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TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL SCIENCE
CLASSROOMS: LIFE HISTORIES OF BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN TEACHERS

By

Loyiso C. Jita

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1999

ABSTRACT

TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL SCIENCE
CLASSROOMS: LIFE HISTORIES OF BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN TEACHERS

By

Loyiso C. Jita

This study investigated the construction of teaching practices that are aimed at
including all students in learning the key ideas of science and helping them to develop a
voice for participating in the discourses in and outside of the science classroom. Such
practices define what in this study is referred to as transformative practice.

The study tells the stories of three Black secondary school teachers in South
Africa who have worked to construct a transformative practice in their biology and
physical science classrooms.

Using a life history perspective, the study explored the relationships between
teachers’ identities and the changes in their classroom practices. Data were collected
mainly through periodic interviews with the teachers and observations of their teaching
practices over a period of 18 months.

An important finding of the study was that the classroom practices of all three
teachers were defined by three similar themes of:

0 “covering the content” and preparing their students to succeed in the
national examinations,

. developing deep conceptual understandings of the subject matter, and

0 including all students in their teaching by constructing what other
researchers have called a “culturally-relevant” pedagogy.
This finding was consistent despite the observed variations of context and personal
histories.

A major finding of this study on the question of the relationship between identity
and teaching practice was that despite the importance of context, subject matter, material
and social resources, another category of resources - - the “resources of biography” - -
proved to be crucial for each of the teachers in crafting a transformative pedagogy. These
“resources of biography” included such things as the teachers’ own experiences of
marginalization, the experiences of growing up or living in a particular culture, and the
experiences of participating in certain kinds of social, political, religious or professional
activities.

The study suggests that it is not only the experiences that provide a person with
the resources for crafiing a transformative practice, but a conscious reflection on and
willingness to learn from these experiences that makes them available as resources for
crafting such a practice. Further research is needed to better understand what the rubric
of “resources of biography” includes and to explore the interactions between these kinds
of resources and the material, human, and social resources that teachers need to reform

their classroom practices.

COPyright by

Loyiso Currell Jita

l 999

DEDICATION

To my mother
for teaching me the value of hard work and service.

Fumana mama nokuba ibhityile.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Pursuing a doctoral education and writing a dissertation in a university that is
oceans away from home can be a long and challenging experience. I wish to thank all
those colleagues and friends who made the experience worthwhile and whose support and
encouragement sustained me throughout the program.

I would like to express a debt of gratitude to my dissertation director, Susan
Melnick for our friendship and her continual encouragement and unconditional support
throughout the course of my study at Michigan State University. Susan provided me with
the space (literally and figuratively) to think and write, and constantly pushed me to
develop my ideas further and further with each draft. Thank you for believing in me.

I am also grateful to Andy Anderson, my advisor and guidance committee chair
for staying with me through it all. Your critical comments and insights on science and
science education helped to locate this study firmly within the inquiry of science
education.

Wanda May, another member of my committee, was instrumental in advancing
my interest in critical theoretical frameworks for exploring (science) education. Her
critical commentaries on those very frameworks helped me to push the boundaries a little
more with each draft of this dissertation.

Aaron Pallas is another member of the committee who helped me think through
the concept of “transformative practice” in this dissertation. His patience, thoroughness

and thoughtfulness were more than exemplary for me in writing this dissertation.

vi

I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Education Policy Unit, University
of Natal, Durban who encouraged and supported my field research in South Africa. In
the two years I spent with them, I grew and developed into a fully-fledged researcher and
activist for equity in education in the “new” South Africa.

I would also like to acknowledge the funding support of the IBIS/Danish
International Development Agency frame program and the Foundation for Research
Development for supporting aspects of this research work.

A special word of appreciation goes to the many teachers who have made it their
business to help Black students develop the skills to participate in the processes of social
transformation in South Africa. Special thanks goes to “Mrs. Hlophe,” “Mr. Tshabalala”
and “Mr. Sithole” (not their real names) for allowing me to use their stories to puzzle
over the issues of social justice and participation in the field of science education.

Finally, I owe this whole undertaking to my family: My wife Thuthukile, who has
lived through it all and still retains her sense of humor and generosity. Her faith in my
abilities to “complete the dissertation” has sustained me throughout the writing process.
My mother and father who gave me a name, “Loyiso”, to follow. And my lovely
daughters, Hlengekile and Bulelwa, who gave me wonderful moments of laughter and

joy, even when at times I seemed a little, out off from them.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................. l

CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE EDUCATION 2
THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF SCIENCE

EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA ............................... 12

The hierarchy of apartheid .................................. 12

Black participation in science education ................... 14

THINKING ABOUT ALTERNATIVE IDENTITY AND DISCOURSES 17

DEFINITION OF TERMS ...................................................... l9

Black/African .................................................... l9

Discourse ......................................................... 20

Township ......................................................... 20

Identity ............................................................ 21

ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION ............................... 21

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................... 23

TEACHERS AS TRANSFORMATIVE INTELLECTUALS ............... 28
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE IN SOUTH

AFRICA .................................................................... 29

The discourse of authoritarian surveillance ................... 32

The discourse of fundamental pedagogics ..................... 33

The teacher qualification discourse ............................. 33

The school-based control discourse ............................ 34

The resource constraint discourse .............................. 34

REFORMING SCIENCE EDUCATION GLOBALLY ...................... 36

Scientific literacy for all ........................................ 36

Feminist alternatives ............................................. 39

Multicultural frameworks ........................................ 41

Cultural frameworks to science education ..................... 43

Science-techno]ogy-society (STS) framework ............... 44

Eclectic frameworks .............................................. 45

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...................................................... 50

RESEARCH DESIGN .............................................................. 53

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................ 56

TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE ............................................... 5 7

DATA COLLECTION METHODS .............................................. 59

Interviews ........................................................... 59

viii

CHAPTER PAGE

Observation method ................................. 64

LIFE HISTORY/LIFE STORY/NARRATIVE RESEARCH ................. 66

FRAMEWORKS FOR ANALYSIS OF TEACHER NARRATIVES ....... 69

Data analysis ....................................................... 71
NEGOTIATION AND ACCOMODATION OF RESEARCH INTEREST

WITHIN THE EPU RESEARCH PROGRAM ........................ 73

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIELD ................................................. 75

KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province ................................ 75

Gauteng province .................................................. 76

Types of schools .................................................. 76

INTERLUDE ................................................................................. 80

INTRODUCTION TO THE CASES ............................................. 8O

4. COMPETING GOALS, CONFLICTING EXPECTATIONS AND THE
VISION OF A TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE: THE LIFE AND

WORK OF MR. SITHOLE ........................................................ 83
DESCRIBING TRANSFORMATION IN MR. SITHOLE’S PRACTICE ..83
CLASSROOM CONTEXT AND ENVIRONMENT .......................... 84
LESSON 1 AND 2: NERVOUS SYSTEM AND PHYSIOLOGICAL
CO-ORDINATION ........................................................ 86
LIFE STORY OF MR. SITHOLE ................................................ 100
Journey into teaching ............................................. 110
MAKING SENSE OF THE CHANGES IN SITHOLE’S CLASSROOM
PRACTICE ................................................................ 112
Afi'ican identity ................................................... 1 14
Identity as a leader and activist ................................. 116
Professional counter-identity .................................... 1 19
Identity as a learner ................................................ 121

5. MARGINALIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A

TRANSFORMATIVE IDENTITY ............................................... 124
INTRODUCING MR. TSHABALALA, HIS VISIONS AND

COMMITMENTS TO SCIENCE EDUCATION ..................... 124
FEATURES OF CLASSROOM PRACTICE ................................... 127
LIFE STORY AND WORK EXPERIENCES .................................. 142
The life story ....................................................... 145
Cultural conquest versus education for empowerment ....... 146
Early education .................................................... 149

The events of June 16, 1976 and their impact on
Mr. Tshabalala ............................................ 150
Post-1976 schooling experiences ............................... 152

ix

CHAPTER PAGE

The journey into teaching ....................................... 158

MARGINALIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A
TRANSFORMATIVE IDENTITY: A RESTATEMENT ........... 163
Racial identity ..................................................... 164
Socioeconomic identity .......................................... 165
Special education identity ....................................... 166
Teacher of the “other” identity .................................. 167

6. SUBJECT MATTER IDENTITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A

TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE ............................................... 169
INTRODUCTION: GOALS FOR TEACHING SCIENCE ................... 169
A VIEW INTO THE CLASSROOM: PART I .................................. 172
SCHOOL AND CLASSROOM CONTEXT .................................... 177
A VIEW INTO THE CLASSROOM: PART II ................................ 181
SOME IMPORTANT FEATURES OF MRS. HLOPHE’S PRACTICE ....185
THE LIFE STORY OF MRS. HLOPHE ......................................... 190
MAKING SENSE OF MRS. HLOPHE’S CLASSROOM PRACTICE 197
Subject matter identity and transformative practice .......... 199

7. REVIEW OF THE FINDINGS, IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND
PRACTICE AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER

RESEARCH ......................................................................... 206

REVIEW OF THE STUDY ........................................................ 206

DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS ............................................. 208
What do some examples of transformative Practices in

South African classrooms look like? ............. 208

Subject matter as a resource in transformative practice ...... 212

Context as a resource for transformative practice ............. 215

“Resources of biography” or personal history ................ 217

Experiences of marginalization ............... 218

Growing up and living in a particular culture219
Participating in social, political, religious
& professional organizations

activities ........................ 220

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE ........................... 222
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ..................... 225

8. AN EPILOGUE .......................................................................... 227

APPENDICES .............................................................................. 236

APPENDIX A: RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS ................................ 237
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SCIENCE TEACHERS ........... 238
QUESTIONNAIRE ITEMS GROUPED BY TOPIC FOR
PURPOSES OF SELECTING TEACHERS FOR FURTHER

CONVERSATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS ............... 248
PHASE I & II OBSERVATION AND INTERVIEW
INSTRUMENTS .................................................. 248
APPENDIX B: SIMPLIFIED SCHEME FOR DESCRIBING TYPES OF
SCHOOLS IN SOUTH AFRICA ....................................... 257
SIMPLIFIED SCHEME FOR DESCRIBING TYPES OF SCHOOLS
IN SOUTH AFRICA ............................................. 258
APPENDIX C: Mr. Sithole’s laboratory setting ............................... 261
APPENDIX D: (FIGURE 1) A MULTIPOLAR NEURON .................. 262
APPENDIX D: (CONTINUED) ........................ 263
APPENDIX D: (CONTINUED) ....................... 264
APPENDIX E: MR. TSHABALALA’S CLASSROOM SETTING ........ 265
APPENDIX F: THE ALCOHOLS AND MONOCARBOXYLIC (FATTY)
ACIDS ..................................................... 266
APPENDIX G: Mrs. Hlophe’s laboratory setting .............................. 267
APPENDIX H: Preparation of oxygen and the catalytic oxidation of
ammonia ................................................... 268
REFERENCES ........................................................................... 269
REFERENCES..................: ............................. 270

xi

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This study is about the lives and work experiences of Black science teachers in
South Africa. It tells a story of three secondary school teachers, two men working in
schools in the Gauteng Province and one woman who teaches at a school in KwaZulu-
Natal.1 Theirs is a story about how life experiences and “identity politics” provide the
frameworks for en-visioning and enacting a classroom practice that has the potential to
provide all students with much deeper skills and understandings to participate in the
processes of social transformation and reconstruction in South Africa. Such a practice is
in this study referred to as transformative practice.

The study grew out of my experiences, first as a student and then as an educator,
in the Black schools of South Africa during the times when apartheid was the law. I was
at school during the most repressive period of apartheid, in 1976 when scores of
protesting students were brutally murdered by the regime.2 I was also part of the
community leadership, as a young university student, during the optimistic and creative
times of the development of counter-hegemonic discourses of “people’s education for

people’s power” in the mid-19805.3 In the twelve years of my grade schooling, I was

 

' Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal are two of the nine provinces that make up the geographical demarcations of
the (new) South Africa. Two very different provinces, with the former often referred to as the financial
capital of South Africa that includes the country’s administrative capital in Pretoria and the “financial
capital” in Johannesburg, while the latter is a predominantly rural coastal province with Durban as its nerve
center. The choice of teachers in these two provinces will be discussed later, in the section on
methodology.

2 Aspects of the history of South African education are discussed at various points throughout the
dissertation. I have chosen to locate such an historical discussion within the context of telling the stories of
the three science teachers in order to bring out its pertinence and consequences on people’s lives.

3 "People's education for people's power" was formulated by the National Education Crisis Committee,
NECC (later called the National Education Co—ordinating Committee) in December of 1985, as an approach
to deal with the inadequacies and crisis in education, especially the education of the Black majority in the

F“:

'4‘

taught by groups of hard-working and dedicated Black teachers, few of whom had any
advanced degrees or any university education at all. With the exception of one or two, I
loved and respected most of these teachers for their commitment to “preparing (us) for
the rough world out there,” as they often remarked. For many years, as a youngster, I
heard this theme of “preparing for the rough world out there” many times over, at
church, at school and at home. It became part of the discourse around which aspects of
my identity as a Black child, student, teacher, activist and researcher were to be
constructed. The emphasis was on acquiring such skills as would enable our cohort to
participate in (re)shaping a world that was experienced by most of the adults around
(parents, teachers, church ministers etc.) as oppressive and hostile to Black people. Most
of these teachers tried with varying degrees of success to enact a kind of pedagogy they
perceived to be adequate to the challenge of providing the skills for meaningful social

participation and (re)construction.

CONCEPTUALIZING A TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE EDUCATION
When I began teaching, about eleven years ago now, I had a clear image of the
kind of teacher I wanted to be. I wanted to be like Mr. Juluka4, my 12Lh grade biology
teacher, whose classroom practice came close to what I envisioned as the meaning of
preparing students for participation in social practices designed to build democracy and
justice for all. Like many of my grade school teachers, Juluka lived within the

community, knew my folks very well, and in fact outside of class I called him uncle - -

 

country. In one sense, people's education was a response to the education crisis, and in another, it offered a
scenario for education in a future post-apartheid South Africa (Kruss, 1988). This is more so now that the
leaders of that movement occupy senior positions within the new Ministry of Education.

following the example of his nephews (playmates of mine) who often came to visit the
neighborhood on weekends and during school holidays. Juluka could be very tough and
uncompromising, another feature he shared not only with my folks but with many of my
other grade school teachers as well. He could also be funny and jolly in class,
exceptionally accommodating but still focused and demanding of his students. Most of
all, though, Mr. Juluka could be very engaging in his approaches to the subject matter of
biology. He was not shy about asking “too many questions” of one student, probing
his/her thinking on every response given. As students we sometimes dreaded the
opportunity to ask or respond to questions, as we knew many more probes would follow.
He would not be deterred, for he pounced on a student even when his/her hand was not
up (to indicate a desire to take a turn in the verbal participation in class).

I still have vivid memories of that one lesson Mr. Juluka presented on the
structure and fimctioning of the human circulatory system. It was almost sixteen years
ago, in a matriculation (grade-12) class, at Lwazi secondary school. Lwazi secondary,
our school, was a regular township school with all the challenges that have come to be
associated with these kinds of schools in Black townships - - especially the inadequate
provision of facilities and resources for learning.5 As the deputy principal of the school,
Mr. Juluka had also earned himself a reputation as a no-nonsense man. He was very
tough and strict on school discipline. Despite this reputation, his biology lessons were

always something to look forward to.

 

’ The names of people, and schools at which they work(ed), have been changed to protect them from easy
identification.

5 In Chapter three I describe one such school where Mr. Sithole, one of the participants in the study,
worked. Appendix C provides a typology of the different kinds of schools in South Africa.

For that lesson, Juluka took advantage of an experience most of us (students) were
familiar with in our daily lives, the concept of a four- roomed house. Four roomed
“town-houses” are a common feature in Black townships of South Africa, and are often
referred to as the “match-boxes” because of their shape and small size. Mr. Juluka used
the concept of a four-roomed house to build an image of the human heart with its four
chambers, the two atria and the two ventricles. Elaborating on his metaphor, he
described how the heart, like the house, was central to our very existence. Knowing that
most of us would be less familiar with the anatomical details of the human heart, he
methodically introduced the concepts and the terminology, pausing at strategic points to
contrast the details with the match-box houses he had described. The houses had four
small rooms, which he compared to the chambers of the heart, and connecting passages,
which be compared to the valves, the tricuspid and bicuspid valves of the heart. Juluka
had started the lesson in a rather strange manner: “I have a four roomed house, you all
know that, don’t you”. . .. Now what you do not know is that I have reconstructed it
inside, in such a way that you can move from the back rooms to the front ones through a
set of passages connecting each back room to the front one adjacent to it. The passages
have names, and I have chosen to call them the tricuspid valve and the bicuspid valve.”
He then went on to construct a simple sketch that would illustrate the details he had
described, and proceeded with more. It was in the midst of our amazement and laughter
that we finally realized that he was actually describing the structure of a human heart.

Reflecting back on the experience, I am often struck by the kind of learning
context Mr. Juluka was able to create through the use of his metaphors. In this particular

case, we were all amazed and confused as to what he was up to this time. At the same

time, we were also curious and anxious to know what he was driving at. We understood
the biological concepts as he described and explained them, but the context of a four-
roomed house seemed misplaced. It took a bit of thinking and passing around of little
notes among several students in the class for us to figure out that he was actually
describing the human heart. Only when we had figured it out did he confirm that he was
indeed discussing the human heart. By precipitating some confusion, amazement,
anticipation, intense intellectual engagement, and challenge in trying to figure out the
next twist in his lesson puzzle, Juluka had managed to create a discourse community of
science learners in his classroom. Little notes were passed from desk to desk,
commenting and puzzling over some aspect of the lesson. We were all careful not to be
disruptive of the lesson, or to appear disrespectful of Mr. Juluka in any way as we
engaged in the “public” deliberation on the subject matter. For a stranger not familiar
with these discourse patterns in that classroom, it would be easy to conclude, as many
white researchers in South Africa have, that Black students sit quietly and are not
engaged when the teacher presents the lesson. And that the students engage in rich
discussions only when invited by the teachers, who are not apt to issue such invitations
for fear of exposing their inadequacies.6
What made the four-roomed house/heart metaphor stick was not only its
connections to the familiar life experiences Juluka had drawn on or its novelty, but also
how he later used it to critique both the physical and the social reality of these four-

roomed houses. Using a commercial model of the human heart, Juluka then invited the

students to contrast the metaphor with the real object it represented. From this

 

6 In the next chapter, I will review some of research findings emanating from many such classroom studies
conducted in South African schools ( most of which are done in Black schools).

comparison, broader issues on housing and the environment were discussed. The biology
lesson acquired a relevance of a different kind to our social existence. Through this
metaphor, the teacher had found a way to bring together the everyday, the scientific, the
cultural, and the political. It is the interaction of these different facets of human
experience both inwardly and outwardly that made this experience indelible. That is,
Juluka had managed to provide us with the discourse frameworks with which to interpret
and make sense of our life experiences. Such new interpretations help students construct
new sets of personal identities that give rise to committed actions for social change
(Bromley, 1989; Martin and Mohanty, 1986; Pratt, 1984).

Mr. Juluka could have just plunged in and given a lecture on the anatomical
details of the human heart as required by the matriculation syllabus or maybe he could
have just brought in the commercial model of the human heart and then attached labels to
everything that we saw on the model. Instead he chose to tell a story - - a story which
brought out the cultural, the economic, the political, the scientific, and committed our
deep inner feelings into the lesson. Most good science teachers would applaud Mr.
Juluka’s intentions to connect his lesson on the blood circulatory system with the life
experiences of his students but would question the wisdom of a veteran matriculation
teacher who allows a lesson on the circulatory system to engender a discussion on
housing policies and the environment - - interesting topics, yes, but not interesting
enough to feature in the biology national examination content. Such observers would
probably subscribe to a view of good teaching that emphasizes clear objectives and goals
of exploring the scientific canon, hence, meeting well-stated objectives being central for

evaluating teaching. On the other hand, however, supporters of Mr. Juluka would

advance a view of good teaching that puts a higher premium on the teachers’ ability to
pay attention to and respond to students’ ideas and insights and the reality around them.
This is the kind. of teaching that builds on the prescribed subject matter content to provide
frameworks for (re)constructions of identity. In this view, a teacher who is seen as too
sincere or wedded to the objective would be criticized for not paying enough attention to
his/her students’ ideas and life experiences.

A few years later, as the local community rose up against the government on the
very issues of housing policy and arbitrary rent hikes, little did Mr. Juluka know that the
stuff of his biology class would become a part of our various contributions to these
community struggles of the day. By the late-19805, many of my former classmates at
Lwazi had become seasoned activists against the institutional injustices of apartheid. It is
difficult to imagine how Juluka would know of the deeper contribution his biology-plus
lessons made in helping to shape some of his students’ social and political identities. For

the system he works for discourages such innovation in teaching practice through its:

0 tight prescription of the biology curriculum “to be covered” at all schools by a
particular time frame,

0 policing of the implementation of this curriculum by way of regular
inspections and centrally controlled processes of textbook adoption,

0 assessment programs that center around the high stakes, end-of—year

assessment of teaching and learning,

0 reward structures for teachers, that are based on performance indicators of

curriculum implementation, and

0 teacher education programs and in-service program that are themselves
traditional in conception and implementation.

In Chapter two, I will revisit this discussion of the policy tools and discourses that act to
constrain innovation in South African classrooms.

As I began my own journey into teaching, the vision of wanting to be like Mr.
Juluka proved difficult to sustain and realize. I had entered the profession through a
“back door,” without a teaching qualification alter completing an undergraduate degree in
biochemistry and microbiology and taking up a position as a laboratory assistant in one of
the country’s major brewing companies. After a brutal crash of the “self” at the brewery,
under the powerfully constraining and oppressive discourses of racial exclusion and
sexism7, I was happy to work in the township among the people whose experiences of
marginalization and exclusion I shared. The teaching job provided me with an
opportunity to reconstruct my wounded self. Among the multiple identities I could be
associated with, I reconstructed myself as Black male teacher, and a political activist
committed to issues of social justice and national liberation. In my new position, I felt
valued and needed, especially because of the perceived skills and qualification in science
I brought to the system. In the light of my negative experiences with racism and sexism
in particular, I became committed to a “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire, 1970).
Constructing such a pedagogical practice, however, proved to be too much of a challenge.
From a practical standpoint, I wondered about what it would taketo teach differently

within the system that seemed to discourage “a pedagogy of difference.” More

 

7 When I was recruited to the quality control laboratory at the brewery, I was the only one with a university
qualification (obtained at an historically white institution), save for the boss. I was also one of two Black
males employed at a level higher than a cleaner or sample collector, and the only one who had been

specifically, I wondered about what would motivate or compel a teacher to construct
transformative practices in his/her classroom. And whether these practices would all
look like Juluka’s in scope, content, and consequences? And what it would take to
encourage and/or sustain them?

Later, as a teacher educator at a historically Black university in KwaZulu-Natal, I
continued to ponder these questions in search of defensible explanations for my own
failures and successes in crafting a transformative practice. My association with teachers,
both as a teacher and as a teacher educator, privileged me to the narratives of their daily
struggles with classroom practice and their skirmishes with senior education officers who
were often policing the implementation of the official curriculum.

This study comes out of those narratives of teachers' attempts to change practice
and their concerns with improving the quality of education for students from formerly
disenfranchised and poor communities in South Africa. This study explores the life
histories of three science teachers who engage in resistance and change in their pedagogy.
By privileging these teachers' voices, I hope to add insights into the personal, political,
cultural and social factors that have shaped their lives and practices. Such insights
generated from the “wisdom of practice” can be used to inform our attempts to improve
both the education of new teachers and the in-service education of practicing teachers.

If we take Gramsci's position seriously that “hegemony is never complete,”8 then
the development of different pedagogics alongside the dominant traditional apartheid

pedagogy should not at all be surprising. Teachers, motivated by the “desire to do good”,

 

recruited while a student and funded by the company as part of their management development program for
Black people. All the white employees in the division were women.

a. I use the term “hegemony” in the Gramscian sense of the potential and opportunity of the dominant group
to shape the consciousness of subordinate groups by its prescription of dominant discourses and practices

 

struggle to make their classroom practice more relevant to their students. They use
various teaching methods to get students “involved” in the learning process, and they
seek to affirm their students' life experiences by drawing examples from the “life world”
of these students. This is what I have termed an “alternative pedagogy/practice.”
Alternative practices, though genuine in their attempts to address the marginalization of
students who have traditionally been under-served by the system, fail to incorporate a
“social critique and a revolutionary agenda” (McLaren, 1998: 442). Transformative
practice, however, goes a step further; it seeks to address issues of power both in schools
and society. Its major goals seek to provide students with the critical learning and
understandings that can be used to effect personal, social, political, and economic
transformation in a democratic South Africa. Its major assumptions rest on the notion
that "critical understanding leads to critical action" (Freire, 1970). In this study,
transformative pedagogy is conceived of as a form of practice that seeks to engage
learners in a reconceptualization of both the epistemological and pedagogical frames in
the classroom. Juluka’s work of broadening the “what” of biology, how it is learned,
how we know what we know, is illustrative in this regard.

Although most evidence of such a practice in South Africa remains anecdotal, few
studies of transformative practice have found their way into academic journals and
periodicals.9 For example, the close examination of "the racial nature of scientific
authority" in the context of South Africa by Jansen (1990) led him to engage his students

in a critical discussion about scientific knowledge and its construction or "discovery.”

 

and suppression of counter-discourses. Like Gramsci, I believe that hegemony is never successfully
imposed and complete. It is always being re-imposed and resisted.

