achieve a truly representative society across all spheres in South Africa, which forces diverse groups of society to conform to the goal of a homogeneous society. This affects all cultures and social classes in society and consequently also the school principal in all aspects of school management. The study drew on a comprehensive literature study exploring the philosophical foundations, the principles that underpin social representation, racial, cultural and gender divides, as well as its impact on organisations and suggestions on how to manage diversity in the school. The data that emerged from the literature review was used as point of departure for the empirical investigations. In this investigation a mixed-method approach was followed, using interviews with eight school leaders in the Free State Province and a researcher developed questionnaire that was distributed to 280 school leaders at schools with diverse cultures situated in urban as well as rural communities in the Free State Province. The above investigations revealed how social representation is experienced and perceived, the problems encountered during implementation, what school leaders regard as basic elements to ensure effectively run diverse schools, as well as the training that they would like to undergo in order to become more efficient in running a socially represented school in the present South African context. The researcher came to the conclusion that, in spite of heightened racial sensitivity, school leaders have rather positive feelings about social representation and that the school and the community benefit from it. The study is concluded by a synthesis of the findings resulting in guidelines for the effective management of socially diverse schools. It was finally envisaged that this study will serve as a starting point for training and for the further dissemination of the research findings to the benefit of school management and staff performance in South Africa.