Creating sustainable learning environments through effective teachers' personal growth plans: a developmental stragegy
| dc.contributor.advisor | Nkoane, M. M. | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Mahlomaholo, M. G. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Petrus, Mokone Matseo | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-07-10T12:06:50Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-07-10T12:06:50Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2019 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The advent of democracy in the Republic of South Africa in 1994 brought about an important dimension of inclusivity for all stakeholders in the education system. Education became a community responsibility, within which the development of teachers was not left in the hands of the education authorities to conduct the teacher development programme. The paradigm shift created the platform for other stakeholders to come on board to shape the quality of education provided to learners in the learning environment. The actualisation and realisation of this seemed to be a pie in the sky because the professional development of teachers in the township schools was regarded as the sole responsibility of the education authorities, without the involvement of other stakeholders. This study is grounded in the critical emancipatory research paradigm, which embraces all community members as important partners in the improvement of education. Critical emancipatory research provides the participants with values such as emancipation, social justice and equitable power sharing to be practised. This is in sharp contrast to prior practices in which the input of the other community members was used contribute only indirectly to education, and then only on rare occasions. The principles of the free attitude interview technique, as advocated by Meulenberg-Buskens, played an important role in setting in motion the engagement of the participants by asking the open-ended question “How can we improve professional teacher development that is sustainable?” The question triggered a communication process between teachers and other community members regarding their development strategy. This question ignited the discussions that sought clarity regarding the nature of the teacher development strategy at the school in focus. The platform served as a springboard from where the previously marginalised community members could speak for themselves to bring to the fore the community aspirations of teaching and learning. The social research aspects of critical emancipatory research and the free attitude interview provided the community stakeholders, who have an interest in promoting teacher development in education, with the opportunity to act as equal partners. They navigated collectively in tapping into the cultural values of the community in order to construct knowledge that is necessary for the development of a teacher strategy. Critical discourse analysis, as advocated by Van Dijk, was used to analyse the data gathered from the participants. The analysis proved to be beneficial to the study to obtain useful data in the form of spoken words from the participants, which were transcribed verbatim. The critical discourse analysis was approached from three levels, namely the textual, discursive and structural levels, to analyse the data. It was within this data analysis that the study revealed the unequal power sharing between teachers and authorities in the person of subject advisers, which showed that there is no effective teacher strategy at the school in focus. Through the use of critical discourse analysis, the study determined that the community members have tacit knowledge which, if recognised and analysed appropriately, can be of great importance to the development of teachers to carry out their teaching activities efficiently to the learners. | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11660/10059 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_ZA |
| dc.publisher | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Empowerment | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Development | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Strategy | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Emancipation | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Social transformation | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Social justice | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Sustainable environment | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Power sharing | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--University of the Free State, 2019 | en_ZA |
| dc.title | Creating sustainable learning environments through effective teachers' personal growth plans: a developmental stragegy | en_ZA |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_ZA |