9 This is not to diminish the value of the “spoken word”, nor to minimize the importance of the local
experiments at transformative practices, that for one reason or the other have not found their way into the

Jansen began this discussion from examining the most widely used biology text in South
Africa, the Senior Biology for Standard 9 & 10 (Du toit et a1, 1985) He engaged the
question of scientific authority by discussing the authority of the text, and its eight
authors (all white and Afrikaners). This exemplifies one possibility of
reconceptualization at an epistemological level. On the pedagogical front, it is the
changes in the tasks assigned, the classroom discourse and the classroom environment to
allow students an increased role in their learning that are of interest (N CTM, 1991). For
example, Julie (1991/92) writes of an interesting case of how he challenged students who
were preparing to march on the educational authorities over the issue of overcrowded
classrooms. He challenged his students to use their mathematical knowledge to construct
a definition of an “overcrowded classroom” using the concept of volume that he had
explored with them in a math lesson. This is one example where the classroom tasks
were recast in order to promote learner involvement and relevance to their experiences.

In summary, transformative practice can, therefore, be thought of as posing a
challenge to traditional practice on a number of fronts:
(i) Classroom relationships between teachers and students and among the students are
redefined. The classroom discourse shifts away from the teacher to all members of the
classroom community. Such a shift in discourse patterns communicates powerful values
about knowledge and authority. Whose knowledge and ways of thinking are valued, who
can/can't contribute, and what is an acceptable contribution?
(ii) Alternative conceptions of the subject matter or the discipline in general are

presented and explored. This may involve a reconceptualization of the nature of subject

 

formal academic (mostly western) vehicles of affirmation. In the next chapter, I will consider some of the
alternative and/or transformative discourses that have become dominant in western science education.

matter knowledge, for example exploring the 'tentative nature of science' or the 'socially
determined conventions' that underlie most concepts and operations in mathematics.

(iii) An emphasis is placed on the relationship between knowledge/power and social
existence. Julie's example above demonstrates one attempt to weave mathematical
knowledge into the students’ struggles to reconstruct their social experiences.

Although we are clearer about the goals of transformative practice and the
challenges it poses to traditional practices, we are less clear about what range of
possibilities exist within this broad theme of transformative practices, how they take
shape in the different classrooms and what accounts for them. In this regard, this study
provides exemplars of three classrooms where versions of this form of practice were
observed. More importantly, I explore the lives and experiences of the three science
teachers involved in crafting such a practice, in order to learn more about what it takes, to

engage in such ftmdamental change in classroom practice.

THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF SCIENCE EDUCATION IN

SOUTH AFRICA

The hierarchy of apartheid

South Africa is a pluralist society with a diversity of “racial” and ethnic groups.
Until recently, officially since the adoption of the new constitution in 1996, this diversity
of its peoples has been used to define political and socioeconomic rights and privileges.
According to the recent census data of 1996, the total population of South Africa is about

40.5 million, of which 11% are Whites, 9% percent are Coloreds, 3% are Indian/Asians

and 77% are Africans (Orkin, et a1, 1999). The White population is comprised mainly of
two groups - - the Afrikaans-speaking or Afrikaner group who are mostly descendants of
Dutch settlers who first came to South Africa in 1652; and the English speaking group
which is mainly of British origin. Other White ethnic groups, for example of Jewish
decent, Greek decent, and Portuguese decent occupy powerful minority strata within the
dominant White communities. The Colored people are a product of miscegenation
between Whites, Malay slaves and the indigenous African population. The Asian, mainly
Indians, came to South Africa in the second half of the 19‘h century as indentured
servants to work in the sugar plantations of KwaZulu-Natal. The last group, the Africans,
is the indigenous inhabitants of the country (together with the Khoi-San peoples10 who
were precariously classified as Colored or African). The Afiicans have been called by
many names, including Kaffirs, Aborigines, Natives, Non-Whites, and Bantu, none of
which has been acceptable to the Africans. In the late 19708, the term Black was used to
replace the other terms. As in the White groups, Coloreds, Indians and Africans are not
monolithic; they are constituted by a number of ethnic, religious, political and other
groupings.

The four officially demarcated groups, Whites, Indians, Coloreds and Africans
enjoyed different socioeconomic rights and privileges in this “hierarchical order of the
races” (Kallaway, 1984; Switzer, 1993). In politics, economics, and education, Whites
always got a better deal than all the other groups, with Africans getting the worst. South
African education today still suffers from the legacy of both Dutch and British
colonialism and apartheid distortions of the past. Of note is the immediate history of

exclusion by “race” and ethnicity, which has resulted in different racialized patterns of

 

'0 The Khoi-San peoples are pejoratively known as the Bushmen.

l3

participation and success within the education system. For example, the success rate by
Africans at the Matriculation examination level (grade-12) has not been any better since
the first African matriculated as a private candidate in 1880. As Horrell (1963) reports,
the success rates at the turn of the century were disproportionate: between 1901 and
1910, only five Africans had matriculated; and this number had risen to only 22 by the
end of the decade that followed. These numbers have not been impressive over the years,
as the national average pass rate for the 19903 hovers below 60% (Amott et a1, 1997;

SAIRR, 1997).

Black participation in science education

The poor participation and success rates of Black people have been more
pronounced in those subjects with a higher premium in society - - particularly
mathematics and the sciences. According to the Bantu education scheme, mathematics
and science were the particular subjects from which Black peoples were to be excluded
(Kallaway, 1984).11 For example, between 1985 and 1993, the national average pass rate
in matriculation physical science for Black learners was 47% (Shindler, 1997;
Sidiropoulos, 1997). During that eight-year period, the percentage pass in physical
science had never reached beyond 50% nationally. '2 Participation rates have also been
relatively low. For example, in 1994 (the last year in which South African learners wrote
matriculation examinations under racially segregated examination systems) only 16% of

the 250, 000 matriculating female learners enrolled for physical science compared with

 

” Bantu education, as the name indicates, was a kind of education scheme that was specifically designed
for Black people in South Africa. It was to be inferior to the education of other “races” by design (Rose
and Tummer, 1975). Science and mathematics were considered irrelevant to the native lives and were
discouraged or excluded from the curriculum.

l4

21% of the 188, 000 matriculating male learners.l3 Against this background, therefore,
Sidiropoulos’ (1997) observation that in the years between 1985 and 1993 Africans
accounted for only 2.6% of the total number of students graduating in engineering and
technology should not be surprising.

These statistics would not be so alarming were it not for the fact that they give us
a clue into the distribution of rights and privileges within the South African society. For
instance, the participation and success rates of Africans in higher education, especially in
the sciences, has been dismal with ten percent more whites graduating with science
degrees than Blacks (Foundation for Research Development, FRD 1993). This is an
embarrassing statistic for a country where more than three quarters of the population is
African, and it has implications for the kinds of jobs and careers that become available to
Afi'ican peoples. Secondly, it is not surprising that there are fewer qualified Black
science teachers within the education system. According to a recent survey of seven (of
the nine) provinces, only 42% of science teachers nationally were qualified to teach
science with percentages even lower for schools serving Black learners (Amott, et a1,
1997). Recently, policy-makers have been concerned over the fact that South Africa lags
behind most countries in scientific and technological literacy (Department of Arts,
Culture, Science and Technology,DACST, 1998). In comparison with 19 other countries,
for example, South Africa ranked 18 out of 20 on natural and environmental sciences
literacy, only fairing better than Russia and Poland (Department of Arts, Culture, Science

and Technology, DACST, 1998). South Afiica s ratio of scientists and engineers per

 

'2 From about 1995 when all the separate apartheid departments had been unified, national average pass
rates were slightly higher. This is because of the higher averages in the other former “racial” departments.
‘3 Biology, another of science subjects, is an exception to this enrollment pattern (with 86% of females
enrolling and 85% of the males). The success rates in biology are not radically different however.

15

1000 of the population is 3.3 - - making it one of the lowest among both developing and
developed countries (compared to Brazil’s 11.2; or the United State of America’s
(USA/US) 21.6 (Sidiropoulos, 1997).

Although some of the government programs initiated after 1994 have made an
impact on the situation, many Black peoples still remain vulnerable and live the lives of
the oppressed primarily because of their social and economic conditions. The
inequalities continue to be supported by a number of discourse structures and systems in
society such as the economic system, the political system, the curriculum structure, the
pedagogical practices and the dominant cultural discourses. The racialized capitalist
production system of South Africa has relied heavily on availability of cheap and
unskilled Black labor, while social privilege is still structured by a discourse of racial
discrimination and exclusion. In schools, much of the curriculum remains exclusive and
irrelevant (Christie, 1985; Jansen, 1990b; 1989; Nkomo, 1990). And pedagogical
practices derived from the colonial and apartheid past remain in place in most
classrooms. Consequently, a culture of negativity about the future of Black schooling
pervades society, such that those who can, bail out of Black schools. These discursive
systems are, however, not automatic in their effects of defining Black learners and
teachers to social relations of inferiority. For each one of them is not monolithic. Each is
a product of history and struggle and contains within itself multiple and contradictory
elements. It is a known fact, for example, that no two analysts can explain the content
and meaning of the apartheid political system in the same way (evidence of this abounds

at present within the processes of “truth” searching by the Truth and Reconciliation

l6

 

Commission, TRC, of South Africa).14 Also, if we take Foucault’s (1982) notion that
such multiple and contradictory discourse systems are material and constitutive of our
subjectivities, then our histories will also be multiply-stranded and contradictory with

many different kinds of opportunities and possibilities.

THINKING ABOUT ALTERNATIVE IDENTITIES AND DISCOURSES
The processes by which transformative discourses are constructed and adopted by
teachers are of interest in this study. That is, how do Black teachers construct new
identities that enable them to charter new forms of practice in their classrooms? This
involves investigating the construction and meaning assigned to new forms of identities
and practices by transformative teachers.

As Bromley (1989) argues, personal history by itself “lacks the power to bring

about change, until it is embedded in social relations linked to wider processes by a
political discourse.” On the other hand, he further argues, an “analysis of social relations
by itself, is also ineffective until given emotional reality through being instantiated on an
individual level by grounding it in one’s own personal history” (p. 211-212). Bromley’s
analysis allows for a construction of closer links between social analysis and self
(re)construction, with personal histories used to “evoke both interest in and capacity for
individual change” and political discourses provide the context for the personal histories
and enable transformation of social relations (p.212). Bromley, therefore, posits a model
where teachers actively choose to engage in transformative practice. That is, it is not

enough for Black teachers to have lived their lives under conditions of oppression for

 

" The TRC is a constitutional body established in 1996 to sort out the history of South Africa in terms of
victims/perpetrators of gross human rights violations from 1960 to 1994. Although it had an initial life

17

them to want to commit to a transformative practice, but a discourse of resistance and
transformation is needed for action. To disrupt the cycle of exclusion and inequality in
education, attention needs to be paid to both the personal histories of teachers and the
alternative discourses that shape those histories.

In its attempts to intervene in the patterns of exclusion and inequality in educating
all children in South Africa, the new government has tried to reconstruct the social and
political discourse on a number of fronts: First, through its adoption of the new
constitution and the crafting of appropriate legislation, many of the political privileges
and rights have been restored to the African majority of South Africa. Second,
government has already declared science and technology as the two key areas of focus for
transformation (Department of Education, DoE, 1995). To further give visibility to the
idea of reconstruction of science and technology, the year 1998 was declared the “year of
science and technology” (DACST, 1998). Third, new curriculum initiatives have just
been launched in the primary school grades, to be implemented progressively through the
grade levels. The new curriculum, based on Outcomes Based Education (OBE) models,
is called the curriculum 2005 initiative. In science, the new curriculum contains elements
that provide an alternative discourse pattern to the traditional curriculum. Fourth, the
cultural terms and conditions of schooling are also being reshaped through the
government’s campaign of restoring “the culture of teaching and learning,” especially in
African schools (Department of Education, DoE, 1997). The campaign attempts to
disrupt some of the hegemonic practices of “teachers and learners” in schools.

Despite the strides made in reconstructing the discourse systems in South Africa,

most classrooms do not seem to have been affected by this change (Jansen, 1998; Jita,

 

span of two years, this has been extended to give enough time for the process “to be completed.”

18

1998; Moharnmed, Interview August 1998). Most teachers have still to embrace the new
discourses and construct their identities around them. We are not clear, however, about
what it takes for teachers to embrace new discourses and teach differently. This study
presents narratives of three science teachers who have attempted to craft a transformative
practice. Their practice is constructed within the context of their histories as Black
people who grew up and were educated under apartheid, and who now teach Black
learners under a new set of emerging conditions created both by the legacy of apartheid

and the interventions of the new government.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Black/African

In this study I use the term “Black” interchangeably with the term “African.” In
South Africa, the name Black has its roots in the Black consciousness Movement (BCM)
of the 19603. It was used as an inclusive term to refer to all those who were marginalized
and oppressed under the terms of apartheid. That is, it was used to refer collectively to
Africans, Coloreds and Indians. However, by 1979 the name had been appropriated by
the apartheid government and used to refer to Africans only (since sections of the White
people wanted to refer to themselves as Afrikaners to emphasize their connection to
Africa as well). Although most of the time I use the terms, Black and African
interchangeably, there are times when I use Black to define the collective (experiences of
the oppressed). My use of the term Black is also motivated by the fact that most African

people often refer to themselves as Black. Politically, African has become a fashionable

statement in the new South Afiica. There is now a rush by all political leaders, Black and

White, to stake their claims to being African.

Discourse

I use “discourse” to mean statements used at disciplinary, political and cultural
levels to convey meaning and to restrict and regulate what can be said, known and
experienced. In this way, discourses are constitutive of our subjectivity, and thereby link
knowledge and power (Foucault, 1980; Weedon, 1987). Discursive practices refers to the
“rules and institutional arrangements through which discourse statements are produced

and communicated (Foucault, 1980).

Township

I use the term “township” to refer to the formerly exclusively Black residential
areas. These areas are olten easy to distinguish from the White residential areas (often
called suburbs) by the differences in infrastructure. While white residential areas are well
provided for with services such as adequate electricity, tarred roads, street lighting and
regular garbage collection, the townships enjoy very little of such services. Schools in
these two areas of residence are also marked by these sharp disparities. The provision of
educational facilities in South Africa followed a pattern of social stratification, with
White schools being well provided, while African schools received the least - - Indian

and Colored schools straddling in between the two extremes in that order.

20

Identity
By “identity” I refer to the people’s sense of self, as socially constructed within

social settings.

ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION

The first chapter has attempted to locate the genesis of this dissertation both
within my personal realities of growing up and struggling to teach science in South
Afiica. It also located the dissertation within the broader theoretical/practical concerns of
working for change in schools and classrooms, especially those that serve
disproportionate numbers of Black students.

The second chapter samples a range of literature to locate the theoretical
framework of the study. Literature in such varied traditions as science education and
social theory is employed in this dissertation.

The third chapter describes the methodology used in the research. The study has
two interwoven components: the ethnographic component of classroom observations, and
the life story component of the teachers’ discussion of the place and meaning of their
lives. There is an uneasy tension of emphasis between these two components (at least in
the mind of the researcher as the dissertation is being constructed). The presentation is
meant to be interactive between life stories and ethnographic inquiry, with a view to
understanding why the teachers constructed the kind of practices I observed during the

visits to their classrooms.

21

The fourth, fifth, and six chapters present cases of life stories and classroom
experiences of the three science teachers. The construction of particular forms of
identities and practices by these three teachers is presented.

Chapter seven is the conclusion. It recaptures some of the important themes and
lessons from the stories of the three teachers and explores some of the implications for
policy, research and teaching.

An Epilogue pulls together aspects of the researcher’s story and ponders the
questions raised by the research in regard to my own identity as a Black researcher,

teacher, and teacher educator.

22

CHAPTER TWO

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This study is located at the intersection of three areas of concerns, viz. concerns
with teachers who resist dominant patterns of modal practice, in science education, within
the context of the South African education system. Accordingly, I have chosen to review
three different sets of literature, beginning with the literature on critical theory which
provides the basis for thinking about a kind of pedagogical change that has consequences
beyond the classroom. I examine the concerns with pedagogical change and its potential
for social change within the context of South Africa. Given the particular focus of this
research on science teaching, I also review literature on some of the recent attempts to
promote change in the teaching and learning of science in schools. As a result of my
emphasis on changing practices, I have chosen to de-emphasize modal practice except
only to acknowledge its existence in the context of the changes observed in the practices
of the three case teachers in this study and the reform literature reviewed here.

This study is grounded principally in the tradition of critical theory. There are
many versions of this theory, and consequently many different forms of critical pedagogy
emanating from them (Giroux, 1995; Gur-Ze’ev, 1998; McLaren, 1998). All versions,
however, rest on the assumptions that the existing society is both exploitative and
oppressive, but also that it is within our capacity to change it and make it equitable
(Anyon, 1981; Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Weiler, 1988). This common denominator is what
GurZe’ev refers to as the notion of a “positive utopia.” (GurZe’ev, 1998), also captured
in Giroux’s notion of the “language of possibility” (Giroux, and McLaren, 1987).

Scholars in the critical theory tradition, especially those influenced by the “Frankfurt

23

school,” tend to view education as either an instrument of oppression or of
transformation. One line of scholarship within this tradition has focused on the processes
through which the existing power relations in society are produced, maintained and
reproduced (Anyon, 1981; Bernstein, 1977; Bourdieu, 1977; Bowles & Gintis, 1976;
Giroux, 1983). The idea of “cultural capital,” and the notion that schools and school
knowledge serve to reproduce the dominant classes were often posited as explanations
and causes of the inequalities in school and society.

Another line, however, focuses more on the day-to-day experiences of people or
groups of people (especially the oppressed), and their struggles and resistance to the
instruments of oppression and exploitation (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1988; 1985; Shor and
Freire, 1987; Willis, 1977). It is the latter strand that has the most appeal to critical
scholars in developing countries, because of its usefulness in analyzing their experiences
of racial and sexual oppression, in sponsoring the voices of oppressed men and women in
education, and on its emphasis on conceptualizing possibilities for change. The story of
this research on science teachers who teach differently is located within the latter strand
of critical theory of education. In its later articulation, influenced by the various

discourses of postmodernism and post-colonialism, this strand now presents schooling

less in a language of reproduction and resistance and more in terms of
different ways of articulating one’s identity from the perspective of social
class, gender, race, and sexual preference (sic), and in terms of developing a
language of meaning as teachers and students address together the issues
and struggles of critique and possibility (Oldenski, 1997, p.82).

Issues of power, discourse and identity construction within the context of larger material
and discursive conflicts, therefore, become paramount in telling the stories of the three

science teachers. This is a radical departure from the earlier analyses by critical theorists

24

science teachers. This is a radical departure from the earlier analyses by critical theorists
that subsumed all individual actions and experiences under singular regulatory schemes
of race, class, gender, or structure.

Paulo F reire is one critical scholar of the latter strand, whose work has probably
had the most impact in many developing countries. His work has been used in countries
such as Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Chile, Brazil, and many others. Freire
attacked the very basis of traditional pedagogy: its emphasis on the transmission and
transference of knowledge. He was critical of what he terms the "banking" system of

education where:

Education (thus) becomes an act of depositing in which the students are
the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of
communication the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits
which the students patiently receive, memorize and repeat. This is the
'banking' concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to
the student extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the
deposits...(Freire, 1970, p.58).

This form of traditional pedagogy imposes a number of limitations on its recipients. The
most obvious, both from radical and conservative perspectives, is that it does not
adequately prepare students for critical, proactive participation within the society. Even
in education systems where such a pedagogy was maintained by design to fulfill other
social objectives (e.g., within Black education in apartheid South Africa, or communist
education in the former Soviet Union), it can be argued that its successes were modest at
best, as more and more people continued to fashion social actions and programs designed
to undermine the social objectives of such uncritical and hegemonic pedagogy.

In education, Freire’s ideas and those of other critical theorists have found
application in diverse programs designed to get students involved or included in the

learning processes, and empowered in ways that seek to affirm their life experiences.

25

From a critical theory standpoint, inclusion, voice, and empowerment are the central
themes of any pedagogy of transformation (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1988; 1985; Gore,
1992; hooks, 1996; Shor and F reire, 1991). However, as Jennifer Gore (1992) and
Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) demonstrate with their critique of the notions of
empowerment, voice and dialogue in critical and feminist theories, the meanings of these
concepts are not pre-determined. The specific material contexts and discourses within
which they are articulated shape their meanings. In the classrooms, teachers are thus not
always at the center of the consciousness raising activities, and students, especially those
for whom the empowering practices are constructed, are not always ready to have their
voices heard by others in a dialogical relationship. A complex array of power dynamics
inside and outside of the classroom determine whether or not and how students and
teachers participate in the classroom experiences.

Inclusion, voice and empowerment are important concepts for thinking about
transformative practice in South Africa. Without a representation of their experiences in
the design and processes of schooling, Black peoples in South Africa often felt
‘excluded’ by the system and resisted its implementation (Christie, 1985; Kallaway,
1984; Walker, 1996). Inclusion, as used in this study, therefore, denotes not only the
attempts to bring in more Black students into the science classrooms (access), but to
bring them in as active subjects whose experiences shape their learning and
understandings of the content of science. Inclusion is used to refer to the deliberate
efforts by teachers to draw on the day-to-day realities and differing experiences of the
students to present the subject matter, to craft tasks and projects for students, and to

assess their understandings of important concepts in science. The notion of inclusion

26

seeks to capture the teachers’ overall approach to science teaching by examining three
categories of the teacher’s classroom practice that constitutes the bulk of what organizes
classrooms in most schools in South Africa and elsewhere:

0 Presentation of the content

0 Assignment of Tasks and Questions (in the class-work. homework,

projects, and other assignments)

0 Assessment of students’ understandings
With respect to each of these categories, three questions are asked of the practices of each
teacher in this study: To what extent do they draw on the day to day experiences of the
students? In what ways do the teachers weave these experiences into the three aspects of
practice identified above? How do they make choices about what experiences to bring in,
when and how?

Voice, on the other hand, refers to the articulation and representation of the
multiple meanings and understandings constructed by the students within the classroom
and school discourse. It is about extending the limits of what can be said about science in
the classroom, who is allowed to participate in the discourse, and what meanings are
given to the things that are said by the various participants in the science classroom
discourse. I ask four questions to bring out aspects of voice that are important for critical
pedagogues:

0 What is talked about in the science classroom, in terms of the specific

subject matter of science, stories of lived experiences of both teachers
and students, and other social issues of relevance to the community of

science learners in the particular classrooms?

27

0 Who talks about what and to whom? Who supports or listens and who

does not?
0 What meanings are assigned to what is said?
0 What language(s) and concepts are used?
0 How are choices about meanings and language made?

Critical education theorists argue that it is in the context of a pedagogy that privileges
voice and inclusion, that students become positioned to develop the capacity and the
willingness to exercise power (‘empowerment’) in ways that may have transformative
consequences. The third component of this study, after voice and inclusion, examines the

consequences of transformative practice. This includes concerns with such issues as :
0 what kinds of conceptions of science students get from the teaching?

0 how the concepts and conceptions of science help to shape different

understandings of their experiences?

0 how new constructions and identities help to shape social change?
The concept of a transformative practice, which forms a key component of this study,

defines such pedagogy of voice and inclusion.

TEACHERS AS TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTITIONERS
The idea of looking at the work of teachers as transformative (and intellectual)
derives from two separate influences on my own thinking and practice. First, Henry
Giroux’s (1985; 1988) notion of looking at teachers as “transformative intellectuals.”
Second, it comes from the definition of the South African struggles as being about more

than just reforming the apartheid structures of the past but aimed at creating conditions

28

for a radical change (or transformation) from apartheid. That is, creating conditions for
transforming the power relations in society.

Giroux’s (1985, p.378; 1988, p.125-126) concept of “transformative intellectuals”
is useful in this study for examining a number of issues about non—traditional practices in
South Africa. First, it provides a “basis for examining teachers’ work as a form of
intellectual labor,” as opposed to defining it in instrumental or technical terms (Giroux,
1988, p.125). Teacher thinking and actions, and the meanings assigned to them can
therefore be studied more productively within this framework. Second, it clarifies the
kinds of “ideological and practical conditions necessary for teachers to function as
intellectuals” (Giroux, 1985, p.125). The social, economic, historical, cultural and
political contexts within which teachers work also become a legitimate component of
study. For instance, what conditions enable teachers to construct a pedagogy of
difference in their science classrooms is a concern that can be pursued legitimately within
this framework. Thirdly, it helps to make clear the role of teachers’ work within the
various discursive and material interests. That is, what organizations of power do their
classroom strategies and approaches support, deliberately or inadvertently?

Teachers, as transformative intellectuals, therefore, have an important role in
“legitimating the [students’] voices in an effort to empower them as critical and active

citizens.” (Giroux, 1988, p. 165).
CONCEPTUALIZING TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA

The notion of transformative classroom practice from the point of view of the

South African discourses has its origins in the “people’s education for people’s power”

29

movement of the mid-805. This was a movement to redefine both the content and context
of education in South Africa (Kruss, 1988). As a result, classroom changes had to be
located within this overall movement for social change and empowerment for them to be

regarded as truly transformative (Unterhalter and Wolpe, 1989):

Although the partial ‘reforms’ which could be implanted in Bantu
education would be of value in themselves the fundamental point is that
they were intended to be the outcome of a political process, in
particular the assertion of people’s power in the sphere of education. It
is precisely this which would have given the achievement of changes in
Bantu education their specificity as expressions of people’s power and
not merely as reforms (p.15).

The notion of reform is therefore not adequate to express the kinds of changes that were
being advocated by the enthusiasts of “people's’ education” in South Africa.
Transformation and transformative practice became popular themes to express the
demand for fundamental change in the apartheid educational discourse and practice of the
19808 and early 19905. Teachers began to be regarded as important actors in this struggle
for social and educational change (Davidoff, 1993; Enslin, 1988; National Education
Policy Investigation, NEPI, 1992; Walker, 1989;), only if they could be convinced to

have the right politics. As Enslin (1988) put it,

those who recognize the role which teachers can play in the struggle to
liberate South Africa from the present order, the brand of theoretical
discourse available to teachers should be of some interest. (p. 73).

Although framed in this very orthodox (Marxist) manner of granting the privilege of
transformative social action only to a select group of teachers with the right theoretical
discourses, the vanguard so to speak, the focus on teachers as agents of transformation
was an important step forward - - from the view of teachers as state agents who

implemented Bantu education (Hartshome, 1992; Kallaway, 1984).

30

The View of teachers as potential transformative agents legitimated alternative
paradigms of practice in schools for many teachers and provided voice to new lines of
research on teaching and teachers in South Africa. The important paradigm shift,
precipitated by the people’s education ideas, was that concerns with how well teachers
were implementing the traditional curriculum and practices began to give way to new
concerns about how teachers were constrained in doing their work of educating society
(Nduna-Watson, 1995; Chisholm, 1992; Morrell, 1988; Walters, 1981). Later, these
concerns about constraints further shifted to how well teachers could be ‘helped’ to adapt
to and find ways of undercutting the constraining contexts to do the potentially
transformative work. Most of the latter strand of work was carried out by university
researchers, working mostly with elementary school teachers, and by non-governmental
organizations working in the area of educational development (see for example, Breen
and Coombe, 1992; Education Support Project (ESP), 1995; Flanagan, 1991; Potter,
1997; Walker, 1991; 1994; 1996; Wickham, 1997). While these projects are beginning to
contribute worthwhile insights about transformational discourses and practices in Black
schools and classrooms, the form they take as quasi-evaluation studies that look at the
impact of the specific interventions by the university researchers in schools limits their
scope. With the exception of Wickham’s (1997) project which focuses on the classroom
practices of a group of white teachers in KwaZulu-Natal province; and Porter’s (1997)

discussion of his own experience as a White university lecturer teaching in a formerly
“Whites only” elementary school; and Walker’s (1996) re-interpretation of her earlier
dissertation research (i.e. Walker 1992), the studies stop short of entertaining richer

acCounts on the limits and possibilities for educational change in schools that serve Black

31

children, outside of the strategies framed by their own staff development projects. In a
later publication of her earlier research in Black schools, Walker enriches our
understanding of the possibilities, limits and dynamics of change as experienced by the
Black elementary school teachers she worked with in the townships of Cape Town. Her
analysis draws on the “feminist poststructuralist” approaches to look at the external
factors that constrain the work of Black primary teachers. Secondary school teachers in
Black schools experience many of the same kinds of constraints that she identified for the
primary school teachers. Five of the discourses she identified in her study frame the
context of work of the secondary school teachers studied here, viz. the discourse of
authoritarian surveillance, the discourse of fundamental pedagogics, the teacher
qualification discourse, the school-based control discourse, and the resource constraint

discourse.

The discourse of authoritarian surveillance

This is the discourse that shapes the hierarchical relations and interactions
between the teachers and their employer. This discourse captures the very unequal
relations between teachers and the department, characterized by the absence of any
“concept of teachers’ rights” (Walker, 1996, p.82). Given the centralized structuring and
organization of the education system, teachers' work and lives in school and classroom

Were often pre-determined from central office.

32

 

The discourse of fundamental pedagogics

Fundamental pedagogics is an ideology that was developed by the Afrikaner
academics to uphold the vision of a Christian National Education (CNE) introduced by
the Nationalist Party after its rise to power in 1948. Its central tenets are segregation or
development of the separate “races”/“nationalities” and White superiority (Enslin, 1984;
Kallaway, 1994; Nkomo, 1991; Unterhalter and Wolpe, 1989). A course in “fundamental
pedagogics,” or “theory of education” as it was sometimes called, was compulsory at all
teacher education colleges and universities in South Africa. The content of the course
was roughly similar at all institutions, except for the White English speaking universities
that openly resisted and challenged its view of education. Fundamental pedagogics
emphasized obedience for both teachers and students and presented an unquestioned
doctrine of inequality between the different racial and ethnic groups in the country.
Because of the apartheid laws that required Black students to get government approval to
attend the Historical White Universities (HWU), very few Black teachers graduated from
the White English speaking universities.l5 The classroom practices of many Black

teachers are thus also constrained by their experiences of fundamental pedagogics.

The teacher qualification discourse
Changes in the state requirements for teaching often disempowered many of the
teaChers who were considered “under-qualified.” Many of the older teachers in

elementary and secondary schools began their careers in the 19505 and 19603 when the

\

IS
{‘lthough the requirement for Government approval was relaxed in 1994, the fee structure and the
Smngent admission requirements at these institutions limited the numbers of Black students that could
attend. In addition, government provided incentives in the form of full scholarships for student teachers in

33

requirement for teaching was a grade eight plus two years of teacher preparation. With
the new requirement of a matriculation (grade-12) certificate and three years of teacher
preparation, most teachers who have served the system so diligently in the past find
themselves with labels of “under-qualified” or “unqualified.” Rural teachers, and/or
Black teachers, are often affected in higher numbers because of lack of resources and
institutions for upgrading nearer their places of work. Although the number of under-
qualified teachers has dropped sharply in the last five years, thanks to a new government
policy to encourage teacher upgrading, for those who still hear this label, the
consequences are even harsher than years past. Such teachers are often the first to go

when government implements its rationalization programs.

The school-based control discourse

This category describes the regulatory mechanisms of each school where the
teachers work. The conditions at school level mirrored the national relations of
oppression and surveillance, especially through the use of random inspections of

curriculum implementation by the Educational Inspectors (Els).

The resource constraint discourse
This category describes the manner in which teachers experience their
impoverished environments, lack of facilities, texts and other resources necessary to do a

d“lent job of educating in their subject areas.

\

the Historically Black Universities (HBUs). For colleges of education (the equivalent of normal colleges in
e USA), these incentives meant that literally all the students in a college would be fully funded.

34

A combination of these discourses function to regulate and constrain the
classroom practices of many science teachers in South Africa. Collectively, they produce
a set of modal practices that alienate both the Black learners and teachers alike.

It is important to note, however, that the influence of the regulatory discourses on
teachers is not automatic. That is, it is still possible to find Black teachers whose
practices depart from the normalized view of teaching (Mcleod, 1995; NEPI, 1992). This
is where Walker’s (1996) work breaks new ground on research about teachers and
teaching in South Afiica, in that she was able to simultaneously analyze the “spaces” and
opportunities for freedom in the work and personal lives of the teachers in her study. Her
discussion of the “spaces of freedom” (a concept she borrowed from Gore, 1993, see
Walker p.161) includes an analysis of potentially counter-hegemonic discourses and
interpretations of power that the teachers could appeal to in making sense of their
attempts at classroom transformation. Walker, however, laments the fact that many of
the teachers in her study did not have “access” to the counter-hegemonic discourses and
therefore had trouble embracing many of the changes her professional development
course wanted to promote. Walker’s (1996) is the only study of Black South African
teachers I have come across that explores the material and discursive realities of teaching
in South African classroom from a personal meaning-making and human agency
approach]6 The present study differs from Walker’s in that it focuses on secondary

teachers who set out to change the way science and science classrooms are experienced

by many Black students in South Africa and elsewhere - - as alienating, irrelevant and

 

16
Tthe only other similar study of ‘transforming pedagogy’ by Macleod (1995) explores the work of subject
ad"'lsors (a layer of district level subject matter co—ordinators and facilitators) while Wickham (1997)
explores similar issues with a group of white teachers.

35

perpetuating the inequalities of school and society. In addition, I seek to contribute
insights about how the transformative teachers used the “internal” resources (of identity)
to construct an alternative practice of science in their classrooms in spite of the external

factors that conspire against change.

REFORMING SCIENCE EDUCATION GLOBALLY

As a graduate student in North America, with the concerns about voice and
inclusion in science education, I have been drawn to some of the literature on reform in
science education (for example, AAAS, 1989; 1995; NRC, 1996; NSTA, 1988). There
have been several attempts at reforming science teaching and learning in North America
and Europe in particular, targeting the issues of voice and inclusion, that provide
interesting case material for thinking about transformative practice in South Africa.
Many of these reforms have come under different names with slightly different ways of
expressing their concerns based on the history, and each with its own problems and
limitations. In the next section, I provide a snapshot of some of these science reform
frameworks, with particular focus on their major tenets around the issues of inclusion and
voice. My review of these ideas focuses less on the specific history of their development

than on the major propositions they make for classroom change.

Scientific literacy for all

This is the most recent and prominent of the efforts at changing the practice of
science education in schools. In the USA, its origins are often traced to Project 2061

Vision statements of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS,

36

 

1989; 1993). Its major concerns revolve around two issues: first, the specific science
concepts and skills and ‘habits of mind’ that students should have the opportunity to learn
and develop in the science classroom, and second the fact that all learners should have
access to these concepts and habits. In terms of the content of science education, the
documents produced by AAAS, the National Research Council (NRC) and other reform
documents develop the notion that science education needs to focus on a few key
concepts, principles, and theories that weave together the different subject matter of
science (AAAS, 1989; NRC, 1996). For example, the notion of “homeostasis and
change” in science which cuts across different sub-disciplines of science and could be
used to explore a broad range of phenomenon in the subject; or the notion of a “system,”
or the idea of a “model” and many more.

Teaching for conceptual understanding is based on the recently articulated
constructivist theories of learning that highlight the notion that learners actively construct
meanings of scientific phenomena within the context of their social and personal
experiences (Anderson et a1, 1987; Cobern, 1993; Matthews, 1994; Roth, 1994; Tobin,
1993; van Glasersfeld, 1989). In this view of learning, teachers are expected to teach in
ways that engage the student’s understandings and constructions deeply and
meaningfully. For example, in the articulation of one of its standards for the teaching of
science, the NRC (1996) proposes that teachers focus on “guiding and facilitating

learning” by focusing and supporting inquiries, orchestrating discourse among students
abOut scientific ideas, challenging students to share responsibility for learning and to
recOgnize and respond to student diversity (p.32). These ideas about the need for

Students to be active in constructing their own understandings of the science concepts and

37

principles, and about the role of teachers in creating an environment that supports and
encourages such exploration from the students individually and collaboratively, have
given rise to a plethora of ideas and research agendas designed to realize some of the
reform ideas. Palinscar, et al (1993); Roth (1995) and Hobden (1998), for instance,
explore problem-solving within a context of collaborative group work in science
classrooms as a way of getting students to attain deeper understandings of the subject
(what Palinscar et a1 refer to as ‘scientific literacy’). Studies of conceptual change
among science learners define another major line of research in science education
designed to realize deeper conceptual understandings in science learners (Driver, et al,
1994; Hewson et al, 1998; Hewson, 1981; Smith, et a1, 1993, Smith, 1987). Yet another
major area of research relating to the reform ideas involves issues of language and
discourse in science teaching and learning (Lemke, 1990; Malecki, 1990; Rosebery et al,
1992; Saul et al, 1993; Vellom et al, 1995). A major goal of all these research programs
is to contribute insights about how to develop conceptual understanding for all science
learners.

The second concern of the reforms is the notion that all students need to learn and
develop the conceptual understandings and habits of mind proposed. Unlike the first
reform goal which has generated a lot of research interest, the second goal of teaching
science to all students has not had the same attention from researchers and reformers in

SCience education. Beginning with the major reform documents themselves, the AAAS
(1989) and the NRC (1996) do not provide much to guide the efforts of educators who
are interested in issues of inclusion for all students. These documents make reference to

the rhetoric of all students without “addressing directly the ethnic, socioeconomic, gender

38

 

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and theoretical issues that influence the teaching and learning of science in (our) schools”
(Rodriguez, 1998, p.592). That is, teachers are left with very little to go by in making the
changes to include all students in science education (Spillane et al, 1996). The research
agenda on teaching for understanding, despite its success in providing insights on how to
realize the reform visions in the classrooms, has come up short on the goals of inclusion
of the different social, cultural, economic and gender groups. Several critiques of both
traditional practice and the ‘teaching for understanding’ framework have led to several

alternative proposals for transforming classroom practices of science teachers.

Feminist alternatives
One of the most sustained critiques of both traditional practice and ‘teaching for
understanding’ comes from the feminist scholars and teachers (Barton, 1998a; b;
Brickhouse, 1994; Harding, 1986; Longino, 1989; Osborne and Barton, 1998; Rosser,
1986; 1990). These scholars are critical of the notion that science learners, and
particularly those who had been excluded from science, need only be provided with
deeper conceptual understandings of the concepts in science to make it back into the
science fold. They argue that the problem of exclusion is deeper that that: it demands a
critique of the very scientific knowledge that other reformers take for granted. That is,
the very content, culture, and discursive practices in the science classroom need to be
Opened up for critique (Barton, 1995). Instead of trying to assimilate all students into an
unexamined discourse of science by using the “construct of difference” (Barton, 1995,
13-33) to legitimate the dominant ideas in society, science education should be a forum for

critiques that have the potential to transform the lives of students. These critiques of the

39

practice of science, and science education, and the knowledge it has created are premised
on the fact that science is enacted by people and thus cannot remain free from personal,
political and social bias (Richmond et al, 1998). Personal, political and social concerns
therefore, need to be an integral part of science teaching and learning. In this framework,
reform ideas become valuable only as far as they have something to say about science as
it relates to the personal, political and social lives of those who are excluded from science
education. In terms of their potential for addressing the concerns of inclusion and
relevance for the marginalized as identified in this study, the feminist frameworks
provide a ray of hope.

One of the major hassles for this framework is having to contest for space within
the dominant frameworks of science education, and sometimes its exclusionary focus on
women’s experiences limit the scope of its influence within science education. Several
promising projects in this framework are beginning to generate interest within the field of
science education. For instance, Rosser’s seminal works on “teaching science and health
from a feminist perspective” (1986) and “female-friendly science” (1990) have been used
by many in science education as a template for constructing curricula and practices that
are responsive to the needs and experiences of women. Howes (1998) provides another
example where the application of “difference feminism” (p. 877) to teach a high school
unit on prenatal testing by appealing to the interests and experiences of the girls in her
classroom. Barton (1995) also documented her teaching of a community college

chemistry class from perspectives that include feminism.

40

Multicultural frameworks

Other reformers more concerned with broader issues of diversity in science
education have advanced the idea of a multicultural science education (Atwater, 1994;
1995; 1996a; 1996b; Hodson, 1993; Rodriguez, 1998). Several constructions of
multiculturalism in science education have been discussed in the literature recently. For
example, one view holds that teaching for diversity in science education involves
“learning to implement more culturally inclusive and socially relevant pedagogical
strategies” in the science classroom (Rodriguez, 1998, p.590). Another view by Hodson
(1993) moves a step beyond the focus on “overcoming linguistic differences, establishing
culturally appropriate behaviors, and accommodating to differences in classroom
expectations” (p. 689) by drawing up a scheme of three possible approaches to a
multicultural science education:

In the fist approach, which he calls “Science Education in a Multicultural
Setting,” the use of both written and spoken language is adapted to avoid disadvantage to
those with language difficulties, especially those for whom English is a second language
Hodson, 1993). Attention is also paid to the ‘language of science education’, and more
opportunities are provided for students to explore and develop understanding. Subject
matter that recognizes and utilizes the culturally determined knowledge and experiences
of students is used with culturally appropriate learning experiences.

In the second approach, which Hodson (1993) calls the “Anti-racist Science
Education,” textbooks, worksheets, and other curriculum materials are reviewed for
purposes of removing all offensive and racially stereotyped content. More democratic

school organizational procedures and learner-driven teaching/learning methods are

41

established while drawing attention to ways in which science and scientific ways of
presenting information are sometimes misused to underpin racist attitudes and legitimate
discrimination against minorities.

The third approach, the “Multicultural Perspectives for Science Education,” draws
in exemplars from a variety of cultures and countries and privileges the contribution of
non-Westem scientists to present science (Hodson, 1993). Furthermore, emphasis is
placed on the culturally specific nature of scientific practice and to issues of justice,
equality and freedom in the discussion of scientific and technological practices.

These three approaches to a multicultural science education derive from and
mirror the compendium of classroom approaches identified by scholars in the broader
field of multicultural education (see Melnick, 1999; Raptis and Fleming, 1998; Sleeter,
1989; Sleeter and Grant, 1987). All three approaches, however, stop short of embracing
the more radical approaches that call for a total reconstruction of the science content to
promote social action for transformation. For example, Combleth and Waugh’s (1995)
idea of a “transformative” practice and what Sleeter and Grant (1987) called the
“multicultural and Social Reconstructionist” strands do not seem to find a place within
the agenda of multiculturalism in science education. In the latter two approaches, science
concepts, themes and problems would have to be written and taught from different
perspectives of race, class, gender, and ethnicity with a view to promoting social action
for change in schools and outside. This, as Melnick (1999) argues, is a very difficult
challenge which accounts for the absence of comprehensive models to demonstrate “that
curricular and instructional transformation are indeed possible” (p.13). In addition to the

curricular and instructional difficulties involved in constructing such a practice, the

42

dominant frameworks and politics of knowledge upon which the whole enterprise of
science and science education is premised are not compatible with such a “multiple
perspectives” approach. The influence of the alternative discourses to science education
will, therefore, also depend on their ability to master the resources to occupy the socio-

political space in the field of discursive practices and ideas.

Cultural frameworks to science education

One response to the failure of the multicultural science frameworks to move
beyond the prescriptions of the dominant culture in science education has been the
development of the cultural approach to science teaching and learning (Aikenhead, 1996;
1997; Jegede, 1995; Pomeroy, 1994; Swift, 1992). Based on the premise that science is
part of a wider cultural matrix of society or a “subculture” (Aikenhead, 1996; 1997), it
has a distinct set of norms, values, and views on nature, knowledge and life itself. In this
view of science, teaching and learning involve cultural transmission (Hawkins and
Urevbu, 1987). To distinguish themselves from the traditional approach to cultural
transmission, that of assimilation, advocates of the cultural perspective to science
education propose the idea of ‘border crossing’ (Giroux, 1992). The concept of "border
crossing" is used to explain how students move between their various cultural locations,
e.g., home culture, youth subculture, school culture, and the science education culture. In
this framework, all students - - western and non-westem alike - - experience science as a
foreign culture with borders that they need cross to be part of science education.
Research work in this framework has focused on the extent to which the science

subculture is congruent or discordant with the other dominant cultures within which the

43

students are embedded (Baker and Taylor, 1995; Cobem, 1994; Costa, 1995 as discussed
in Aikenhead, 1996; Jegede, 1995). The more different the students’ subcultures, the
more difficult the processes of “border crossing.” The strength of the cultural
frameworks lies in their recognition of the traditional approaches to science education as
a form of Western cultural transmission. The extent to which science educators take
seriously this view of science as a subculture and adopt methods that promote “border
crossing” as opposed to assimilation of students, provides better opportunities for
promoting the inclusion of the marginalized students. This strength, however, also
happens to be the very weakness of this framework. That is, by theorizing science as a
subculture of Western culture, it negates the possibilities for reconceptualization of the
discipline and distorts the history of science as an accumulation of contributions and

perspectives from a diverse group of peoples and geographical locations.

Science-Technology-Society (STS) framework

Another set of proposals aimed at relevance in science education involve the
attempts to combine the content of science and technology in discussing themes that have
social relevance, like acid rain, pollution, and nuclear energy. The influence of this
framework as an approach to injecting relevance into science education is diminished by
the contradictory and contesting approaches that are often adopted by its advocates. For
example, although the AAAS (1989) proposals seemed to support an STS approach, its
elaboration of content and standards (AAAS, 1993) are less embracing of the STS
approach. A clearer statement on STS comes from the National Science Teachers

Association (N STA) in the USA, when it advocates a view of STS as “the teaching and

44

learning of science in the context of human experience” and asserts that it “represents an
appropriate science education context for all learners” (N STA, 1990 as cited in Layton,
1994, p. 37). The NSTA view is, however, a minority view as most advocates and
teachers consider STS to be just a chapter, a unit or a course within a school’s science
education program, and not a framework on whose basis science education can be
reconceptualized (Bybee, 1993; Solomon, 1994; Yager and Tamir, 1993; Ziman, 1994).
Aikenhead’s (1994) review of various STS curricula in Canada, Europe and the USA
illustrate the dominance of the tag-on approaches (where STS is somehow attached to the
traditional science curriculum). The lack of clarity about the place of STS in science
education (whether it is science education or just STS attached to science education) and
its lack of attention to the issues of diversity, power and privilege in science education,

make it less ideal to guide transformative practices in science teaching and learning.

Eclectic frameworks

The discussion of the alternative frameworks, separate from each other, in the
preceding section may be misleading in suggesting tight borders separating the
frameworks. In practice, teachers and researchers often appeal to several frameworks at
once to make sense of classroom reality. In fact, the most promising alternatives in terms
of equity and social justice for the marginalized science learners tend to combine two or
more of these frameworks to understand and change classroom practice. As Rivera and
Poplin (cited in Atwater, 1996a) pointed out, “neither constructivism, critical theory,
feminism, nor multicultural education have developed an adequate way of responding to

many of the meanings learners construct” (p. 831). Accordingly, Atwater (1996a)

45

explores a possibility for combining social constructivism and multiculturalism, while
Taylor and Cobem (1998) advocate for something of an eclectic model that combines
concerns from social constructivism, critical theory, feminist perspectives and cultural
frameworks in science education. A few examples of actual research studies that hold
promise for providing deeper insights about efforts to reconceptualize and reconstruct
science teaching and learning in schools will be examined.

In his study of strategies for addressing the resistance to ideological change
required to confiont racism and oppressive social norms in the classroom (as opposed to
pedagogical change) of pre-service science teachers, Rodriguez (1998) uses a framework
that combines multiculturalism and social constructivism. His framework, which he calls
“sociotransformative constructivism (STC)” (p. 589), links the concerns of teaching for
diversity with those of teaching for understanding. Rodriguez (1998) is concerned with
not only helping pre-service teachers affirm the abilities of all students to construct
knowledge in the context of the learning communities in their classrooms, but also with
helping them to deconstruct the “structures of power from which established cultural,
historical, and institutional contexts spring" (p. 599). The pre-service science teachers
are encouraged to think about the power structures that facilitate or undermine learning
for the marginalized students. Analysis of classroom practice using the STC model
focuses on four elements:

0 The dialogic conversation: derived from Bakhtin’s notion of

“dialogicality,” this involves paying close attention to who is doing the talking?
Whose voices (insight, values, and beliefs) are being (re)presented by the

speaker/listeners?

46

0 Authentic activity: based on Dewey’s notion of “educative
experience,” students are urged to go beyond the hands-on, minds-on activities, but to
also reflect on how the subject under study is socio-culturally relevant and tied to
everyday life.

0 Metacognition: a major theme of the individual constructivists and
Freire model of practice, students are instructed to develop a sense of consciousness
and agency about their own ways of learning.

0 Reflexivity: which focuses on students becoming aware of their social
locations (ethnic, cultural, class etc.), academic locations, and how these influence
their learning. That is, the “culture of power” is examined and transformed.
(Rodriguez, 1998, p. 599-601).

In another synthesis of the different alternative frameworks, Osborne and Barton
use a combination of critical theory and feminist perspectives to study issues that arise
out of their own efforts to create a “liberatory pedagogy in science” (Barton, 1998a;
1998b; Osborne and Barton, 1998). This synthesis allows them to raise questions about
how science is represented in schools and classrooms (and who has the power to sponsor
these images), and how the identities of those who are included (and those who are
excluded) are constructed by the various discourses of science (Barton, 1998a; Osborne
and Barton, 1998). These are questions that have important consequences for who
becomes included in science and science education, and whose voices get represented in
the scientific discourse in the classrooms.

It is these questions of identity construction that are central to this study, more

especially as they relate to science teachers. Very little is said, in the science literature

47

reviewed here, about how science teachers come to embrace one or more of the
frameworks identified as guides for changing classroom practices. The question of how
particular alternatives get adopted, partially or wholly, becomes more important in the
context of the struggles for influence among the various discourses, especially those
constructed on the margins. In studying how a group of South African teachers used their
“lived experiences” (van Maanen, 1990) to craft classroom practices that are potentially
transformative, I seek to contribute to this emerging body of work on the subject of
identity and science teaching (Helms, 1998; Volkman and Anderson, 1998). Unlike the
two recent studies in science education, one by Helms (1998) and the other by Volkman
and Anderson (1998), this study makes no assumptions about the role (or potential role)
of the subject matter in the construction of an identity of a science teacher. In fact, the
initial conceptualization of the study assumed a much larger role for the political and
ideological influences in shaping the professional identities of teachers who teach
differently, in transformative ways. As it turned out, other factors including religion,
culture, experiences as students, pre-service education and early professional experiences,
eclipsed the role of politics in accounting for the changing practices of the South African
teachers I studied.

I began my review of literature with an excursion into critical theory, which
framed my definition of a transformative pedagogy. Using Giroux’s concept of teachers
as “transformative intellectuals,” I explored the external factors that act to discourage
South African teachers from embracing the role of a transformative intellectual. The
review concluded with an exploration of some of the current proposals to reform science

education internationally. Although many of these proposals hold promise, especially the

48

eclectic forms of the proposals, their impact and scope of influence in developing
countries has thus far been limited. As I quickly found out from the interviews with the
science teachers in South Africa, the reform ideas most of which are embraced in the new
education policies have yet to reach the teachers in the classrooms. The teachers’
changing practice could not, therefore, be explained adequately by looking at policy.
Similarly, the teachers’ politics could not provide an adequate explanation either.17 In an
attempt to seek alternative explanations for my observations, it became necessary to look
beyond the literature reviewed earlier. The review extended to literature on “identity
politics.”

In the next chapter, I discuss the research design and methodologies used in the study.
I also explore the shifts in the conceptualizations of the research and how “identity
politics” came to be the privileged framework for making sense of the teacher’s accounts
of why they were engaged in the kind of practices I saw in their classrooms. In the
context of explaining the shifts to identity politics, some of the literature on identity,

outside of science education, will also be reviewed briefly.

 

'7 From my own experiences and interviews with teachers in the USA (during my pilot study), I had come
to expect transformative teachers to be influenced by some radical politics that embrace equity and social
justice. Data from the South African teachers suggest that although politics was indeed one of the factors,
it was by no means the dominant and all embracing factor shaping non—traditional practice.

49

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this section I trace the unfolding of the research study, its strategies, and the
instruments used to collect and analyze data. I present both the “theory and analysis” of
how the research was supposed to proceed, and how it actually proceeded in the field
(Harding, 1987: 3). In discussing the origins and evolution of the research questions, the
theoretical frameworks, and strategies for data collection and analysis -- in the context of
my own life, as a South African teacher/researcher and doctoral student at Michigan State
University-- I seek to engage in a kind of self-reflection about my own socialization into
the research enterprise generally (Ballenger, 1992).

Even before I had clarified my questions into a “researchable problem,” I knew I
was interested in a research approach that would allow for the “voices” of the research
participants to come out. I had read too much research on Black teachers, especially in
South Africa, where I found myself “talking back” (hooks, 1989) to the researcher(s)
because I could not hear the teachers’ voices in their presentations. In this sense, the
choice of a research approach was, for me, as much a political choice as it was a
“rational” choice of tools to investigate a particular set of questions about the
construction of specific forms of empowering practices by teachers. Cresswell (1998)
observes that the personal concerns of the researcher often predispose him/her toward a
particular research perspective and theoretical framework. In my case, lifting the

marginalized “voices” of the Black science teachers was the more important concern.

50

The purpose of this study is to understand the lives and experiences of a group of
Black science teachers who teach differently -- against the grain as it were (Cochran-
Smith, 1991; Simon, 1992). These are teachers who teach in ways that seek to empower
the learners with skills and knowledge to participate in the social processes of change in
South Africa. I seek to understand how these teachers define and construct meaning in
their lives (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992; Denzin, l989a,b); how they make sense of their
personal and work experiences (Bruner, 1990; Denzin, l989a; van Maanen, 1990); and
ultimately how they construct their identities in ways which help them to justify and
explain the development of alternative constructions of classroom experience for
themselves and their learners (Bromley, 1989; Bullough et al, 1991; Davidoff and van
den Berg, 1991).

Although the study of personal experience, through life history approaches, has
always been part of this research study, understanding the processes by which alternative
identities are constructed by these science teachers has not always been the central theme
of the dissertation. Its ascent can be traced through the various stages of the research
process. The theme of “teachers’ identities” unfolded as I tried to make sense of the
research experience during the on-going initial analysis in the data collection stages and
during the more detailed analysis during the writing up of the dissertation. It began to
take root in the context of constant prodding by my dissertation director about “what
is/are the story(ies) of this dissertation?” This dissertation is about the struggles of three
science teacher to construct different, counter-hegemonic identities in their lives and

work places. It is also an examination of some of the consequences of these constructed

51

identities, in terms of their potential for providing a basis for developing classroom
practices that are themselves empowering to both teachers and learners.

I began this research with a larger focus on the “results” of the constructed
identities, that is, the reformed classroom practices of the teachers. The three major

questions of the research (as described in the original proposal) were:

0 What do some examples of transformative practices in South African

classrooms look like?

0 What are the personal, social, cultural, professional, historical and political
factors that help shape classroom practices of the teachers who engage in

transformative practice at various points in history in South Africa?

0 What does this suggest about what form(s) of transformative practices should
be fostered and how it/they might be fostered?

Although I was dissatisfied with much of the mainstream research on reformed practice
for its major focus on external factors that shape teaching and its silencing of the teachers
in the process, the language of my initial focus did not highlight the issues I was most
interested in strongly enough; viz. the teachers’ lives and meanings assigned to them and
how these meanings are deployed to justify, explain and make sense of actions to
transform classroom practice (MacLure, 1993). The language of “identity politics”
enabled me to find the voice through which to articulate these research interests
(Bromley, 1989; Casey, 1993; Osler, 1997a; b; Somers and Gibson, 1994).
In the sections that follow, I chronicle the “life story” of this research, and to some extent
that of the researcher, with its evolving focus on the identities of Black science teachers

who teach differently.

52

RESEARCH DESIGN

After several unsuccessful attempts to secure a research grant to enable conduct of
fieldwork for this research in South Africa, I took up a full time position as a researcher
at an Education Policy Unit (EPU) at the University of Natal, Durban (UND) in South
Afiica. The Education Policy Unit is a Non-Govemmental Research Organization
(NGO) founded on a collaborative agreement between what used to be the anti-apartheid
community organizations (under the auspices of the National Education Crisis
Committee, NECC) and the University of Natal. Under the agreement, the university was
to provide 50% of the funding for the EPU, while the remainder was to be generated from
fund-raising activities. In real terms, however, the university never lived up to its side of
the bargain except to provide for space, both physical and intellectual, for the unit to
carry out its policy-oriented research and outreach activities. As a consequence of this
design, the EPU became accountable more to its community constituencies than to the
university structures. Although it has received wide acclaim nationally, including being
commissioned by the national education ministry and several other provincial ones to
draft their policy frameworks and white papers, the unit has, until recently, remained
peripheral to the activities of the School of Education at UND. Administratively, the unit
reports directly to the office of the Vice President for Research, thereby further removing
it from the day-to-day interactions with the School of Education. In addition to its
income generating (commissioned) research programs within the country, the unit has
received much of its core funding from the Swedish and Danish International

Development Agencies (SIDA & DANIDA).

53

At the time of my recruitment, the EPU had seven permanent staff members, four
researchers and three support staff, plus two visiting senior scholars, one from an
academic department at UND and the other a professor from England. Only two
members of the research team were Black (as defined broadly to include all people with a
collective experience of racial oppression in South Africa), one African and the other
Indian. The senior researcher, who later became the acting director, and the visiting
professor from England were the only two female researchers within the unit. Although
the unit was small and dynamic, and progressive in its politics, it had not escaped
criticism with regards to its recruitment and/or retention of Black researchers. The
criticisms of the recruitment and retention of Black scholars by academic and research
organizations were part of much larger debate about participation and equity in the
various discourse communities shaping the knowledge/power relations in the South
African society. What made the EPU special in these debates on participation and equity
was is its founding commitment (and major fundraising theme) to the development of
Black researchers, especially African women. With only two Black men, both in junior
positions, the image obviously didn’t fit the commitments. Although these debates on the
representation of the Black voices within the research communities especially, and more
particularly within the EPUs, were not new to me, it is how they played out in the context
of developing my own research and doing fieldwork that they acquired more

significance. ’8

 

'8 In 1987, I had the privilege of participating in some of the community discussions that gave birth to the
idea of developing the Education Policy Units, as the “intellectual” arms of the mass organisations that
were fighting against apartheid. The EPUs, three of them were established at the time, were conceived as
training grounds for a new breed researchers, especially Black researchers, whose work was to be
intricately linked to the community struggles to redefine education in South Africa. In the first set of EPUs
formed in the late 19803, two were located at Historically White Universities (HWU), and one at an
Historically Black University (HBU). Mainly white “progressive” researchers staffed all of them. The

54

My dissertation project was negotiated with the management structures of the unit
at the time of my recruitment. Although my senior colleagues were hesitant about a
number of things in the project I proposed, they were willing, however, to sponsor a
revised version of it as part of the EPU application for funding to either SIDA or
DANIDA. Some of the issues of concern to them were in fact similar to the questions I
had discussed with my dissertation committee and/or reviewers for some of the funding
agencies in the USA who had expressed some interest in the project. Chief among the
issues of concern was the conceptualization of transformative practice, what its content
and methods were, and how it was different from traditional practice. My colleagues at
the EPU were not positive about the possibility of finding teachers who embrace a
pedagogy of empowerment in the Black schools, especially the schools in KwaZulu—
Natal. Their argument was two-fold: First, on the basis of the matriculation results
teaching in Black schools could not be expected to be any good; otherwise the results
would not be as disproportionately bad as they are. Second, politically KwaZulu—Natal
was fairly conservative and in fact repressive of any counter-hegemonic practices such
that it would be unfair to expect Black teachers to embrace anything but the official
discourse on classroom practice which was mainly traditional. Other reviews by funding
agencies raised issues around research approaches, sample size, and the theoretical
frameworks guiding the project. The following section provides some responses to the
commonly asked questions about the project and thereby engages a discussion on the

research design.

 

number of these units has since expanded to six, all located at universities with the exception of one. The
UND EPU was one of the first to be established in 1987.

55

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In the original proposal, I located the study within the tradition of critical
theoretical frameworks to educational critique and practice. Like other researchers
working within these frameworks, I saw the study as another attempt to grapple with the
issues of structure and agency in education (for example, Apple, 1990; 1995; Cochran-
Smith, 1991; Giroux, 1983; McLaren, 1987; Simon, 1992; and many others). That is,
issues about how the structuring of schools and society functioned to produce and sustain
relations of oppression and inequality for the different racial, gender, class, and other
oppressed groups in society were central to my investigation. Also central were issues
about how various social actors in schools, especially the teachers, constructed different
practices with positive outcomes for social change within these very constraining
contexts. I saw my study as an elaboration of and a critique of Henry Giroux's (1988)
notion of “teachers as transformative intellectuals.” I was curious to find out what made
Giroux’s intellectuals transformative and how their lives were constructed to make sense
of the goals of social transformation in particular contexts, especially in contexts that
works against the attainment of that goal.

This framing of the question, as a social project of critique of schooling in South
Africa, was not a problem for my South African defense, as much as it was for the US
ones. In fact, in South Africa it emerged as a particular strength of the project. This was
in part because of the historical failure by the dominant educational research discourse to
problematize schooling and its processes of teaching and learning in the context of the
apartheid ideology and structural and economic constraints prevailing in South Africa.

The few studies in the vein of critical theory were considered by some as significant,

56

especially in the context of the new government’s programs of social and economic
transformations (examples of this kind of work in South Africa include projects by
Jansen, 1989, 1990a, 1990b; Julie, 1991/92; Kallaway, 1994; Mncwabe, 1992; Nkomo,
1990; and a few others).

In the USA, however, where the critical theory discourse on social transformation
is considered by some as marginal and unlikely to rise above certain levels of ‘noise’ to
seriously challenge the power and privilege of the racial and ethnic majorities, the
theoretical framing was viewed as a disadvantage. In the view of some of the funding
reviewers, a study located on the margins, theoretically, was unlikely to raise issues that
are relevant for the center. For me, however, the strength of the theory lies in its ability
to provide the ‘space’ to examine the center from perspectives developed on the margins.
That is, by studying the perspectives and practices of teachers on the margins (in terms of
their non-traditional approaches, and being Black), we are likely to be even more

reflective about the dominant practices and their outcomes.

TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE
Although I was less clear about what a transformative practice would look like in
different classrooms and contexts, and what specific science content it includes or
excludes, I knew enough conceptually from the “people’s education for people’s power”
projects of the mid-19808 and practically from sitting and learning in classrooms
constructed by Black teachers like Mr. Juluka to wonder about what it would take for
these alternative practices to take root in the South African system. These images of

teachers who teach differently posed a serious challenge to some of the gloomy images of

57

classroom teaching in Black schools, as presented in mainstream research in South Africa
and elsewhere. The major goal of this pedagogy of difference was empowerment for
social participation. I could not claim that all Black teachers teach to these goals, but I
knew some who endeavored to, at least at certain historical times and places. From my
reading of the literature, no one had ever attempted to study the lives of these teachers in
South Africa, and only recently have such projects found favor in the economically
developed nations as well. I was thus curious to find explanations of the teachers’
constructions of difference.

Finding teachers who teach differently is never easy anywhere, for one has to first
construct the differences one is looking for. In a situation where the differences are
themselves the subject of the investigation, the task becomes compounded. Beginning
with a review of literature in science education, I found pointers on ways in which
difference in classroom practices can be constructed. For example, teaching for inclusion
as in “science for all” is one way of constructing difference in classroom practice
(AAAS, 1989; NRTS, 1996; Richmond, 1998). Another example is that of “cultural
relevance” in the content and pedagogy of science and math education (Aikenhead,
1996a; Banks and Banks, 1995; Heath, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Sutherland, 1999).
Similarly, an investigation where difference is constructed around ‘teaching for social
transformation’ seems legitimate, especially in the context where such a transformation is
the major item on the national agenda. The study strives to construct explanations of why

some Black teachers choose to engage in this kind of practice.

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DATA COLLECTION METHODS

Interviews

The main data collection procedures I used were interviews/conversations and
participant-observation methods. I used three different kinds of conversation formats to
learn about the teachers’ visions of a transformative practice and how they connect to the
stories of their lives. First, we talked in formal interviews that were focussed (Whyte,
1984). These were based largely on the interview protocol 1 had prepared and given to
the teachers at least a day before the interview.19 Much of the initial data on the teachers’
life stories was generated from these kinds of conversations. These conversations tended
to be longer, lasting anything between an hour-and-half and three hours. I had at least
one such conversation with every teacher in the study. Second, we talked in formal
interviews that were open-ended (Spradley, 1979). For most of these interviews, I
prepared a list of possible prompts to areas of questioning that I wanted to pursue. I used
these conversations, mostly, to generate data on the teachers’ interpretation of particular
events in the classroom and their point of view and elaboration on aspects of their stories
I found interesting or confusing. Most of the focused interviews were tape recorded,
except for those conducted with one of the female teachers who was not comfortable with
any audio recording of the conversations. In all cases, I took detailed notes, which I filed
and organized under each participant. The open-ended interviews varied a great deal but
were shorter, lasting anything from 15 minutes to an hour. These kinds of conversations

occurred more regularly during the study, especially during the observation periods.

 

'9 Copies of all the interview protocols and the questionnaire used for the survey are included in appendix
A.

59

The third type of conversation I had with the teachers was the informal conversations.
These are the types of conversations we had outside of the formal context of
interviewing. These conversations often took place outside of school, in the corridors, in
staff rooms when there were more people, and generally in settings where it was
impossible and sometimes undesirable to record the conversations. For example, on
occasion Mr. Sithole and I went out for drinks and used these sessions to talk about all
sorts of issues including topics that were of interest to the research. Similarly with Mr.
Tshabalala, we arranged to meet almost every time I went to Johannesburg on business
trips unrelated to the study. We talked as friends and did things together during those
times, and often we engaged on issues pertinent to the research. I made notes of these
informal conversations where issues that had the potential to inform the study had been
discussed, within a few days after the conversations. Although initially I tried to make
these notes in the evenings of the same day of the conversations, the pressures of my
other research commitments at Education Policy Unit often made this impossible. I set
myself a target of making notes of relevant informal conversations within three days of
the discussions and where it was possible, I began the next formal conversations with
some kind of a restatement of the important issues raised during the informal discussions.
For example, when Mr. Tshabalala had told me a lot of the history of the boarding school
he went to for secondary education at a soccer game, I began our next formal
conversation a few months later by telling that I had not been aware of X and Y about the
school. This way of introducing the discussion often got us back to the issues we had
talked about informally before proceeding to another set of issues. In this way, I was able

to check on my notes, and also get as much as it was possible on tape during the formal

60

conversations. Soon after getting to know the other teachers in the study, I would meet
and talk with them outside of school in some very unplanned conversations. For
example, I had similar encounters with Mrs. Hlophe, one of the three focus teachers in
this study, at a science teachers’ workshop in Durban. 1 also had informal discussions
with both of the other female teachers whose practices I studied, at an out-of-school
cultural day celebration event. Our conversations in the staff room were also informal
and got a lot of other teachers, who were not part of the study, involved in the issues of
discussion. My goal was to allow the teachers to talk as freely, as was practical, about
the various issues important to them, using their own common sense notions and
concepts.

As part of my other work at the EPU, I was able to interview several policy-makers
and government officials about a number of policy issues that help to define the context
within which the identities of the sample teachers were formed. Most of these were
formal conversations where I sought to understand the policy—makers understanding of
what it means to teach differently and the policy context within which such a practice
could occur. I also had access to a number of important policy documents from which
the dominant constructions of the identities of Black teachers and their teaching could be
read. Constructions of these issues on teachers’ identities in the newer policy documents
of the Government of National Unity (GNU) and utterances by policy-makers provided
interesting reference material for telling the stories of the three science teachers in this
study.

Almost all the formal interviews were conducted in English except for the set of

interviews with one of the female teachers, who saw “no reason” why we had to conduct

61

our conversations in a language that was foreign to both of us. This was an interesting
point because indeed at times the sample teachers struggled to articulate the deeper
meanings of their utterances in English. To break the tension, on such occasions, I
sometimes provided the English word I thought the teachers were trying to find or gave
the expression in an African language. Teachers often did not find it easy to code switch
once the conversation had been started in English. Part of the reason for the reluctance to
code switch may be found in the ways language is taught in Black schools, that
discourages such a practice and perceives it as a form of incompetence. In that context, I
was never certain whether the words or expressions I had provided were the appropriate
ones for articulating the teachers' own stories. The dilemma for me as a researcher in the
project arose from the fact that my research was now located within the broader research
of the Education Policy Unit and had to be shared with colleagues who did not speak the
African languages. The infrastructure for the project did not support a wide scale use of
an African language as the major language of the research. I used two strategies to try to
reduce the constraints of language on the ability of the teachers to tell their stories in their
own words and ways. First, I often restated what I thought the teachers were saying or
gave another example and then asked for their comment. This technique worked better
with the two men with whom I was most familiar, Mr. Tshabalala and Mr. Sithole, who
had little problem disagreeing with anything I said that was out of context. My
conversations with the women in the study were more “polite and polished” and
disagreements were not likely to be brought out distinctly. The conversations were
governed by many social and cultural conventions in our society that prescribe what can

be said and how between men and women in the society. Also, the fact that the women

62

in the study, except for one, were much older than I was further constrained the nature of
the conversations. A positive consequence of these constraints, however, is that the
women controlled their stories a little more than the men did. I allowed them to organize
and tell their stories in their own ways more than I did with the men. For example,
without them raising issues about their husbands and partners, I could not ask them about
the role they play in their lives as teachers.

The second strategy I used to reduce the negative effects of language was to conduct
all the informal conversations in an African language, mostly IsiZulu but sometimes in
IsiXhosa and SeTswana. Although I include this as a research strategy for addressing the
impact of conducting our conversations in a foreign language, the situation could hardly
have been otherwise. That is, outside of the formal conversation settings it was automatic
to revert back to the African languages, and code switching in that context was
spontaneous for some of the teachers. The formal interviews were transcribed, and in the
case of the one teacher whom I interviewed in IsiZulu translations to English were made,
by a number of research assistants assigned to me by the Education Policy Unit. All the
research assistants, mainly undergraduate students, were trained briefly on how to do the
transcriptions and “debriefed” after the transcription to preserve the integrity and
confidentiality of the data. The quality of the transcriptions did vary among the research
assistants, creating a need for some cleaning up by the researcher.

Collectively, the three types of conversations I had with the teachers provided a lot of
data on the teachers’ lives and work experiences, which I filed under each teacher. I read
notes and the transcriptions of individual teacher interviews and created categories

around which to be build stories of their lives. In the first level of analysis, I created

63

about 23 categories (or “bins”) to organize the data. The categories included such
organizers as schooling (primary and secondary), family, perspectives on ‘good
teaching’, teaching experiences, university/college experiences, lesson expectations,
descriptions of a typical lesson, and further education. I asked more questions on each
category over the l8—month period of study and filled the “bins” accordingly. As I re-
read the texts over and over again, I reduced them into larger chunks from which I could
tell the stories of the lives of the sample teachers. For example, I collapsed such
categories as lesson expectation, typical lesson, lesson preparation, previous years’
approach to the lesson, students’ understanding of the lesson under one category on
“classroom practice and visions.” I did this reduction for all the teachers in the study.

The reconstructed categories allowed me to tell a unifying story of each case.

Observation method

I used this method to observe teachers in schools and classrooms over an l8-month
period from February 1997 to August 1998.20 For Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala, I was
able to negotiate one-week breaks from my commitments at the EPU to travel to Gauteng
for the fieldwork. I took three such breaks during 1997 specifically for this data
collection, and also used other days when my EPU research commitments took me to
Gauteng. For example, part of June and the whole of July 1997 I was contracted to do
research work in Gauteng for the national Department of Education (DoE). In February
of 1998, closer to my wedding which took place in Gauteng, I was again able to take time

oft’ and visit both Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala’s classrooms. I was able to visit them

 

2° The school year in South Africa begins in January and ends in Early December.

64

again for a week in July-August of 1998. I was able to visit Mrs. Hlophe’ school from
June 1997, when I first distributed the questionnaire to the schools. The observations
with her were slightly difficult to schedule given her busy schedule during and after
school hours. She was involved in the provincial curriculum reform initiatives, which
required her to attend a number of meetings, which were sometimes scheduled within
short notice. I visited her several times during 1997 and 1998, often for two successive
days at a time. Initially I planned for four such visits during the second half of 1997, as
per request I had made in the questionnaire for no more than 6 hours of observation per
year. As we got to know each other, and with a couple of sessions when I would show up
and find her tied up in one unscheduled meeting or another, it became easier to extend the
period of observation into 1998. We reached a new agreement that I could just show up
anytime, and, if she was not in a meeting we could talk or I could observe her teach.
Despite this agreement, I made a point to call the day before though, just to be sure and to
get information about the day’s lesson.

The observations provided a context for understanding the visions of transformative
practice and stories of their experiences that the teachers brought up during the
conversations. I used the conversations and the observations to feed off each other and
help me understand the local meanings of concepts and interpretations. For the
observations, I used an observation protocol that I helped to design in the Michigan
Statewide Systemic Initiative (MSSI) policy and program review study at Michigan State
University (see Appendix A). I paid attention to the nature of the tasks assigned, the
teachers’ presentation strategies, their assessment tools and strategies, classroom

discourse (who said what, to whom and in what language), and probed teachers on their

65

perspectives on aspects of my observations. I wrote notes of classroom observations with
my comments and questions along the margins. Over the 18-month of observation, I
varied my focus of observation sometimes paying attention to only one or two aspects of
the categories noted above. To see teachers engage in classroom teaching, talk to
students and colleagues, and grapple with the exigencies of the moment, gave me a
deeper insight into their lives and workplace experiences. I wrote brief notes of about a
half a page each on what I thought were the salient features of the lesson and/or the day’s
observation.

In writing up the case studies of the three teachers, I selected lessons and aspects of
lessons that were typical of the observations and help me articulate the complex stories of

each teacher’s visions and practice.

LIFE HISTORY/LIFE STORY/NARRATIVE RESEARCH“

My interest in studying the subjective meanings of the teachers’ experiences with
constructing a different classroom practice, set the limits on the kinds of approaches that
would allow for a decent exploration of the issues. Qualitative methods of research
seemed appropriate for this study. For, according to Denzin and Lincoln (1994), they
involve “the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials -— case study,
personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical,
interactional, and visual texts -- that describe routine and problematic moments and

meaning in individual’s lives” (p.2). The particular focus of the research is the life story

 

2’ Like Maggie MacLure and many others, I use the terms such as Life history, Narrative and Life story
with the “semantic fuzziness that is tolerated (and indeed unavoidable) in everyday language” (MacLure,
1993). The term is used to encompass a variety of research practices that focus on the articulation and
ordering of human experience in order to construct meanings about the subjective reality of social actors

66

narratives of Black science teachers that places the “study of teaching and sponsorship of
teachers’ voice at the center of the research action” (Goodson, 1996, p.6).

In my choice of life history research, I was influenced by other scholars whose
work explores similar issues about teachers who have dedicated their lives to
empowering students to engage the power relations that give rise to inequality and
oppression (Butt et al, 1992; Casey, 1993; Goodson, 1984; 1992; Knowles, 1992;
Middleton, 1989; 1993; Nelson, 1992; Nias, 1989; Osler, 1997a, 1997b; Weiler, 1988).
From these studies we are beginning to learn more about Goodson's argument that the
actions of teachers cannot be separated from their personal socio-historical past (1984).
Consider, for example, Lortie’s (1975) notion of the power of the schooling experience in
providing what he termed the “apprenticeship of observation” which many new teachers
“activate” in their own classrooms. Collectively, these studies suggest a number of
dimensions of people’s lives that have an impact on their practice. The teachers' previous
careers, even as students, and life experiences shape their view of teaching and the way
they set about it (Casey, 1993; Goodson, 1984; Knowles, 1992; Middleton, 1993). Their
'life outside school' together with their latent identities and cultures shape their practice
(Goodson, 1984, 1992; Casey, 1993; Middleton, 1993; Nelson, 1992; Osler, 1997a &
1997b). Teachers’ career cycles, whether they are beginning teachers, veteran teachers,
or even student teachers, play a significant role in decisions to change classroom
practices (Goodson, 1984; Huberrnan, 1993; Knowles, 1992; Osler, 1997a & 1997b).
Casey (1993), Middleton (1993), and Weiler (1988), who studied different groups of

feminist teachers, have also drawn our attention to the role of political and

 

(Brunet, 1990; Connelly and Clandinin, 1990; Riessman, 1993; Weiland, 1995). For a comprehensive
review of research in this domain see Casey, 1995/96.

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epistemological frameworks in crafting classroom practice. Goodson (1996) and
Ginsburg et a1 (1992) also elaborate a view of the work of teachers as a “political and
social construction” by active social agents (p.4-5).

Although we are now better informed about what aspects of life histories may
play a role in the crafting of teaching practice, we still do not understand how these
factors get translated into practice. Middleton (1989; 1993), Bromley (1989), and Casey
(1993), for instance, propose the mediation role played by access to radical social
theories in helping feminist teachers translate their own experiences of marginalization
(past or present) into meaningful and empowering practice for their students. Knowles
(1992) uses Crow’s (1987) concept of "teacher role identity" to explain this connection
between biography and classroom practice. Knowles' argument is that teachers'
childhood experience, their early teacher role models, their previous teaching
experiences, and other critical incidents in their lives, all come together to shape their
"image of self as a teacher,” which is significant in their development of practice in the

22. Despite the increasing number of life history studies of teachers, most of

classroom
them are still largely descriptive with little theoretical framing to allow a broader test of
the emerging understandings. And as Osler (1997b) observes, very little of such work
has been done in the low-income countries. South Africa is no exception to this trend.
Fewer studies have explored the question of teacher identities and the ways in which

these impact on their work (see Macleod, 1995; Walker, 1996). The present study is

located within these efforts to understand the identities of teachers who are engaged in

 

22 What is significant about most of these studies is their finding on the marginal influence of teacher
education on practice, thereby suggesting the need for us think differently about current programs designed
to prepare teachers or those designed to help practicing teachers (staff development & in-service
education).

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one form of an empowering practice and the impact of these identities on their classroom
practices.

This study of three science teachers is an exploratory research of a set of issues on
what it means to teach differently under conditions of practice in South Africa. It is not
intended to provide generalizable claims that would characterize the entire spectrum of
science teachers and science teaching in South Africa. The strength of the study,
however, lies in its ability to weave in many complex aspects of each teachers’ life and
context of practice which would otherwise not be possible using the conventional studies
(Weiland, 1995). I chose three teachers who were different on a number of attributes
commonly associated with variations in teaching practices such as the type of school they
worked in, their own educational background, geographical location of the school, and
gender, in order to develop understandings about how these contextual variables play out
with different teachers. The experiences of the three teachers were also sufficiently
common to their cohort of science teachers in South Africa. In this way, their stories can
be read by many who confront the challenges of changing practice and constructing
counter-hegemonic identities in South Africa and elsewhere. The study of three teachers
provided sufficient breath and allowed me to dig deeper into the issues of each case
without being overwhelming in the context of limited resources of time and human

capacity especially.

FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS OF TEACHER NARRATIVES
The most significant shifts made in the process of carrying out and writing up this

research project is to be found in the frameworks used to make sense of the data. My

69

approach to the data analysis moved from a pre-occupation with finding the general
themes and patterns by which the teachers’ lives and actions could be explained. I was
interested in understanding the deeper meanings they assigned to the particular social
categories, e.g. age, race, ethnicity, poverty, church and religion, and others through
which they chose to tell their stories. How these meanings are constructed, and used to
justify, explain and make sense of their actions in the classroom became significant. The
object of the study, therefore, shifted in some important ways. First, within a few months
of beginning the project, it became clear to me that there were no consistent and
pervasive science reform ideas similar to those advanced by many organizations in the
USA that would explain the shifts in the teachers’ practices. The new discourses of
curriculum 2005 were still being formed and represented a privileged discourse of
policymakers at that time. Second, the grand narratives of people’s education and the
broader anti-apartheid politics were not enough to explain the shifts in the teaching
practices of these teachers, in part because the people’s education agenda had by now lost
its momentum and/or had been appropriated into other discourses of foreign origin - -
more particularly the Outcomes Based Education (OBE) approach which South Africans
believe they imported from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada in
that order. Why, then, were the participants in my study pressing ahead with their
transformative agenda?

The stories of their lives provided some of the answers. Their upbringing in a
complex web of relationships, and cultural, religious and economic circumstances
provided interesting lines of inquiry for my study. I found it important, therefore, to

listen and pay attention to the teachers’ context and time-bound definitions of

70

transformative practice, some of which may/may not have similar consequences as the
science reforms advocated in the United States and elsewhere globally. Gloria Ladson-
Billings’ (1995) work on the practices of exemplary teachers of African American
students, which others would characterize as “just good teaching,” came in handy as I
sought to disengage my stranglehold on the definition of a transformative practice under
these conditions. It was also important for me to understand the ways in which the lives
of the participant teachers had provided the context for their transformative agendas.
Identities and solidarities forged on the basis of these identities promised a better model
for explaining the actions of these transformative practitioners. As Somers and Gibson
(1994) argue about social actors in general, they “act because of who they are” and not
because of interests and a set of learned values (p.53). Identity theories suggested more
powerful ways of explaining difference among social actors in ways that took account of

time, place and relationality (Bromley, 1989; Somers and Gibson, 1994).

Data analysis

The data from the life stories were analyzed for content features that brought out
the teachers’ struggles to overcome the normative identities and practices that attempted
to define their lives and work experiences. Appealing to the poststructuralist notions that
words and texts do not have a fixed and intrinsic meaning, my analysis sought to discover
how meanings were constituted through the contexts in which they occurred and the
social processes that defined them (Weedon, 1986). The meanings of the teachers’ lives
and identities are therefore constructed within contexts that are both material and

discursive. My analysis thus presents life history narratives in their relatedness to the

71

material social practices and power relations that construct them. By presenting teachers
who are different, the analysis seeks to reveal other meanings that may be present within
the “regimes of truth,” (Gore, 1992) and examines how they can Operate differently in
specific contexts. Unitary notions of teaching in Black schools or being a Black teacher
are replaced by complex constructions of social identity -- where race becomes a social
construction like class, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. How these identities
and meanings are constructed, from what resources, and how they are used are all-
important organizing questions for the analysis.

More concretely, my analysis borrows from Dollard’s (1935) seven themes for
judging life history, as modified and restated by Polkinghome (1995) as guides in
generating storied history or case study from gathered data in what he calls a narrative
analysis: I have taken the liberty to adapt and restate them in a way that makes them

useful to the analysis in this particular study.

0 First, the descriptions of the cultural context in which the storied case study
are constructed. This part of the analysis seeks to present the contextual
features that give specific meanings to events so that their contribution to the
plot can be understood. This is what Somers and Gibson (1994, p.61-63) refer
to as the “public narratives” which focus on the cultural and institutional
formations larger than the individual (e.g. family, church, government, and

workplace organizations).

0 Second, an analysis of life stories based on what van Maanen (1990, p.172)
calls the four “existential themes” of corporeality (lived bodY), temporality

(lived time), spatiality (lived space), and sociality (lived relationships with

72

others) is done. Somers and Gibson (1994) refer to this second stage as the

construction of the “ontological narratives” of who we are.

0 Third, an analysis of the meanings and understandings constructed of each
situation or significant event using both the conceptual vocabulary generated
by researchers and the “meta-narratives” (such as systems of production like
capitalism and nationalism) is done. Somers and Gibson (1994) separate this
stage into two distinct phases that involve the constructions of the conceptual
and the meta-narratives/master-narratives. It is this particular analysis that
allows for understanding of the influence of the “regimes of truth” (Gore,

1992) on the experiences and meanings assigned to the teachers’ lives.

NEGOTIATION AND ACCOMODATION OF RESEARCH INTEREST WITHIN
THE EPU RESEARCH PROGRAMS

After several in-house EPU seminars, negotiating both my own research interests
and those of the institution, I developed a modified proposal that allowed for my
dissertation research to be pursued in the context of a much broader study of science
teaching practice in schools in KwaZulu—Natal. The proposal for the new study included
both Black and White science teachers and located their practices within a set of reported
practices and perspectives in a small survey of teachers in more than a dozen schools.
The new study was constructed as having a number of phases: Phase I was to be a kind of
a pilot for the larger study. In real terms though, phase I was the stuff of my dissertation:

it involved in-depth observation and interviews with two teachers who lived and worked

73

in the Gauteng province, Morapeli Tshabalala and Movement Sithole”. These two
teachers were selected first on the basis of my familiarity with their practices and their
willingness to participate in the research study and second on my colleagues’ insistence
that we include teachers from Gauteng as an “insurance” against the uncertain prospects
in KwaZulu-Natal. In a very complex way, phase I was a response to at least two
pressing imperatives: first, the need to begin data collection soon enough into the new
year (1997) to enable sufficient analysis for presentation at a conference in the latter part
of the first quarter of the 1997; and second, to conceive of and try out research
procedures and analytical tools to warrant continuation with the larger project which had
since been funded to the tune of R187, 000 by DANIDA.24

Phase II, the KwaZulu-Natal component of the study, involved a survey of 87
teachers from whom a sub-sample of seven teachers were selected for in-depth
observation and interview. It is from this sub-sample of seven teachers that Nozibele
Hlophe, the third focus teacher of this study, was identified and approached on the basis
of both the responses she provided to some of the questionnaire probes and by
nomination from both the educational authorities in her region and her principal. The
three focus teachers of this study were thus selected in very different but complementary

ways.

 

23 The names of persons and schools where teachers work are all pseudonyms chosen to protect them from

easy identification.
2‘ The South African currency is Rand, R. The dollar equivalence, $1 : R625 (as of 05/28/1999).

74

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIELD
KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province

The study was conducted in two geographical provinces of South Africa,
KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces. KwaZulu-Natal province has the largest
education department in the whole country. It serves a population of about 2.7 million
students. It is one of the poorest provinces in the country and is the hardest hit by the
political violence and disruptions that engulfed the country towards the elections of the
new government of national unity. For purposes of addressing issues of educational
access and quality, it presents an array of challenges to policy-makers.

Despite being one of the poorest regions in South Africa with high rates of
unemployment and illiteracy, KZN has some of the best schools in the country and has
consistently produced students within the top ten in the country. However, it has also
produced schools within the bottom ten in the whole country. The disparities between
the rich and the poor are more conspicuous in this region because of its large rural
communities. It has a mix of urban township schools, suburban schools, farm schools,
and schools serving 'squatter'/informal settlements, formerly whites only schools,
formerly Indians only schools, formerly coloreds only school and a preponderance of
rural schools formerly administered by the KwaZulu-Natal homeland.

Although KZN provides a potentially rich environment from which to explore the
themes of this study, its choice was judicious and practical based largely on the
considerations of my employment situation. In terms of my focus on Black teachers who

teach differently, I do not feel compromised by this choice of the research site. The

75

choice was still as contingent and based on some principles of nomination, including self-
nomination, as it was for the other two teachers from Gauteng (and would have been had

the study been conducted only in Gauteng).

Gauteng Province

The Gauteng region encompasses the Johannesburg-Soweto area, which has often been
referred to as the nerve center of South Africa. For purposes of addressing issues of
educational access and quality, it also presents an array of challenges to policy-makers.
For, despite its being the richest region in South Africa, it has a high number of
unemployed persons in the country. The disparities between the rich and the poor are
more glaring in their effects on the rupturing of the social fabric in many communities in
this province. Like KZN, Gauteng also has a mix of rural schools, urban township
schools, suburban schools, farm schools, and schools serving 'squatter'/informal
settlements. My choice of studying teachers in this province was shaped largely by my
familiarity with the area, having taught in two different schools in the area and lived most
of my youth there. My familiarity with the socio-political setting in the region proved to

be an asset in probing the stories of the teachers.

TYPES OF SCHOOLS25

As noted earlier, the context of science teaching was very different for the three
science teachers who participated in this study. Mr. Sithole is employed in a “regular”

township school in Evaton. His school had over a thousand students with just over 10%

 

2’ In appendix B, I present a very brief typology of the universe of schools found in South Africa.

76

of them in grade-12. The school is located in a very old township of Evaton with houses
more than 30 years old. In the immediate vicinity of the school a lot of new four-roomed
houses have been built in the last 10 years in what used to be a vacant piece of land. The
school itself is 20 years old this year, and Mr. Sithole chairs a committee that is charged
with organizing activities to celebrate 20 years of the school’s existence. Most of the
students at school are from the neighborhood with low socioeconomic backgrounds.
Some, however, come from as far as Soweto, which is 30km away. With two other high
schools within a radius of 1 km, it is surprising that all three of them have to turn students
away at the beginning of every year. This is because of the large numbers of students and
the skewed provision of facilities such that school buildings are sometimes erected next
to each other while students in other townships have no facilities at all. Under the new
South African School’s Act (SASA) of 1996, students can attend any school of their
choice but schools have to give preference to children from the neighborhood first.

Mr. Tshabalala teaches in a Finishing school, which is a type of school that was
created for students who wished to repeat Grade-l2. Finishing schools are special types
of schools that exist only in places with very high failure rates and high demands for
readmission to sit for the Grade—12 examination. They are very few in number per
province and are allocated space in existing schools. They draw teachers from existing
schools with surplus teachers, and in Gauteng groups of teachers who could not be
employed in permanent posts by the Department of Education were assigned to a number
of such Finishing schools, moving from one to the other on any given day. Most of the
students in Finishing schools are older, generally less successful at regular school and

could be from anywhere in the township or outside. Mr. Tshabalala’s finishing school is

77

located at the school where he was originally assigned in Soweto. As a result of this
interface between the two schools, Mr. Tshabalala often functions as part of the two
schools simultaneously. For example, he was the de facto athletics coach at both schools
due to lack of interest among his colleagues at both schools. The schools began with 130
Grade-12 students in 1996 but had grown to double the number in 1997. There were six
groups of about 60 students per class and Mr. Tshabalala taught Biology to all but one
group. At the beginning of 1998, the government suspended the Finishing school project
for lack of money and Tshabalala was reassigned back to his old school.

Mrs. Nozibele Hlophe teaches at a boarding school in one of the townships
around Durban. Boarding schools represent a special group of schools that are often
privileged due to their ability to generate a good share of their own resources and
revenues. Fees are much higher in boarding schools than in regular township schools for
instance. These schools represent a kind of privilege mostly for students with middle and
upper class backgrounds. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds often attend
these schools as day scholars as opposed to boarders, although still the fees are relatively
higher. Mrs. Hlophe is the science head at one of these schools and she specializes in
physical science. As there are only two such schools for Blacks in the townships
surrounding Durban, I will not discuss the many other details about the school to protect
its identity and the people who work at the school. In our discussion with Mrs. Hlophe
we did acknowledge the difficulty I would have in trying to protect the school’s identity
and hers. Both boarding schools are exemplary in terms of performance in the
matriculation national examinations and have often featured prominently in the news

media and policy research studies, which often do not disguise the names of the schools

78

or teachers studied. In spite of this difficulty, I seek to preserve the confidentiality of the
research site and participants.

For purposes of writing this dissertation I have elected to discuss only three of the
six teachers I observed and interviewed for the following reasons: First, I have
eliminated all the teachers for whom no science lessons were observed. Because of
sudden changes in the allocation of duties at his school, one teacher, Mr. Pule, was
reassigned to teach only mathematics and not science. Second, of the three women in the
study, Mrs. Hlophe’s case seemed to raise many of the issues of this study in much more
depth than I had opportunities to explore with the other two. The three case studies of
Mrs. Hlophe, Mr. Tshabalala and Mr. Sithole are different both in content and scope to
enable a sufficiently broad discussion of the major themes of this study.

Chapters four, five and six present case studies of each of the three science
teachers who participated in the study. In each chapter, I introduce the teacher again
more elaborately, discuss his or her visions and practice, and then provide an account of

their life and work experiences.

79

INTERLUDE

INTRODUCTION TO THE CASE STUDIES
The next three chapters present case studies of the three science teachers whose
practice I have characterized as transformative. Their cases each tell a story about how
their practice is a constant struggle to steer their pedagogy away from a singular emphasis
on “covering the material” to a much broader practice that includes three major themes of
quantity, quality and equity.

Covering the material or what I have come to call the concerns with Quantity
refers first, to the amount of examinable material a teacher is able to cover during his/her
lessons, in order to “prepare” the students for the end-of—year matriculation examination.
At another level, the “Quantity-concems” refer to the number of students, in his/her
previous classes, who have made it through the matriculation examination. That is, the
percentage pass-rate a teacher has achieved previously with his/her grade-twelve science
classes.

Teaching for “conceptual understanding” or what I have come to call the
concerns with Quality refers to the kind of teaching that pays attention to the science
concepts students learn in the science classroom, the meanings they make of these
concepts, how these meanings are constructed and articulated, application of the concepts
to personal life, and how the teacher assesses the students’ understandings of the
concepts. It also highlights the repertoire of instructional approaches and design of
learning contexts that a teachers uses to facilitate such conceptual understandings of

science.

80

Teaching all students or what I have come to call the concerns with Equity
refers to a teacher’s efforts to teach in ways that support the inclusion of all the learners
in the classroom. These concerns included, in these three cases, such issues as how to
use the students’ own experiences to enhance their understanding of scientific concepts
and when to let them use SeSotho, or another one of the eleven national languages to
participate in the classroom discourse although such a language may not be the official
language of instruction. The equity concerns also included concerns about when is it
appropriate to selectively focus attention on girls in the science classroom.

The shift from an over-emphasis of “content coverage,” to a situation where
covering the content becomes the basis for and actually enables the achievement of
conceptual understanding by all learners, is what highlights the practices of Mr. Sithole,
Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe in this study as transformative. That is, the “content-
coverage” becomes a vehicle for students to develop understandings of science and also
provides the teachers with the space to include all students without having to worry about
parental and district expectations for the completion of the syllabus and student
achievement in the national examinations. The teachers’ ability to demonstrate
“coverage” of the syllabus, and good achievement by their former students removed the
need for district inspection and close supervision of their work, thereby, allowing them
the space to pursue their other goals of “quality” and “equity” in their teaching of science.

The stories of the three teachers are not necessarily parallel, but in presenting
them I have tried for equivalence within the constraints of trying to highlight the salient
features of each unique case. I have organized the stories around four major subheadings,

that is,

81

a brief description of the teacher’s vision of transformative practice,

a description of (an) instance(s) of this vision in his/her classroom and
the dilemmas involved,

a life history account of some of the influences on the teacher’s
personal history and work experiences, and finally

an analysis of the important themes from the foregoing subheadings to
account for why each of the three teachers engage in the kinds of

practices I have described as transformative.

82

CHAPTER FOUR

COMPETING GOALS, CONFLICTING EXPECTATIONS AND THE VISION
OF A TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MR.

MOVEMENT SITHOLE: 2‘

DESCRIBING TRANSFORMATION IN MR. SITHOLE’S PRACTICE

Movement Sithole is a Black male in his late 305, who teaches Biology and
Afrikaans at a township school in Evaton. At the time of our first meeting for this study,
he was in his 10‘11 year of teaching, nine of which he has spent at his present school.
Located in the middle of a newly developed neighborhood with less defined roadways,
finding my way to the school was a little tricky although I had been to the school several
times before. Once at the school, negotiating entry was also tricky in that I had to get
clearance from the school security guard who keeps the gates locked at all times during
school hours. Without an appropriate pass to show evidence of an appointment,
clearance had to be obtained through the principal of the school who in turn had to
confirm with Mr. Sithole before letting me in. This was a new access procedure designed
mainly to regulate students’ entry and exit during class times.

For a while since his initial difficulties with meeting the requirements of
“covering the material,” Mr. Sithole has been trying to craft a more “relevant” pedagogy
for his science students. When asked to describe his classroom practices, he uses such

terms as

 

2" Names of persons and schools are all pseudonyms.

83

independence, less dependent on the teacher, different teaching styles,
breaking the monotony of the teacher in the classroom, group learning,
giving chances to all students, preparing for the world, preparing for
success, using (student’s) personal experiences, using different words
to show understanding and allow for different languages in class.

When abstracted from their context of development and use, as I have done here, these
terms do not mean very much. Viewed against the language of voice, inclusion,
conceptual understanding, collaborative learning, orchestration of discourse, and
application of science concepts to authentic situations, that is often privileged by the
current discourses on science education reform, Mr. Sithole’s descriptions begin to
acquire more significance. His language does not, however, conjure images of a
revolution, but a revolution may just be the appropriate metaphor for his practice of
science teaching at Uthukela secondary school in the dusty streets of Evaton.

His practice has shifted from his earlier concerns with just “covering the
material,” to include concerns with “quality” and “equity.” How these shifts of emphasis
from the one goal to the other play out in an actual classroom set-up is illustrated by the
following example of Mr. Sithole’s lessons on the “Nervous System and Physiological
Co-ordination.” Before describing the lesson itself, a description of the context is

warranted.

CLASSROOM CONTEXT AND ENVIRONMENT
The setting is a large secondary school in Evaton, a township 50-km South of
Johannesburg. The focus is on Mr. Sithole’s biology classroom, which is a medium —
sized school laboratory, with seating arranged in three rows of tables and chairs.27 Each

row has three large, movable tables put together and a set of chairs scattered around each

 

27 See Appendix C for a sketch of the classroom and seating arrangements.

84

set of tables. In the first row (nearest to the door) are seated seven boys and six girls, and
fourteen girls are scattered around the seats in the middle row, while five more girls and
seven boys occupy the third and last row of the classroom organization (nearest to the
teacher’s/researcher’s table). This is his grade-12 biology class.

Lighting in the room is provided by four filament-type lamps on the ceiling, with
only one of these in good working condition. There is a front demonstration bench (on
top of which is a broken overhead projector) and two long side benches on each side of
the walls (with the windows). Behind the demonstration bench is the chalkboard, next to
which lies a commercial model of the skeleton. The classroom walls are decorated with
different kinds of student drawings of biological structures -— ranging from human to plant
morphological structures. Despite the faulty electric light system, the room was well lit
from the rays of the sun on this otherwise cold August afternoon. With no heating
system in place, and some broken windows in the classroom, everyone had their coats
and jackets on during the entire lesson. As a participant observer in this classroom, I sat
at the back of the laboratory, where Mr. Sithole has his table. I had to negotiate for some
space on the table that was full of books and reference materials. As the students had just
taken their mid-year examinations, Mr. Sithole’s table was full of different bundles of
exercise books well arranged by grade level. Several kinds of textbooks and reference
material were also organized neatly on this table. Behind the teacher’s table is a glass
cupboard with a few plant specimens preserved in small bottles. Mr. Sithole sits right

opposite the door facing (at almost an angle) towards the front bench and the chalkboard.

85

LESSON 1 AND 2: NERVOUS SYSTEM AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CO-
ORDINATION

The day’s lesson, a continuation of a section on the Nervous System and

Physiological Co-ordination was the second in a series of about three or four lessons.28

It is a section of the Human Physiology theme in the prescribed biology matriculation
syllabus. As the syllabus stands, aspects of Human Physiology are first introduced in the
grade-10 syllabus but are then ‘forgotten’, only to be resurrected at grade-12. This lack
of continuity and proper sequencing in the curriculum is one of the conceptual blocks
identified by Mr. Sithole as contributing to his students’ struggle to understand the notion
of a “system” and how it explains the co-ordination of bodily functions. Mr. Sithole was
critical of the South Afiican biology curriculum in this regard:

For example, certain topics, they are not relevant, you see, to the
pupils teaching wise, you know, especially in biology, like you see
sometimes, you, Standard 10 (grade-12) there is no direct link what
with of Standard 9 (grade-l 1) that there is a gap. For example, in
Standard 9 they are dealing about the animal kingdom for instance, in
Standard Eight they are dealing with tissues and cells and the digestive
system, you see that and also population dynamics, you see that.
Standard Eight now and at Standard 10 level they are doing almost the
continuation of Standard 8, in other words the child rest in Standard 9
with a new system altogether, you see that. There could be a link from
Standard 8 up to Standard 10 or rather from Standard 9 to 10 should be
one system and then Standard 6 and 7 and 8 should be one system
continuation and at Standard 9 another system. Ja, which is going to be

related (interview, August 04, 1998).

Mr. Sithole’s critique of the biology curriculum is framed by his three goals for science
teaching. First, he worries about including all his students in the lessons. He discusses
this concern in terms of the lack of relevance of subject matter to his students. Second,

he identifies gaps in the organization and structuring of the curriculum, where related

 

2" Mr. Sithole had planned three lessons for this unit, but based on his assessment of the students’
understanding of the concepts and themes, he decided to add another lesson that would tie the unit together
for the students.

86

concepts and subject matter are discussed in two separate grades, one, two or three years
apart. As with many of the reformers who advocate for conceptual understanding in
science teaching, Mr. Sithole proposes an organizational structure that would link
concepts within and among grade levels. He proposes the use of phase organizers, for
example using the concept of an ecosystem, to link subject matter presently found in
grades 8, 9 and 10 - - which would be a junior secondary system. Subject matter for
Grades 11 and 12 would also be linked in a similar way according to his proposal.

Mr. Sithole teaches biology twice a day to the same group of students. He runs an
hour-long early morning class before school starts in order to “cover the material” and
then sees the same group of students during the regularly scheduled biology lesson at
various times during the school day. In the first lesson on the Nervous System and
Physiological Co-ordination section, which Mr. Sithole taught in the morning of that day,
he used commercial models of the skeleton and of the brain to discuss the various
components of the nervous system.29 He discussed the “three main components” of the
nervous system, viz. the central nervous system, the peripheral nervous system, and the
autonomic nervous system. Using his models, he then picked up each one of these
components of the nervous system and discussed their composition. His discussion
focused to a large part on the morphological and structural details (as opposed to the
functional aspects).

In the second lesson (the main focus of my discussion), he was planning to focus

on some of the functional aspects the nervous system. Coming to class a few minutes

 

2’ In addition to the regularly scheduled class period for biology, Mr. Sithole runs an early morning class
(an hour before school starts) for his grade 12 classes four times a week (Monday to Thursday). The
morning class, which began right after the mid-year school recess was designed to help students “cover the
material” in preparation for their matriculation examination.

87

early, he began to draw three structures on the chalkboard: the Structure of a Multipolar
Neuron; the Scheme of a Synapse; and A Schematic of an impulse across a Synapse.
As the students came into the laboratory, Mr. Sithole asked them to settle down

and draw the structures in their books.30

T: O.K. Now we are going to discuss the movement of the nerve impulse.

T: (to the researcher) I want them to understand the transmission of impulses,
before we discuss the structure of the spinal chord further.

T: First, draw the structures (that are on the board) in your notebook.

There was a loud buzz of activity for about 15-20 minutes as the students began to draw
and talk in their small groups. Although most of the students have a textbook they share
with at least one other person in the classroom, Mr. Sithole preferred them to get into the
“habit” of drawing the structures in their own notebooks so that they can “own” them and
get “practice.” If part of being a scientist involves the ability to represent observations or
ideas in words, models, pictures, charts, and other forms of communication often used
within the scientific community of scholars, then Mr. Sithole wasn’t taking this for
granted. He was allocating time and space for his students to master these tools of
participation within the scientific discourse community.

The student discussions in some of the groups involved comparisons of the
representations of the structural features and debates about which representations were
more or less accurate. In one of these groups, closest to where I was sitting, five or six
students got involved in an argument about the representation of the Synapse. Their
discussion was about the direction of the arrows that represented the (direction of)

impulse. The arrows in the teacher’s diagram all pointed in one direction - - from the

 

3° Unlike the other subjects where teachers — and not Ieamers - change classes, for biology it is the students
that move to the laboratory where Mr. Sithole prefers to conduct his lessons. See appendix D for a sketch
of the chalkboard work with the drawings.

88

dendrite of neighboring nerve cells into the cell body of the ‘receiving’ nerve cell (see
Appendix D, for the drawings). One learner who was drawing from a textbook structure,
however, drew some arrows showing impulses moving out of the cell body into an axon.
When the other students saw his drawing, an argument ensued. The argument was about
the fact that the latter student was showing an inconsistent direction of movement of the
impulse. The exchange continued for a few minutes about why one representation was
“wrong” and the others “correct.” The students were deadlocked on what the “correct”
way of representing the direction of impulse was.

To resolve the dilemma, they decided to examine a number of drawings from
different textbooks. Two more textbooks were brought in (from the teacher’s table) for
comparison. One of the two new textbooks (brought in from the teacher’s table) had a
drawing of a synapse that was consistent with what the student in question had drawn.
That is, two textbooks had one pattern of drawings and one other textbook plus the
teacher’s drawing had another pattern - - making it .two against two. A resolution could
not, therefore, simply appeal to the politically expedient solution of paying attention to
the view of the majority, as there was no clear majority in this case, as I sensed they were
inclined to do when they brought in the other two textbooks. After a series of second and
third rounds of close examination of all the drawings (in the textbooks and on the
chalkboard), they arrived at an insightful and interesting resolution of the debate.

Their resolution was that there was nothing wrong with all the drawings - -
because the arrows were “not all on the same nerve cell.” As one of the students put it (in
his explanation of this insight to the others), the synapse was “like a traffic circle where

you come in and circulate and then can go out in any direction.” That is, nerve impulses

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come into the cell body from different directions, and leave through any axon to the
effector organ or muscle.

For some experienced teachers, this incident may appear unexceptionable and in
fact appeared so to this researcher at the time of the observation. It was not until I saw
several of Mr. Sithole’s lessons and engaged him in a discussion of what his vision of a
desirable classroom practice is, that it acquired more significance. Several things are
worth noting about the students’ discussion:

First, it occurred before the class had started any discussion on the functioning of
a synapse, the transfer of impulses or the structure of nerve cells for that matter. Students
seemed to make important connections of the key ideas with aspects of work that is
normally covered in grades nine and ten, on mammalian and human tissues. I was not
able to establish whether the subject matter connections the students were making in this
particular case originated with their prior learning of the concepts from the earlier grades,
or whether it was a result of their preparatory reading for the day’s lesson, which Mr.
Sithole makes a point to assign at the end of each day.

Second, the discourse was spontaneous within the group and in fact the teacher
never became aware of it as he was busy with the other groups until the end of the class
period when I brought it to his attention. What began as a small discussion about
representations and drawings grew up to become a rich source of engagement in the
subject matter of science. It became a source for collaborative construction of meaning.

Third, the discussion among the students took place in SeSotho (one of the eleven
Official languages of South Africa, not a medium of instruction at this level). SeSotho is

a first or second language for many of the students in this classroom, although all

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learning and assessment is officially conducted in English - - a foreign language for many
of them.

Lastly, the students relied on their own resourcefulness to resolve the debate. The
teacher or his chalkboard drawing was not authoritative enough on this issue. Even the
one textbook that one student was drawing from was not enough to establish the “Facts”
in this case. Several sources were needed and used. More importantly, however, is how
the texts were used to construct new meanings on the transfer of impulse. The texts
demanded interpretation and appropriation into the students’ real world experiences. A
metaphor that resonated with students’ experiences was brought to bear on the
discussion. Their metaphor of a traffic circle, however porous, enhanced their
understanding of the concept of a synapse (as a functional unit of the nervous system).
This is one instance where the notion of scientific authority was put on the table for
scrutiny. Neither the teacher, nor the textbooks by themselves, were vested with this kind
of authority. Students were constructing meaning out of what appeared to be a
meaningless sketch of a synapse by one of their colleagues. Such an incident as observed
in this classroom fills the (policy-practice) gaps in most of the science reformers ideas
about changing the way science is presented to students in schools.

“That to me is what teaching and learning is about!” (Interview, August 04,
1998) was the teacher’s excited response when I drew his attention to the incident.
Pressed to explain what he meant, he drew my attention to three aspects of what his
classroom practice was trying to achieve:

I. A safe and nurturing environment for collaborative learning (“group

learning” as he called it) among his students;

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II. A habit of “independent” exploration and learning for the students and
“less reliance on the teacher”;
111. Making the subject matter accessible to the students by “bringing in their
experiences into the classroom.” (Interview, August 04, 1998)
The excitement in Mr. Sithole’s voice when he declared this incident as illustrative of
what he was about in his classroom, sounded like a deep sigh of relief for someone who
had finally found the right word or expression or event to showcase his ideas. As it
turned out, he had not expected me to press him further about what he meant by his
declaration. The incident seemed to provide some live evidence of all he had been trying
to capture in words in our earlier discussions, on what he was trying to achieve in his
classroom. This was more so because every time I went to observe his classrooms and
ask him questions about what he thought of aspects of the lessons, he would later reverse
the questions to find out what I thought of his teaching, his students, and their “chances
of success” (which I was never sure whether he meant success in the matriculation
examination or in life in general or both).

His questions or maybe my inability to engage with them in a very candid and
forthright manner always made me feel uncomfortable during and after the interviews.
Here was a colleague (or former colleague), with whom we used to spend lunch hour
breaks (as teachers) together sharing experiences and discussing shared visions of a
transformed society and education system in our country, trying to rekindle the critical
collegial discussions that we shared, whose attempts I could feel myself turning down. I
was more worried about ‘changing the research environment’ if I engaged in a critical

conversation on aspects of his classroom practice. There were things I would have

92

challenged and engaged him on, in our ‘shared visions’ of transformation in the late
19805 and early 19905 that I felt awkward discussing in this case. For, to do that now
could have led to different emphases in his classroom practice at the time of my
observation, and I was not sure how and whether I would be able to resolve that for the
purposes of this research study. Although I wanted to use the opportunity of observing
Mr. Sithole and discussing issues with him to reflect on my own ideas and practices, I
was conscious of the power differentials between the two of us and therefore avoided
actions that had the potential to color what he was doing. Our relationship and
discussions of his classroom practice were not the same as when we were both high
school teachers sharing stories about how to survive and beat the system in preparing our
students for a post-apartheid society. They were colored by the fact that I was now a
policy researcher with one of the leading universities in the country. In addition, I had
just returned from a few years of study abroad where I had acquired a Master’s degree in
Curriculum and Instruction and supposedly knew more about the teaching of science and
curriculum issues we were discussing with Mr. Sithole. This placed uncertain burdens on
our relationship, more so because we had not seen each other in the “new South Africa”
(post-1994) where some of our ideals were supposedly now legitimate concerns for
school reformers.

His classroom practice was, however, not a straightforward implementation of the
three goals he enunciated in our conversations. It was much more complicated and
murkier than is suggested by this summary. At other times, for instance, his classroom
appeared no different from the many that have been studied and characterized as

traditional: Consider the following excerpt of a 10-15 minute segment of the class lesson

93

I have just discussed: (just after the students had finished drawing the structures in their

notebook):

T:

SS:

T:

SS:

SS:

In the morning we introduced the nervous system. We said it is divided into
how many parts?

Three

Name them in your groups

two minutes pause (after a little caucus by each group, comparing their
answers) one student in each group raises a hand to answer the question

: Central Nervous System (CNS)
: Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)
: Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

Yes, each one of these three, the CNS, the PNS, and the ANS has only one
type of nerve cells. The neurons.

- For example the Multipolar (or motor) neuron (pointing at the diagram
on the chalkboard).

— As you can see here (pointing at the drawing), it is divided into two
parts. (again pointing at the parts) The cell body and the axon.

- The impulse moves from the cell body into the axon and then its
relayed to some other parts of the body where the stimulus originated.

- Another example, are the Unipolar neurons. These are found mainly on
the inside organs such as the brain and the embryo.

- In the morning, we discussed the feeling of pain when a needle pricks
you. We said this response is controlled by the .............. ?

Autonomic nervous system

OK. let’s now look at the structure of the axon so that we can understand
further how the impulses are transmitted

(Observation, August, 04, 1998)3 1

Mr. Sithole then spent the next 15 minutes going over the structural details of the axon,

and the cell body (completing the discussion on the nerve cells). He then began to

discuss the movement of impulses, drawing attention to the chemical imbalances that

facilitate this movement across the nerve cells. In this part of the presentation it was the

teacher’s voice that rose to prominence with students participating only when called upon

to remember or make some connections to some other aspects of the syllabus. Although

 

3‘ T = stands for Teacher; S= stands for particular student as denoted by a number 81 , S2 etc.; SS: all
students together.

94

still making an effort to engage students by asking questions and creating space for
collaborative constructions, the lesson was moving along in a definite direction, pre-
determined and driven by the need for him to get through some aspect of the content he
thought important for the students to learn at that point in the unit. What distinguishes
him from others written about in studies of modal practice, however, is how he makes a
conscious effort to weave back and forth between the three goals of quantity, quality and
equity within the same set of lessons.

For example, during the discussion of the movement of chemical substances that
trigger nerve responses to particular stimuli, Sithole discussed the role of the potassium
and sodium cations in the process. He then asked students to make connections to

another section of the syllabus:

T: These cations (Na and K) move inside the cell body because of electrical
charge differences. Where else did you hear of these two cations?

SS: (some students murmuring) (in the section on) Macro-nutrients

T: Yes, when we discussed the micro and macronutrients required by our
bodies. That was in January, heh?

SS: Yes

T: Are these two, micro or macronutrients?

SS: silence (about a minute and half)

T: (rephrasing the question) Are they needed in large or small quantities in our
bodies?

82 (girl): micronutrients

T: Do you agree?

SS: (unsure) Yes

T: Why?

83: (Inaudible)

T: Yes, they are micronutrients for animals. You better go and brush up on
that section.

(Observation, August 04, 1998)
By this time, the 50 minutes class time had elapsed, but no one seemed to pay any
attention to the bell as Mr. Sithole continued to finish his explanations of the movement

of the impulses from the axon to the dendrite through the synoptic junction.

95

If I had completed my observations at this point, and had no discussions with Mr.
Sithole about what was happening in his classroom, and had not seen the rich interactions
among his students, I would probably have been justified in concluding that there was not
much to characterize as transformative about his classroom practices. Yes, he seemed to
be at pains to nurture an environment of collaborative learning. He required students to
caucus their responses with their group members first before sharing with others in the
class. Furthermore, he opened students’ responses to a public process of verification,
asking them whether they agreed or not and why. He was also enthusiastic about making
connections between several concepts and themes studied earlier by his students. These
latter aspects of his practice acquire even more significance in the context of the overall
culture and practice of science teaching and learning in South Africa, which discourages
innovation and leamer-centeredness in the classroom.

Historically, the culture of teaching and learning in South African schools has
tended to favor tradition over innovation, especially so, at those grade levels where the
public national examinations matter the most (Mehl, 1990; Walker, 1996). In that
context, it is not too difficult to establish that the aspects of Mr. Sithole’s practice
described here are non-traditional. However, contextualizing them further within his own
learning and development, and life challenges and visions for a new society provides an
added dimension to their significance and their potential for being transformative.

Consider, for example, how he concluded this particular lesson on the
transmission of impulses and movement of ions across the differential in the nerve cells.

The lesson was now 5-10 minutes overdue (at the end of the school day), but there

was still firll attention and no sense of shuffling in anticipation of leaving the room.

96

T: We said the acetylcholine facilitates the movement of these charges from
one axon to the cell body across the imaginary junction, the synaptic
junction.

Let’s compare this to something we all know, a telephone.

Now think about how it is possible that when you phone a person on the
side he or she can respond?

S4: Because of technology

T: how does it happen?

SS: Pause (about 2 minutes)

S5: Because of the movement of positive and negative charges through the wire

T: Yes, through the movement of charge through the wire. Remember your
telephone is connected to the poles on the street. These poles have wires
that conduct charges from one point to another, when you have charge
differentials.

SS: (some students seem confused as they try to make the connections between
the telephone lines and the movement of impulses).

One student (S5) from the one group closest to the door (column one)
spontaneously stands up and tries to clear up the confusion by doing a little
demonstration.

SS: (to the teacher) you are the dendrite. You are sending a message to the
muscle or the cable, (pulling one female student to join) and here is the
axon.

I need two charges, the positive and the negative charges (points to two
other students to join).

Using the teacher’s chalk he draws a line (on the floor) between the teacher
and female student (supposedly to illustrate the synoptic junction).

When the K-plus and the Na-plus (positive charges) move in and negative
charges move out, then the message is transmitted until it reaches the
dendrite.

As he tries to get the students who represent the charges to move in and out
(to show movement of charges), there is confusion as more students
contribute ideas on how to make the demonstration more meaningful.

Some ask him to draw lines around the teacher and the female students to
indicate the membranes through which these ions have to travel to reach the
cell body or the axon. He gets a little confused, and some students from his
group stand up and begin to add features to the (live) structures. By this
time, there was so much noise and shuffling by a number of students in the
class (all wanting to add something to the discussion) creating a commotion
that began to attract some of the students from the other classes (who were
leaving school or waiting for their friends outside Mr. Sithole’s classroom).
It is at that point, about 20-25 minutes after school time, that Mr. Sithole
decided to stop the lesson, promising them an opportunity to do this
demonstration again the following day.

(Observation, August 04, 1998)

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Here again was an interaction of his principles at work: his students, working on their
own initiative in response to the teacher’s not so well formed metaphor about telephone
lines and the transmission of nerve impulses, were collaborating on creating a different
way of understanding the processes of transmission of the nervous impulses - - using
their own experiences and resources. What began as an individual student’s effort to
clarify himself and help others understand the transmission of impulse across a synoptic
junction through the telephone metaphor, spontaneously became a collaborative venture
by all members of the class - - to create a metaphor for understanding the subject matter.
In this case, the teacher was able to recede to the background and become a resource in a
rather unfamiliar manner. That is, the teacher ended up as one of the apparatus for
demonstration by the students, at a level more or less equal to all the other members of
the discourse community in this classroom.

I have discussed the experience of these two lessons on the nervous system to
illustrate several features of what I found intriguing about Mr. Sithole’s classroom
practices and also because I had the opportunity to observe Morapeli Tshabalala, the
other biology specialist in the study, teach the same theme to his finishing school
students. From these and other lesson observations I made of Mr. Sithole’s classrooms, I
found that focusing on the teacher and what he was doing during the lessons sometimes
yielded a less than spectacular view of his classroom practices. That is, in this particular
case, a broad characterization of lessons as either teacher-centered or student-centered
was not a very useful way of looking at Mr. Sithole’s practice. For the most part, the
teacher commanded the center stage in this classroom but in ways that did not seem to

colonize the processes of learning and construction of meaning by the Ieamers. The

98

teacher provided both the space and the concepts for nurturing a useful discussion and
debate among the Ieamers. Students were learning about independence, initiative,
science as a social construction, all in the context of learning grade-12 biology - - and,
yes, they were also learning about important biological processes and concepts.

In other words, a sharper focus on what the students seemed to be learning in this
classroom and the goals for teaching science was more useful in talking about his
classroom practice as having the potential to be transformative. Students were engaged
in very rich discussions and opportunities to learn, sometimes not in response to some
great and extra-ordinary things that the teacher was doing but by engaging in processes of
learning within a particular environment that he orchestrated in his classroom. Despite
his visions of a new and transformed society that we shared from the days of apartheid,
nothing in his treatment of the subject matter in the classroom was overtly political and
about transforming the society outside of the classroom. Yet in many ways, his teaching
of biology was just about that. He was challenging a status quo that provided too much
structure for learning and too few opportunities for independent exploration and
collaborative construction of meaning by the Ieamers. As the slogan of the teacher’s
union for which he was one of the regional leaders declares, he was indeed “chalking up
a cultural storm” within the system - - by (re)defining a new culture and identity of
teaching and learning in South Africa.32 For him though, this was all just part of striving
to be a “better teacher,” a “person who is always prepared in the subject and always

trying to impart his knowledge and also to make the pupils understand the subject by

 

’2 The notion of the restoration of the “culture of teaching and learning” is a pervasive but confusing
metaphor for transforming schools in South Africa. It is used in two senses by policy-makers, first to
characterize what needs to change inside schools and classrooms in terms of teaching and learning, and

99

implementing various methodologies to alleviate such problems (as the pupils) they
might have.” (Interview, February 18, 1997)

A very quiet and soft-spoken person, Mr. Sithole is not the kind who would go
out publicly and declare war on traditional practices to teaching despite his expressed
dissatisfaction with those practices. His was a low-key effort at reconceptualizing
science teaching in his classroom. In the next section I seek to locate his practices within
the context of who he is at this point of transformation in South Africa and what seemed

to drive his non-traditional practices to biology teaching in his classroom.

LIFE STORY OF MR. SIT HOLE

At the time of our first meeting for this research, I had known Mr. Sithole for
almost seventeen years. He was a high school friend whom I first met when we were
both entering the ninth grade at Lwazi high school in one of the townships of
Vereeniging. We had both come from different primary schools in the area and had
achieved well enough to earn consideration at that academically rigorous high school at
Lwazi. Although it had been a struggle for me to gain admission at Lwazi, because of
administrative and bureaucratic hitches in our district, Movement had had no such
problems of entry into the secondary school. He had come from a fairly respected
primary school (for SeTswana speaking children) in the area.33

Movement was born and bred in Evaton Township in the early sixties. Although

he does not remember any personal or family stories about the political events of the

 

second to characterize the physical and external circumstances of schools that need to be restored e.g. the
physical infrastructure of most school that need to be rebuilt or refurbished (see DoE, 1996; 1997).

’ SeTswana is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. It is also an official and major
language of Botswana, a neighboring country in Southern Africa.

100

19605, he was born and raised in one of the townships whose name invokes memories of
strong resistance by the African peoples to the land dispossession and oppression by the
minority government of the day. Part of the reason is that his family never owned land
and had come to the township as tenants (from the rural areas). He grew up in a back
room (which they rented) that was artificially separated to form a two-roomed house.
With his two brothers and two sisters, they lived in this house until he began his teaching
career in 1987 when he moved out to his own home. Later, he was able to arrange for his
family to move into a bigger four-roomed rental house.

The oldest of the five children, he was the only one to reach beyond the
matriculation level (grade 12) in his family. This is despite his family’s strong
encouragement on education of all the siblings. His mother, a domestic worker who
often cautioned them against following her unwise decision of not completing her
education before getting married, was eager for her children to get an education that
would enable them to have better chances in the world. For Movement and his mother,

his brothers and sisters were a bit of a disappointment:

I could say its due to lack of discipline, self-discipline and also to respect
for your elder, too. If your elder brother or if somebody elder to you tell
you what you should do so that you should be able to reach your goals and
you don’t listen, you end up nowhere actually. So they (his sisters and
brothers) never listened to me, you see. I always encouraged them that they
should learn because in our days we are not living in days whereby we used
to have cattle, so we have to depend on education.

For the Sithole family, the “power of an education” was never in question. Their mother
came from a family of teachers, who had achieved a great deal within the system. Hi5
maternal uncle had risen to a rank of district school inspector in one of the rural districts
and therefore the debate between tradition and western type education had long been

settled for this family. As argued by Movement, the land dispossession had left Africans

lOl

with no land or cattle to raise but instead with an option of going to school in search of a
better life.34 Such an education was the one possession the oppressors would never be
able to take away from him and other oppressed peoples of South Africa.

Getting the education, however, often proved challenging because of a number of
factors, some political, some cultural and personal, and others structural and inherent to
the education system. For instance, in many of the African townships of the Vaal
Triangle (the equivalent of a county in the US), within which Evaton and Sebokeng are
located, there were more schools provided for the SeSotho speaking peoples than any
other group in the township. This practice, of providing schools for specific ethnic
groups, represented a fundamental expression of the apartheid policy regarding
residential segregation. The architects of apartheid had planned for Evaton and Sebokeng
to be SeSotho speaking areas with no residents from the other ethnic groups. In practice,
the policy had serious problems, as there were peoples of all ethnic groups who owned
land and houses predating the apartheid policies of the 19505 or even the land acts of
1913. As a result, education departments were forced to provide at least one school per
area that would cater to the needs of the non-SeSotho speaking groups. The one-school

per area policy was never adequate for the needs of the community, thereby forcing some

 

3’ There is a bit of dilemma in the zoning of the school. The school was originally zoned as a school in
Evaton, a semi-formal old residential area where Black people still owned land rights and had lifestyles that
represented a rare mixture of the old traditional way of life and the new colonial and apartheid “modern”
township life. Landowners in Evaton also owned herds of cattle, which grazed all over, what used to be
vast areas of open land in the area. Relative to most new surrounding townships, Evaton remains
underdeveloped. The area has a long history of resistance and boasts of one of the first teacher education
centers created by the missionaries at Wilberforce Seminary and College. With the development of new
townships in the surrounding area, coupled to the dispossession of land rights of the inhabitants of the area,
sections of the area were split and rezoned into the emerging township settlements. As a result, the setting
of the school is now sometimes referred to as Sebokeng, one of the new townships in the area. With these
new developments of rezoning and dispossession of land, people’s lives were transformed from being small
time, subsistence farmers to working class persons who had to sell their skills and labor at the many steel
manufacturing and processing companies in the three cities that surround these townships. A very limited

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of the children to attend schools 20 or 30 kilometers from their homes in search of a
school where the medium of instruction was the same as their mother tongue or the
language spoken at home. Some parents, however, opted to have their children attend the
nearest school and put up with the new language demands.

Movement Sithole’s educational career also became a victim of these deliberate
policies to segregate schooling in the country. As a SeTswana speaker, he was forced to
attend a local primary school where SeSotho was the medium of instruction. He attended
the school for the first four years of his schooling, until such time that the language issue
caught up with him.35

T: And then from there I moved to Kabelo because I failed my Standard Two
(Grade four) because at that school (interruption)

1: Kanye?

T: Kanye, 13. They used to talk (Se)Sotho. I was not familiar with the
(Se)Sotho language you see. Because we talk (Se)Tswana at home.

1: Okay.

T: Ja. My home language was (Se)Tswana. We use to talk (Se)Tswana.

Sometimes, some of the terminology at school was very confusing. As I
failed my Standard Two then I had to repeat it at Kabelo

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

His senior primary years, at Kabelo — a SeTswana medium school, were much better and
more productive. Sithole excelled academically and developed positive ideas about

teaching and teachers at his new school.

 

number of subsistence farmers still remain in the area, and their cattle and sheep can often be spotted
gsrazing close to the perimeter of the school fence. .

Movement’s experiences of segregation in primary education are common experience for most
youngsters who grow up in the “wrong areas” (i.e. not designated for their own ethnic groups). Similar to

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No, I had that eager(ness) of learning because the people who were
teaching. Ja. They were not playing, they were teaching. Even the
principal was totally involved in teaching. So he was a person who was
motivating us most of the time. Then I also passed his subject very well. I
remember sometime I got, in the exam, I got a total in multiple choice, in
Geography So I was very impressed. He was also impressed by my
performance. Why, because I was a bookwonn, you see. bookwonn. I was
always reading. I like reading. Ja. I like, I am someone who likes to have
knowledge. Always asking other people. Always at home studying my
books, you see. Every night do some home works and studying further any

work. (Interview, February 18, 1997)

Upon completion of his senior primary schooling, Movement entered a mixed (language)
secondary school at Lwazi where we first met in a grade nine class. Although Lwazi
secondary was a school with a good reputation, Movement was not happy with his

experiences there.

T: Then from there I proceeded to Lwazi where I did my Standard Seven and
Eight (Grades nine and ten). So this is where now things seemed to go very
slow. I didn’t know what was wrong. Because high school level, I mean
high school teaching was totally different to that of primary at Kabelo.
Teachers were different at high school. They were totally relaxed. Some of
them actually. (interruption)

I: What do you mean by relaxed?

T: Relaxed, not teaching with that eagerness of empowering kids with
knowledge, you see.

1: mm

T: Especially the Afrikaans one. And some mathematician teachers were not
showing that interest of seeing us, especially those who were slow Ieamers
in mathematics, you see. So, we had a problem. I had a problem actually to
cope with their teaching methodology.

1: mm

T: So, somewhere, somehow then I lacked that interest there in mathematics.
But then I had that interest before. So you could say the method of primary
and that of a high school was totally different. You see that. So you see
most teachers in high school were relaxed compared to that of primary. I
don’t know what was wrong.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

 

his experiences, being an IsiXhosa speaking youngster, l shifted my medium-language of schooling at

104

Our discussion of his negative experiences of the junior high school years at Lwazi
identified several factors that contributed to that experience. First, there were the
pedagogical factors: For Movement, the teachers’ approach to subject matter, especially
the Mathematics and Afrikaans teachers were not empowering. Their approach was fast-
paced and tailored to encourage competition among the Ieamers (who came from
different primary schools and who were eager to represent their former schools well at
the secondary school) in ways that Movement found destructive. A5 a result, he was
flushed out of mathematics for the rest of his academic career.

This discussion of Movement’s experiences at Lwazi offered me a rare
opportunity to reflect on my own experiences at the school at that point in history. As we
reminisced further on our high school experiences, it occurred to us that our friendship
had been shaped by the rather negative experiences at the junior high level at Lwazi.
Although we had known each other as classmates at grade nine, we got even closer as
friends during the grade-10 year. We commuted together for six months (on the train
rides) every Saturday morning to receive extra tuition on mathematics and physical
science at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Saturday school program for
‘disadvantaged leamers’ in the province. On the three-hour return journey, we talked
about all sorts of social issues, and also helped each other on the mathematics and science
problems. Although there were four or five of us from the grade ten class, Movement
and I were the more regular in the group.

I could relate to Sithole’s articulation about the lack of attention to the not-so-
bright (or to be accurate: the not-so-articulate and verbal in ways that are encouraged in

the classrooms) children in the school, for things changed rather drastically for me after

 

grade 3 and continued with IsiZulu until I graduated high school.

105

the mid-year examinations when most teachers realized that I had been the top student in
the class. Indeed, I received relatively more attention thereafter, and could ask questions
in class without anyone thinking that I was stupid. The need to attend the extra tuition on
Saturday’s therefore ceased for me thereafter. Put differently, the opportunities to learn
at Lwazi increased and became more meaningful now that I was recognized as one of the
good students. For Movement things did not change, and he finally opted out of the
mathematics/science stream in grade-11, leaving biology as the only historical trace of
his ties to the math/science stream. In grade-11, he registered for what is referred to as
the general stream (or what should more appropriately be called the social sciences). It is
clear, however, that before opting out Movement had made all reasonable attempts
including registering and paying for transport and food at a Saturday school offered by a
local university, to stick with the mathematics and science stream. The system, and more
specifically, his teachers, had in this case failed him dismally. The teachers’ “lack of
enthusiasm” and “lack of interest on the slow Ieamers” are all part of the pedagogical
factors raised by Mr. Sithole in analyzing his high school experiences (Interview,
February 18, 1997).

The second set of factors he raised dealt with instructional guidance/supervision
issues. Movement felt that unlike his experiences at the senior primary school where the
principal was involved in the daily processes of teaching and learning at the school, at
secondary level he noted the absence of strong guidance and supervision systems for the
teaching and learning processes. Learners were also encouraged to compete each other

(“to death”) in order to give the school its otherwise spectacular reputation. His

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experiences on what happens to the academic “other” in such schools and classrooms are
an indictment of these traditional processes of schooling and accountability systems.

Before this transformation in his life as a student (who now had to convince
himself that he couldn’t do math and science, for he had not made the grade in the
external high stakes junior certificate examination), he had to deal with another personal
tragedy in his family.

T: After that I decided actually to look for a job. I never got a job. I was
looking for a job because of conditions at home.

I: What do you mean by conditions at home?

T: Ja. Conditions at home. Actually my parents had a problem. They were
separating and then my mom could not afford to bring us up. So I decided
to actually look for some job to assist her. So I couldn’t get a job. It was
now about eight months and the work I was looking for it was government
work like a police or tickets officer. I went to such places. I never got such
ajob.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

Movement’s personal history and circumstances of his existence (who he is and his
experiences) had recommended him negatively for his job search in the structures of the
apartheid government. In the police job, for instance, he was told that he was a few
inches short of the required height to be a policemen. Whereas, in the train (ticket)
officer, he was found to have had a prior record of having been arrested on a train, for
failing to produce an identity document (when he in fact was not of age to be issued with
one by the Department of Home Affairs). Having grown a beard at an early age, he had
many such brushes with the law enforcement officers who often refirsed to believe his
protests that he was underage in terms of the law. Although he was never convicted of

any crimes, the records of wrongful arrest were never erased.

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Throughout his ordeal of trying to find a job, Movement’s mother had constantly
advised him against leaving school, assuring him that things would be fine in the home
even despite the changed circumstances. Four months into the new school term,
Movement abandoned his job search and went back to school for grade 11. The odds
were stacked against him, both in and outside of school. First, he had to persuade the
school authorities that he would be able to catch up on four months of work and would
not be a burden to his new school. He was eventually admitted on the strength of the
representation of his former primary school principal, who spoke at a level that “made
sense” to his counterpart at the high school. The only condition placed on his admission
was that he would not try to get back to the “more demanding” math/science stream at
that late stage of the year. Movement remembers the day of his (re)admission as one

important day in his struggle for an education:

It was 19th April and when I started to go to school at Thandile then for my
Standard Nine (Grade 11). Actually they also never gave me a space
because they said that I was very, very much late. So I nearly did not attend
school that year, but then, due to some other circumstances, and the help of
other eh, eh “timer” so they talked to the tprincipal and then until such time
he accepted me at school the next month.3

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

The fact that he almost lost a year of secondary education remains indelible in his
memory. I was never really able to establish further why this was 50, except that those
experiences of rejection he experienced during the job search and the near 1055 of an
opportunity to pursue his studies together with other experiences over that period of time

became significant in shaping his future relations with the apartheid state and its

 

’6 “Timer” is a street colloquial term for old man.

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education structures. The year 1982 was same year in which he would later be detained,

supposedly for his activities in the Congress of South African Students (COSAS).37

(I remember that year) because I had a lot of problems, some of the
problems like, eh, I had been arrested before 1982 during the uprising in
Evaton and I found that was totally not called for because I never done
anything wrong. I was presumed to be one of the COSAS members and yet
I was not. I spent some days in the prison for nothing. We were mishandled
by police. Such things you know encouraged me to actually want to be a
lawyer so that I would be able to assist those people, who are mishandled by
police in this country.

(Interview, February 19, 1997)

The aggregation of his experiences drove him toward a well-formed consciousness
against the oppressive systems of apartheid governance. He began to form an identity of
resistance to the oppressive system(s), and conceptualized a role for himself in opposition
to the system. That formation of an identity of resistance was more significant given that
a few months earlier, circumstances within his family had driven him to look for a job
within the very system he was now resolved to challenge. How this identity of resistance
and his vision of himself as a “helper” of his people played out in shaping his classroom
practice will be discussed later in this chapter.

Movement Sithole worked hard at high school and passed with a matriculation
exemption (a kind of endorsement reserved for students who had achieved well enough to
receive automatic permission for entry into university level). However, because of his
financial circumstances, he was not able to register at university and instead took the

cheaper route into teaching. Here’s how he described his achievements at high school:

Having come in late (I came first in my class). So that was showing the
determination that I was determined to study and then to proceed with my
studies and because always I was remaining behind after school trying to
cover up for all they have done in my absentia and then from there Standard
Ten (grade 12) as well. So, Standard Ten (Grade 12), well I passed it.

 

37 The Congress of South African Students (COSAS) was the most vocal and active student organization
formed in 1979 to challenge the control and manipulation of secondary schooling by the white minority
government.

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Okay, I got an Exemption Ja. So I got that. So I applied to be a lawyer at
eh or to study further doing a law degree at eh Rhodes University. So that
was my first priority that I would like to be a lawyer or secondly, a
journalist or thirdly, a teacher.

(Interview, February 19, 1997)

After working hard to stay in school and succeed, the system again failed Movement in
that he was not able to pursue his first or second choice of attending a university because
of the economic situation of his parents. In fact, he had to scramble even to pay a R100

(about $16) registration fee at the college of education:38

Ja. She (Mrs. Sithole) was a domestic worker and she was working in the
shop, cleaning and so on. So and she had a relationship with the person
who sent her there. Who was a relative to those people and told them that I
don’t have enough money to register, at least R100. So that family of my
mother’s friend, you know, okay, talked to that businessman of my problem
so that I should be able to register. So they offered to help her. So I got to
register for the course and it was late as well. (laugh). So I arrived late, at
least a week later after registration.

(Interview, February 19, 1997)
One of the remarkable things about Mr. Sithole is his ability to derive humor out of his
otherwise hellish experiences of struggle for an education. Although the seriousness of
the experiences was not lost, he often laughed when he told the story of how he nearly
missed out on an opportunity to become a teacher because he was too poor to come up
with the required R100 and when he told the story of his late registrations at senior high

school and at college.

Journey into teaching
Armed with a R100 bill, Movement was able to enter college and begin his
journey into the profession. Although he found the college experience enjoyable, he also

found it to be a challenge academically:

 

3’ Education at the college of education, as opposed to university, was free and paid for by the state in
return for service to the state upon completion. Students, however, had to raise a registration fee before
admission.

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At college it was demanding because I had to study much harder. Because
we had to study all the subjects, you see to teach, like sports and eh, art. I
remember I never had art at school, so I had to practice that and music also.
And other subjects like Guidance and also education and teaching science.
Those were other subjects that were new to me. So I had to learn and then
the other one that I knew, of course, biology, was third and then Afrikaans.
And Afrikaans, I was told to study Afrikaans because I wanted to study
English. So I was told that the English class was full and the only subject I
can take to support my biology was Afrikaans. And that woman (one
college lecturer) told me that I won’t have a problem and I won’t fail it if I
could just study the language like the other languages.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)
His life at college was not only about balancing his work and putting more effort into the
new subjects in his curriculum, he also had to use his spare time and weekends to raise
money (by selling door to door a variety of cosmetic goods) to survive each day and
week. Through his “small business” venture, he was able to help his mother in
supporting the family:

This cosmetics thing? It started in 1980 actually when the day when my
father left my mother. And the day when I started to go to work after
Standard Eight (grade 9). So I failed to get a job and then I decided to go
back to school and to supplement that I had to sell something to help my
mother to buy some clothes for myself, since she was not earning so much
and to buy some goods and also to assist my younger brothers so that they
can be something and proceed with their studies and should not depend
solely on my mother... Ja, it was difficult. mmm. Because every weekend I
had to think about Monday, transport, see that what I am going to eat at
school and what I am going to eat the next weekend. You see. (laugh) And
clothing you see, such things became problems to me because I had to
travel by bus to school. Especially when l was at college. So, on the other
hand, I had to achieve my education. It was difficult. Because every
weekend, the time when I used to think that I would be sitting down
revising, I was thinking about what I will eat at the weekend and during the
week. So I had to schedule that for my small business. And I was sitting
after hours. I was a worker. So, I sell almost everyday, even weekend,
never a special weekend off. Never had such thing. Every weekend, even
Sunday. Sunday I had to sell. Sometimes when I was not in church. So, I
had to especially month end and fortnights. l have to. So that was the way
around to survive. You see that if I was not doing that I would not be able
to have money for transport and to buy some clothes for myself and some
food for those people at home there.

(Interview, February 19, 1997)
To cope with his demanding schedule of work in and outside of school, Movement

developed a habit of coming to school early and leaving late - - in order to catch up with

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his studies. This is a practice he has retained through his working years. As a teacher, he
comes to school an hour early and leaves two hours later except on days when he has to
attend classes (at a local university where he is registered for a degree in public
administration). He uses the extra time for several purposes: extra-tuition for his grade-
12 students or sometimes works out with his school athletics team (he is also the school
sports master). An avid athlete, Movement has participated and completed the annual
“comrades marathon” (a 90-km race dedicated to the heroes of struggle who fell on June
16, 1976) three times in the last seven years.

Upon entering college, Movement had very modest goals of helping others
“achieve their goals” and “imparting (my) knowledge, especially in the subject in which
(I) had much interest (biology)” (Interview, February 19, 1997). He was determined to
share and use his experiences to provide better chances and opportunities for others in
school. All the challenges in his life had contributed to his convictions to “change
things.” Many of his experiences in and outside of his professional life all seemed to

contribute to this overall goal against the status quo.

MAKING SENSE OF THE CHANGES IN SITHOLE’S CLASSROOM
PRACTICE
One way of reading this case study is as a story of one teacher’s ability to balance
his contradictory goals for science teaching with the conflicting social and professional
expectations of being a teacher in South Africa. That is, while on the one hand Mr.
Sithole was struggling to reconcile his three goals for teaching science - - “quantity,”

“quality” and “equity” - - he was also engaged in a process of justifying the kind of

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practice that was emerging out of this struggle to reconcile the goals. The resulting
practice went much against the images created by the dominant discourses on how to
teach science in South Africa. For example, while the dominant discourse of
“authoritarian surveillance” (Walker, 1996) created an expectation for his classroom
approach to have a distinct emphasis on hierarchical relationships, his emphasis on
democratic relationships and participation arising out of his goals for science teaching
went against the grain in the profession. How is it that Mr. Sithole was able to balance
these contradictions, in a way that they ceased to become contradictions for him, and
maintain a practice that went against the grain? What kind of resources did he draw upon
to sustain a transformative vision and practice? How is it that he was able to underplay
the dominant conceptions of science teaching within the context of his own life and
work?

The answer to these questions is not a simple one. It requires us to look closely at
the events in his life experiences and the meanings they had for him in relation to his
goals for teaching science. His life experiences provided various themes by which he
defined his identity and enabled me to characterize him as a transformative science
teacher. In other words, for Mr. Sithole to break free of the stranglehold of the dominant
discourses that promote modal practices, he needed to see himself in a different light, not
bound by these discourses. That is, he needed a powerful new identity as a
transformative science teacher to substitute the imposed identities that support modal
practices. This new identity of a transformative practitioner is a personal construction by
Mr. Sithole from all his experiences as a Black student, science teacher, parent,

community leader, and cultural being in an African society. The meanings he gave to

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these experiences yielded certain identity forms in Mr. Sithole, which he was able to use
in constructing an identity as a transformative practitioner. In my analysis of his
experiences and how they all shaped his stance on transformative practices, four
particular identity forms stand out: his African identity, identity as a leader and activist,

the professional identity, and the identity as a learner.

African identity

Mr. Sithole is an African and has lived in the African townships of South Africa
all his life. Despite the oppression and poverty so characteristic of these township
communities, the social networks and values are still as intact as they were before
apartheid took over on a grand scale. The social values, networks and ways of doing
things by communities are often referred to as culture. Aspects of this culture such as the
notion that “it takes a whole village to care for and educate a child” provide the intangible
tools on which Mr. Sithole draws to construct a transformative identity. The proverb
essentially neutralizes the idea of the “other” in teaching and learning situations. The
“other” becomes your own, and teaching becomes a personal and cultural involvement.
This ethic of caring for and helping the “other” is so obvious in Mr. Sithole’s vision for
equity in science teaching. It is not clear to me that he bases his pedagogy of inclusion
on the tenets of some reform literature as much as it arises out of his cultural
responsibility and care for all children in the “village.” When I asked him, for instance,
about how he makes decisions about who should talk in class, he explained it in terms of
his desire to get everyone included, especially those who were not inclined to participate

in the public settings of the classroom:

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. . .' sometimes those who have their hands up, you know, most of them are
ones who continue to answer questions. Don’t give the other kids a chance.
Well the other ones, even though they are not raising their hands they know
the answers you find that their hands are not actually up but its a little bit
up, you see. They want to answer but they seem to be shy, I should think so.
So I give them a chance to participate.

(Interview, February, 19, 1997)
Equity for him is about giving all children a chance. This is not unlike his own situation,
when as a prospective teacher education student an old “timer” from his church gave him
a chance by offering to pay his registration fees. In fulfilling a cultural responsibility
towards a village child, the “timer” opened up a chapter on equity for Mr. Sithole.

There is another way in which his pedagogy offered chances to his students, that
is, achieving good results on the matriculation examination or his concerns with
“quantity.” The notion of providing chances for his students seems to reconcile his
otherwise contradictory goals for conceptual understanding of science with covering the
material and preparing for the examination. Since the matriculation examination is
everything for the students and their chances for a job or further education in South
Africa, it would be unwise to ignore the need for students to be prepared for this
challenge. Despite his criticism of the matriculation examination, Mr. Sithole sees no
contradiction in giving his students a chance to pass the examination, while pursuing his
other goals of equity and quality in science education. As an African, Sithole could
appeal to his cultural responsibilities as a father, as elder brother, as teacher and adult
member of society to care for and educate all children under his care.

Whether it was his involvement in the “Lost Children’s Group” who care for the
lost and abandoned children in the area, or his involvement in the pre-school committees
that are lobbying government to fund pre-school and kindergarten activities presently run

by community and non-govemmental agencies or his involvement with literacy classes at

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a local “night school,” or his biology teaching to his grade 12 classes, it all seems to
form part of a conscious effort to contribute to the transformation of society and
improvement of the life chances of others.

This cultural/ethnic identity form, however, does not only provide for positive
features alone, but contains contradictory aspects of culture, which were equally available
to Mr. Sithole. For example, although Mr. Sithole had over the years abandoned the use
of “the stick,” he was not opposed to its use in principle - - on cultural grounds. This
expectation for him to act tough and yet be caring and democratic (or inclusive) in
teaching science to his students is one of the dilemmas created by the appeal to this
cultural identity form. It is obvious that Mr. Sithole chose the features of culture that
resonated with his goals. How choices within choices are made, which help us achieve

particular goals, remains a question on which further research is needed.

Identity as a leader and activist

From the time when Mr. Sithole was wrongfully arrested as a student, he has
never looked back in terms of his development of an identity of resistance. Failing in his
first choice to become a lawyer so that he would be “able to assist those people (that he
had witnessed) manhandled by the police” (Interview, February 18,1997), he set out to
become a teacher with a difference. Armed with a vision of a transformed society and a
strong sense of activism, he set out to challenge the status quo in teaching. He described

his vision and goal as follows:

Actually there were many things that were happening in teaching that I
disliked most. Especially now at Black schools. You see now. I thought
that if I would be a teacher I would be able to change such scene, especially
the one of being under-resourced and then most of the teachers being unable
to impart their knowledge and the lack of interest in their teaching seems so

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and the actually the environment of our schools is bad...the conditions were
really not conducive for being sports persons and for learning.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

Two primary concerns spring from this statement by Mr. Sithole. First, he worries about
the neglect and under resourcing of Black schools generally. Second, he worries about
the lack of support for teachers and the consequent low morale among them. These are
two issues that drive his activism in and outside of the classroom. As a Black teacher, he
feels a particular responsibility to the students in his classroom (all of whom are Black)
and is not sympathetic to those teachers who give up on the kids because the system is
not supportive. His approach as a regional leader of the largest teachers’ union in the
country is to “serve the kids” (Interview, February, 18, 1997) while fighting the “system”
for better conditions of service. For him, working for change inside the classroom was
intricately bound with working for change at another broader structural level of society.
This included working with others to improve the conditions and resourcing of schools,
and access to pre-school education and other social welfare and sporting services to
(deprived) children.

It is this very ethic of leadership that sustains Mr. Sithole in his pursuit of
classroom practices that go against the grain. As a high profile leader of teacher’s union
that has been in the forefront of campaigning for educational transformation in the
country, and whose former president is the Minister of labor in the country, it is possible
that Mr. Sithole sees himself as a trailblazer- - a guinea pig in the experiments for social
and educational transformation. Since he has not seen the new reform curriculum

proposed to transform education in South Africa, he is nobody’s experiment but his own.

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So I have not seen the system (new curriculum) actually. What type of
system is going to be implemented. 1 never got a chance to be, a chance to
participate in this new curriculum. 1 don’t know what type of curriculum it’s
going to be. Either, if I had a chance I would say either its positive or
negative, I don’t know... Teachers’ organization are not involved in that.
Ja, it’s only the bureaucrats at the office who are trying to sort of make a
curriculum.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

Although the language and intentions of the new curriculum would resonate well and
support the transformations in Mr. Sithole’s classroom, the processes of developing and
implementing the new curriculum have been so controversial and contested that much of
its appeal is lost to those teachers, like Mr. Sithole, who need it the most.

Coming out of a strong tradition of workers’ leadership and political activism
which emphasizes democratic principles of consultation, participation, democratic
decision-making, it is no surprise to see Mr. Sithole play the science education game by
the same rules. He presents students’ responses to wider processes of discourse by

asking others to comment on the response:

to see whether those students agree with her before I can give my own
resolution to the class. .13, to see whether they understand the lesson the
same way the other student who answered the question... Sometimes I
usually ask the pupils to answer the same question, if somebody is asking a
question, I redirect the question to them.

(Interview, February, 19, 1997).

The democratic approach to the science discourse enables him to pursue his goals of
encouraging participation in the lessons. But, beyond that it opens up a window into the
different understandings by the students. The notion of a “resolution,” although derived
from the political processes of reaching a consensus on an issue, have important
relevance to science education. It suggests an approach to science as a social
construction, presenting scientific knowledge as generated through processes of public

discourse and agreement or conventions (to resolve differences between competing

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positions). Discourse and social construction of science knowledge are two of the key

features of the new reforms in science education internationally.

Professional counter-identity

The professional culture of teaching in South Africa is grounded on a premise
distorted by the various discourses of apartheid. For example, the “teacher qualification
discourse” (Walker, 1996) tends to undermine the sense of competence of many older
teachers who are defined as “un(der)qualified.” For the younger teachers who graduate
from colleges of education with an inadequate preparation in subject matter,39 building
confidence to present the subject matter in ways that encourage students to question and
participate more can be very challenging. Furthermore, the discourse of “authoritarian
surveillance” (Walker, 1996) limits the ability of teachers to make professional decisions
about what is appropriate to teach, when and how. The syllabus prescriptions are often
over-detennined, and all that teachers have to do is to go through the textbook page by
page. Such professional expectations create and sustain a weakened sense of subject
matter identity among many of the Black teachers in South Africa.

In a professional culture that seems to discourage innovation, to be different

requires a very strong sense of self in relation to one’s work and relations with others

 

’9 Entry requirements at Colleges of Education required less than what universities expected of prospective
teachers. The latter often expected a first (roughly a C-grade) or second class (roughly a D—grade) pass in
the subject of specialization. The result was that most Black teachers from colleges of education have less
confidence and mastery of the subject matter. At the colleges, the curriculum takes them no further than
what they already know from their grade 12 subject matter, since particular emphasis is placed on ability to
teach the subject (more or less what Shulman (1987) calls the pedagogical content knowledge, PCK). Some
universities have determined that the college curriculum gives teachers competence at a level one year
beyond grade 12, and will therefore credit a college teacher with one year’s worth of work if they pursue a

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around the workplace. Upon graduation, Mr. Sithole set out on a path to be just that kind
of a teacher who would be “different.” He was determined to achieve better than many

other teachers around him:

I thought I would teach much better than the other teachers do. For
example, either I try to improve myself to make children to understand the
subject that I was teaching. Ja. Especially science-wise. Ja. I try to have
resources for science. Constructing science without resources is useless
A better teacher is a person who is always prepared in the subject and
always trying to impart his knowledge and also to help the pupils
understand the subject by implementing various methodologies to alleviate
such problems of the pupils as they might have. By planning, I should
think, planning, study further to improve your qualifications so that you
must be having much knowledge and be able to share knowledge with the
pupils, you see and have some knowledge that deals with the
underachievers for some pupils have the interest but being unable to cope
with such subject but you must have some other way round to encourage
them so that they must be able to have interest in the subject and also to
improve themselves. So must try to involve every pupil and to treat them
equaHy.
(Interview, February 18, 1997).

Mr. Sithole identifies four aspects of practice that needed his attention in order to
construct a strong sense of professional identity. First, issues of equity in dealing with all
his Ieamers, paying attention to participation and relevance of subject matter to their
lives. Second, excellence in presenting and responding to subject matter issues and
students’ questions and concerns. This involved developing a strong pedagogical content
knowledge (Shulman, 1987) in science. Third, issues of promoting deeper
understandings of the subject matter and paying attention to all students’ ideas in the
classroom, especially those less inclined to be involved in class activities. Lastly, issues
of organization and management of the learning environment, with emphasis on prOper
planning and ability to improvise in terms of finding resources for science teaching. His

experiences at the college of education and the in—service courses he attended in his first

 

further diploma in education. Interestingly, though, college teachers who wish to improve their subject
matter knowledge by pursuing a university degree receive no such credit or exemptions.

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year of teaching had not prepared him adequately to assume such a strong sense of
identity. He, therefore, had to rely on his resources to build up the competence and
confidence in the areas he identified as needing attention. Learning became a vehicle

through which he developed this strong sense of subject matter identity.

Identity as a learner

Although Mr. Sithole’s first years in the profession were “horrible,” in that he was
“thrown in the fire” ( Interview, February, 18, 1997) of unruly students who were caught
up in the middle of an intense political struggle against the system of apartheid education,
he wasn’t swayed from the early ambitions of to be different. He spent his first two years
(re) learning how to be a teacher under these conditions: how to deal with “discipline
problems,” how to prepare lessons that would capture the attention of students who did
not see a firture within the apartheid education system, and more importantly how to
create avenues for the expression of his visions for a better society, better schools and
better teachers. As a start, he enlisted with a non-govemmental organization that was
offering Saturday classes to matriculation students in the area. This Saturday school
project brought his life full circle, as he was paying back his dues in a program similar to
the one he had attended as a student, several years earlier. The significance of this
Saturday program, however, lies in its effort to spread collaborative Ieaming (“group
learning”) strategies to teachers in Black schools. Mr. Sithole became a beneficiary of
their staff development programs on collaborative learning methods. What began as an

extra hour’s activity actually contributed a great deal in shaping his classroom practices

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in non-traditional ways. He elaborated on the developments in his learning to be a “better

teacher” as follows:

Yes, I should think there has been a change because I am able handle the
senior classes, even lower classes, in the same manner. I am able to bring
some new methodology in class. Motivate pupils. Make some resources
available, either the charts available or the pupils should bring some
specimen to class so that to involve them in the learning situation. They
should see biology is a living subject and they should be able to do some of
the aspects alone, like those projects and in a sense I’m growing with the
subject... I make biology a living subject by allowing the pupils to do the
courses themselves. Either (they) bring some specimen to class. Like, eh,
for example, if I am teaching rhizopus in biology, I will make them to
prepare such at home. And to prepare it in that manner like it appears in the
textbook. The characteristics and the location of that. How it survives in
that condition and that when they bring that to class they must be able to see
some of the things that appear there in that specimen which also appears in
the text books and then I try to associate that with the text book and the real
thing. In a similar sense it develops their mind, understand that the subject
is living even though they cannot touch some of the aspect they seem to be
abstract. Like reproduction wise, it is not possible always to see how it is
reproducing but yet you see some of their structures, you see. In that sense
you have that idea of how to understand and how to mind the subject.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

Mr. Sithole sees himself growing with the subject matter, from his abilities to teach both
senior and lower classes equally effectively. He places emphasis on the growth of his
pedagogical content knowledge and his abilities to work with and from the student’s own
life experiences. A pedagogical practice that sought to deal with connections between
important themes in biology, that relied on non-traditional instructional approaches - -
allowing students to work in groups and contribute their own ideas to the subject struck
me as something as I had witnessed in Mr. Sithole’s classroom at one point or the other
during my visits. That was how he had characterized his changing classroom practice.

Movement is now a regional leader of a national teacher’s union in and continues
to campaign for the rights of teachers to improved conditions of teaching and learning in
schools. Having completed a further diploma in biology teaching with a local distance

university, he is now pursuing a degree in public administration. To fashion a strong

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identity as a transformative science teacher under the conditions of teaching in the
townships of South Africa is a complex task that requires a strong will, a consistent
vision of change, and plenty of resources - - cultural, professional and educational - - and

the mindset to engage in some form of action for change.

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CHAPTER FIVE

MARGINALIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A TRANSFORMATIVE

IDENTITY

INTRODUCING MR. TSHABALALA, HIS VISIONS, AND COMMITMENTS TO
SCIENCE EDUCATION

Morapeli Tshabalala, a bearded black male in his late-305, is a six year veteran
science and mathematics teacher at a large secondary school, Maxima, in a township
south west of Johannesburg (SOWETO).40 He was the most forthright of all the teachers
in the study and whose classroom teaching I had the opportunity to observe the most and
discuss with him. His school was less organized administratively, making it relatively
less cumbersome to negotiate entry at any time when I wished to speak to him and/or
observe his classroom. Mr. Tshabalala was very open about what he was trying to do in
his classroom and often landed in trouble with his superiors about his non-traditional
views and approaches to teaching and learning. In one such instance where he had asked
students to work in groups on different kinds of projects in ecology, he ran foul with the
office over his perceived demands on the students in his class. His description of the
incident elaborates both his vision for science teaching and the varied responses from

students and the school leadership to this vision:

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Well, you see you have students and you have to give them projects, so that,
‘this is the project that you need to do; you organize an aquarium, you
know, this class aquarium that you have, you find aquatic animals there e.g.
fish which was the simplest that could be found.’ You ask them that
although it was very expensive but we have to make it. ‘So combine the
four of you. Either you combine money or combine whatever, sit down
there and work with this project and then after you have bought all that
accessories the aquarium, the fish, you know all the necessary the basic
environment, the light and everything then you must put fish, the different
type of fish, and you must be able to tell us exactly the behavior of the fish,
must go there in the laboratory and study the behavior of this fish. Write a
report on how do they feed? How do they survive? If one fish died, you
must cry and be worried and investigate what happened. How many times
you are supposed to change, may be once a month or a quarter or a week to
change the water inside. What was the advantage of changing the water
every week and not wait for three months or something like that. So you
know something that will create some creativity on the side of the students.
Then one student went to the office to complain that he cannot afford the
project. And then from there, my principal, without even thinking, you
know, deeply into the aim of the project, said I should stop all the projects.
He actually asked me not to do this project.

(Interview, February 17, 1997)
For Mr. Tshabalala, teaching and learning of science occurs better when located within
the context of real life experiences. In this instance, students had to learn about the
ecology and physiology of fish, their behavior, feeding mechanisms, structural features _
and other concepts important to the subject matter of science within the context of trying
to raise fish in a school aquarium. Furthermore, students were learning science
differently from the dominant approaches that promote detachment and emotional un-
involvement in the name of “objectivity.” Mr. Tshabalala expected them to be passionate
about their projects and be willing to invest such resources as may be necessary to make
it work, including raising funds for purchasing small scale equipment and necessities.
Above all, he expected them to be “one with the organism” (F ox-Keller, 1985) they were

raising by being compassionate to the animals. In a way that is so characteristic of

 

’0 SOWETO is an acronym for SOuth WEstem TOwnships, referring to a group of black residential areas
located on the South Western side of Johannesburg.

125

feminist visions of science, he expected attachment to the experimental organisms (F ox-
Keller, 1985).

Mr. Tshabalala described the purposes of these student projects, as not just aimed
at creating fun in the classroom but also designed to allow for different and creative ways
of communicating scientific understandings to this community of learners (Interview,
February 17, 1997). Students engaged with each other in discourse communities of
young scientists and were rewarded in the same way as they would have been in ordinary
written tests. Performance assessment was, therefore, a major theme of Mr. Tshabalala’s
practice.

This kind of practice is indeed atypical and uncommon in most science
classrooms, especially in developing countries. As Mr. Tshabalala’s case illustrates, such

a practice is also not always supported both by Ieamers and school authorities:

Ja, its just that unfortunate(ly) she (the deputy principal) decided to take
a very quick decision, a very impulsive decision. Ja. They (deputy and the
principal) stopped that. The approach was more of authoritarian, they never
reported, that they wanted to know why they (students) were doing that.
They just said stop that because parents are complaining. ‘Now what are the
parents complaining about? Can I see those parents that are complaining so
that I am able to take them into the environment to see what the student had
done so far. Maybe your one student was just dodging the task. So,
therefore, he was able just to use his parents to complain, thats all.’

(Interview, February 18, 1997).

In the case of Mr. Tshabalala’s school leaders, the response was clearer and
harsher. He was ordered to stop his ways of teaching science to that group of learners.
Although his transformative classroom practices were shaken by that incident and he
officially stopped the projects (students continued with them unofficially and he gave
them marks for the work), he continued to embrace the vision of transformation in

science education.

As with Mr. Sithole, Tshabalala’s practice was constructed around the
three goals of content coverage, conceptual understanding, and inclusion and equity. The
meaning or emphasis of each goal differed slightly, however. For example, on the
question of inclusion and equity, Mr. Tshabalala was more deliberate about including
girls in, on his teaching of science by designing learning projects that allowed for girls to

lead in the group work activities and the class presentations.

FEATURES OF CLASSROOM PRACTICE

I observed Mr. Tshabalala teach biology on five different occasions during my
week-long visits to Gauteng in February and April of 1997. Throughout these
observations, I left his classroom with a sense of confusion about his vision and practice
of science education. For, in contrast to the vision he had articulated in our discussions
of his classroom practice, what I saw in many of these observation sessions appeared to
be only marginally different from the traditional forms of practice. “Content coverage”
and “forms of classroom control” were the dominant features of what his classroom
practices seemed to be about. His teaching was “defensive” (McNeil, 1986) and he
seemed to be using subject matter to keep students under control and active during the
lesson. In analyzing these initial lessons, I observed a preponderance of such phrases as

99 6‘

a possible exam question would ask,” “pay attention to this. . ., are

,9 6‘

“listen carefully,

,3 ‘6

you listening, what did I say yesterday?” which collectively began to suggest a specific
use of subject matter in these classroom. He was keeping a tight control on what needed

to be learned and how it would be Ieamed. On a number of occasions, he would ask

students to walk to the board and write down their responses to questions or demonstrate

127

something to their colleagues. Mr. Tshabalala still asked students different questions and
got them to comment on each other’s responses, but often called on them to look at their
study guides for “more information” on the questions.

In a segment typical of this group of lessons Mr. Tshabalala taught a lesson in
biochemistry, where he was reviewing the concept of “chemical bonding” and “the
molecular structures of biologically important organic compounds.” He came into the
grade-12 class of about 63 students with a set of about six or seven study guides
(summarized version of the prescribed textbook). With 63 students in the classroom, Mr.
Tshabalala barely had room to move across the front of the room from one side of the
chalkboard to the other. Accordingly, there was no room a teacher’s table in the
classroom and Mr. Tshabalala had to use part of the students’ desk to put his papers and
materials for the lesson (See Appendix E for a sketch of the classroom setting). As if
familiar with the classroom routines, students began to move the desks which were
organized into four rows of six, closer together to form random groups of about ten
students per set of desks. Forming the groups meant that other students had to turn
backwards to face other members of the group since their desks are designed in such a
way that students can only sit facing in one direction. Six groups were formed to which
he handed a study guide. After writing the title “organic compounds” on the chalkboard,
he began a review of his lesson by asking questions on the previous lessons. Most of the
questions he asked were direct factual questions to which students responded with short
answers, mostly derived from the text in front of them. Here is a segment typical of these

lessons:

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T: What is covalent bonding?

SS: (silence... 1 minute)

T: what happens in a covalent bonding?

S1: bond between non-metals

T: Yes, it often occurs between non-metals. Yes? (asking for more comments from the students)
S2: occurs between Carbon and Hydrogen

T: Yes, the OH bond is one example of a covalent bond. Look at your study guides...

S3: Electrons are shared equally

T: Yes, it is the kind of bonding where electrons are shared (emphasis).

Teacher then writes down the three responses contributed by the students on

Sharing of electrons, between non-metals, with CH as example (students also write down in their
notebooks).

T: What happens when the electrons are not shared?

S2: they move to the one side (demonstrating the shift with his hands)

T: Yes, they are attracted to the one element. What do we call such a bond where the shared
electrons are attracted to the one side?

S4: An ionic bonding.

T: Remember we are still talking about shared electrons. and non-metals

S4: Oh, a polar bond

T: Yes a polar covalent bond.

(Observation, February 18, 1997)
This review segment lasted about 15 minutes of the lesson, after which the teacher took
over with some sense of urgency and spent the remaining 20 minutes of the 35 minutes
class time teaching a new section on the molecular structures of a few biologically
important organic compounds, viz. the alkanes, the alkenes, the alcohols, and the
monocarboxylic acids. He illustrated how each structure was related to that of the other
classes of compounds. For example: To derive Methanol (Alcohol) from Methane
(Alkane), students substituted a hydrogen atom with a hydroxyl group and to derive
Methanoic acid, they substituted two hydrogen atoms with an oxygen atom, and created a
double bond (See Appendix F). During his presentation, student participation involved
going to the chalkboard to complete the drawings on how each structure was derived
from the other class of compounds once the teacher had explained the technique.
The teacher concluded the section with a selection of typical examination questions from

a set of previous examination papers. With renewed vigor in the lesson, students took

turns answering the questions most of which were multiple choice questions and on that
exciting note (with students feeling confident in their ability to answer questions from
previous examination papers), Mr. Tshabalala ended the lesson for the day. This was the
typical format of the lessons I observed during the first half of the year. First, there
would be a review of work done previously, and Mr. Tshabalala would have such a hard
time getting any kind of feedback from the students. Initially, I was left wondering if the
students were uncharacteristically silent or were engaged in some form of resistance
which took the form of deliberate silence in the classroom. After several observations,
and looking at their excitement towards the end of the lessons, their silence seemed
natural (i.e. it was not forced silence and did not appear to be an expression of resistance
in any way). After the rather lengthy reviews, Mr. Tshabalala would then introduce a
new concept for the day to be followed by questions from previous examination papers.
My observations of Mr. Tshabalala’s practices left me confused for two reasons:
First, his practices were not congruent with the ways in which he was talking about his
vision for science teaching and learning, and I seemed to have trouble getting him to talk
about the apparent contradiction. The second reason for my confusion was a
methodological one. As I was only able to observe Mr. Tshabalala five times in the first
half of the year, I was not sure if the apparent contradictions were merely a result of the
flaws in the methodology, such that if I visited Mr. Tshabalala’s classroom more
regularly, I would be able to see a different kind of practice or that some other
explanation of what was happening would emerge. Eventually, I had to ask more pointed

questions of Mr. Tshabalala to understand better what was happening in the lessons.

I30

As it turned out, the lessons I had observed were indeed atypical according to Mr.
Tshabalala. In the previous year, for instance, his approach to the lesson on organic
compounds had varied in some important ways:

Ia, last year it was different because, one I had some borrowed material
from the Funda Center (a local community college). Two, we had our media
room last year. So, after I taught a lesson, I took them into the media room.
Unfortunately this year, last year later they broke in and took all the video
and the television...Yes. so it was different because I taught in a class first,
I taught them almost in a similar way. The question that was different
because I had more time to explore on it and then the next lesson was ready
to develop on that by going out and looking through the video as such. So
you learn and talk about more application of this stuff. We still have the
media room but like I am saying to you, the video material, the tapes, Ja, the
video itself and the television we don’t have.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)
In the previous year, Mr. Tshabalala spent a little more time on the topic allowing
students to manipulate the ball-and-stick models he had borrowed from the community
college. Instead of constructing the molecular structures on the chalkboard as they did in
the lessons I observed, the previous year they had the manipulatives to construct these
structures in their groups. Secondly, a commercially-made video on the real world
applications of the biologically important organic compounds was shown to the students.
The focus on application and hands-on activities for the learners had the potential to
promote deeper conceptual understandings of the subject matter than it seemed students
were getting from the observed lessons.

Why then was Mr. Tshabalala choosing to teach these set of lessons (on
biochemistry) in the ways that he was doing? The short answer to the question is that: as
with Mr. Sithole, Tshabalala was covering his back by “covering the syllabus” and
preparing his students for the national examination. Unlike Mr. Sithole, though, his
content coverage lessons were distinct and separate in time from the conceptual

understanding lessons - - although both sets of lessons included aspects of equity. To

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understand better his practice, one has to locate it within the context of his working life
and conditions at the school where he was teaching.

At the time of our first conversation for this research project, Morapeli was in his
second year of a secondment at Oliver Nyanda high school, a large finishing school in the
area. Finishing schools represent a new kind of institution in South Africa, having
emerged in the mid-905 as a replacement of what had hitherto been known as the adult
education centers. The adult education centers were nothing but a series of classes and
programs arranged for groups of learners who needed second or third opportunities to
take the matriculation examination. These centers were specifically designed for Ieamers
who had been unsuccessful in their first attempt at the matriculation examination. They
provided an after (school) hours tuition to these learners who could not be readmitted to
their old schools, where they sat for the examination the first time around. The actual
subject offerings were designed around the demand of the students. That is, subjects
were offered only on the basis of some evidence of the demand, for example if more than
eight learners were available for tuition. These adult centers were meant to be separate
and distinct from another program of the department of education that was also available
to the unsuccessful matriculants - - the night schools.

Despite the appearance of offering second chances to the grade-12 students who
had not been successful the first time around, the adult education centers were a mockery
to the concept of second chances. They were so poorly organized, under-funded, with
limited personnel capacity, and were constrained in terms of time and space. As a
biology teacher at one of these adult centers in 1992, I only had the opportunity to see my

students twice a week, for a total of four hours, in a classroom environment where we

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could not do much but talk and talk about the subject matter. Conceiving of a practice
richer than that would have been difficult under these conditions. The adult education
centers had to negotiate for two hours a day of free space within an existing school. As
most secondary schools were busy until about four or five in the afternoons on most days,
adult centers were often accommodated in primary school buildings. Even then, they
were only offered rooms to do their teaching in, but no resources or facilities beyond. No
laboratories, offices, staff rooms, copying facilities and other such infra-structural
requirements were available to these centers. As for the teaching staff, we had our
regular jobs elsewhere within the education system and only offered four hours-per-week
of our time to these centers. In general, adult centers were poorly funded, badly
administered and enjoyed low priority within the department of education. They were
created to diffuse the political pressure created by the high failure rates in the
matriculation examinations. For the most part, therefore, the second chance offered by
these centers was a second chance in name only.

Against this background, it was not surprising that these adult centers were the
focus of students’ and community’s ire and contempt. Though desirable, in the sense of
providing for second chances, they were inadequate to the task. For this reason, most
students who could find their way back to the regular schools for the second or third
attempt at the matriculation examination, did so. In fact, at the beginning of every school
year, community crisis committees (later called co-ordinating committees) were often
formed to take up the plight of the students who needed second chances in schools.
Different communities worked out agreements with local school inspectors and principals

for the readmission of most of these Ieamers - - against the department’s official

I33

prescription not to readmit the failed matriculants in regular schools. Finishing schools
then emerged out this set of complex circumstances, where there was a consensus among
all stakeholders in society about the need to provide more opportunities for learners to
take and succeed in the matriculation examination. For most people in the black
communities, adult education centers were, however, a dead option in this regard. The
new government, post 1994, therefore had to consider other options and thus the concept
of a finishing school was born. Finishing schools were to be more than what the adult
centers had been. They were to be schools within schools, providing second and third
opportunities for the finishing class only (the grade-12 candidates).

It is in this kind of an environment that I first observed and discussed science
teaching with Morapeli Tshabalala. As he described it in our first conversation, his
finishing school, Oliver Nyanda finishing school, was conceived of in December 1995
after the dismal matriculation performance by the class of 1995 in most schools in
Soweto:

. inl995 they decided that because there was a high failure rate, lot of
people wanted to come back and repeat matric (culation examination) and
then they decided that in 1996 we should have a certain class that we
allocate for repeaters class and I was then assigned to take that department
as such. I was responsible for the finishing school...it is a separate school
from Maxima but we share the same yard, the same campus and the same
facilities.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

Oliver Nyanda Finishing was a school within a school. It was born out of a commitment
to equity through the provision of second chances to black students who had otherwise
been failed by the education system. Although concerns with equity were driving the
formation of finishing schools, other concerns with excellence loomed large in the .
background. That is, there were concerns with the effects that the repeating students

would have on the new class entering grade-12.

134

Given that we have many requests that a student wanted to come back and
repeat because there was high failure rate in matric(ulation). So, therefore,
we felt that if we do not have special classes, we are going to have a
blockage because students are going to be stuck in matric(ulation)... then
would have more repeaters in the class. It was unfair to have people
repeating in a class and one attempting matric(ulation) for the first time, so
the best idea was to create special classes. Then we eventually decided just
to call it a Finishing School, which is a part of the Community College as
such.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

In many ways, therefore, the finishing school was constructed as a school for the “other,”
and not for the achieving students. As a school for the “other,” its students and teachers
were marginalized within the system. The student population, which was
disproportionately female, was made up of students who had experienced less success

and acceptance within the regular high schools. Many of them had attempted and failed

the matriculation examination before:

.. it is either people who did matric for the first time last year or second
time. Rather, maybe they had a break and discovered, somebody wrote
matric in 1992, maybe had a baby, and later said “No I have to attempt it
again.” So we normally accommodate those kind of people.

(Interview, February 18, 1997).

The disproportionate number of female students is probably a result of several factors,
including that females make up the largest number of matriculation candidates in South
Africa and proportionally more of them fail than males (Amott et al, 1997). Secondly,
prior to the introduction of the new South African School’s Act (SASA) in 1997, female
students who fell pregnant during the term were summarily expelled from schools with
no provision for any second chance within the regular schools.

With respect to the staffing of finishing schools, they were better off than their
predecessors were - - the adult education centers. The problem of the marginalization of
the staff at finishing schools, however, was more conspicuous as illustrated by the case of

Mr. Tshabalala:

135

Well, its just as unfortunate like I am saying it just looks like my
contributions were taken as being very provocative, in a sense that when the
whole thing (of the finishing school) comes in, it looks like they wanted to
get rid of me by transferring me to another school. Yet they are helping me
in a way. I don’t know why. It is because, like I am saying I have been
taken as the most provocative person, yes. Yes, I always come up with
very different views and I want to take myself as very, very committed.
Sometimes we will argue that because I challenge, I wanted to know why.
They say that I don’t co-operate. At a particular point I recall they wanted
to write a report about me to the Inspectors and then I said go ahead, no
problem, you can write. They say that do you know that what it does to your
career and I said to them well I don’t know that. You guys know because
you are in the office. You have a right to, possibly you are or want more
control of my life. So, you know we are actually in loggerheads but that has
not de-motivated me, as such. Except unfortunately you cannot ask a
student to do other extra things, extra curricular things.

(Interview, February 18, 1997).

Mr. Tshabalala viewed his transfer to the finishing school as a punishment for his
challenge to the status quo at Maxima secondary (his original school). His challenge to
the hierarchical and oppressive relations with the school administration, and his challenge
to modal practice, landed him at the finishing school. In many ways, his practice
reflected his new set of circumstances. That is, he could not ask students to engage in
“extra” activities without anyone higher up in the school ranks taking notice. Also, he
now had to prove himself with a different group of students - - that were perceived as the
“other” within the system. He viewed his transfer as a set up for him to fail. With this
group of students, his non-traditional practices would run counter to the parental, societal,
departmental, and students’ expectations for a “finishing school.” His interpretation of
what a second or third chance means had to be balanced with the dominant views which
constructed the second chances as just second or third attempt at the matriculation
examination and nothing more. The students had to be prepared to “finish” school and
nothing more. This was the context within which his practice was to be constructed.

In the last of the five lessons I observed in the first half of the year, just prior to

the mid-year examination, Mr. Tshabalala took time to go over a few of the sections he

136

had covered in the first semester which were likely to be assessed in the mid-year
examination. Although I was not making a longitudinal study of Mr. Tshabalala’s
practices, what I saw of his practice at the time of my second visit to Gauteng in April
and my observations of him in the second half of the year and the following year, relative
to what I had observed earlier, made him an interesting case for this study. His practice
had shifted in very interesting ways as he got “familiar” with the students and the setting
of his practice (Interview, April 18, 1997). In a revision lesson on the biochemistry
section I described earlier, Mr. Tshabalala asked students to get into their groups of about
10-12 again, but instead of working from a study guide this time he asked them to assume
roles as teachers for their classmates. They were to prepare “teaching and learning aids”
to present a lesson that would describe the names of some biologically important organic
compounds, their structural features, real world examples of their use and would
conclude by identifying and answering a few possible examination questions on their
chosen topics (Observation, April 18, 1997). Most students drew charts with the different
components of their lessons and presented these to their colleagues. The interesting part
about this lesson and the subsequent ones is that Mr. Tshabalala had found a point at
which he felt comfortable to let go of his tight control of the class and the subject matter.
There was now more participation from the students in the lessons, students took the
initiative on decisions about what to present in class and how, they engaged in
conversations among and between the groups about the subject matter, they practiced
important skills of communication within the context of learning biology and preparing
for the examination. Mr. Tshabalala was paying more attention to who was

participating, and how, that is to issues of gender and language in the participation of

137

his students. When I asked him about the shifts, Mr. Tshabalala described his approach

as follows:

I like them to enjoy, to use whatever learning material or the teaching
material, you understand. To play with the subject of the day or maybe the
structure that was taught to them. Now if you take it a bit further it was just
wrapping it as the part of the development of a lesson. Not necessarily
delivering everything to them. They need to be part of it and they need to
begin to play with some teaching material so that, you know, it is easy for
them to learn. And once they stood up and developed confidence, even
some of them because you know, they can’t express themselves, they also
learn then sometimes the technique of expressing themselves to their
colleagues because that itself will help them out. Remember that I am just
preparing them for the external environment, you see of possibly being able
to discuss with colleagues and develop a confidence whey they are in front
of them and contribute your ideas. Feel yourself among us, the different
people that you meet and extend them into different challenges that will
come with your studies. Depends what students are taking next year. So
they must be able to develop that particular challenge. They must have
confidence, must be sure of their facts and must be able simply just to take
whatever difficult stuff, whatever it may be, just to play with it in their
learning environment or you know, or be part of the lesson, you know.
Because if I had to stand there and teach everything and I had to do it
myself, then they are not part of my lesson. I cannot be convinced that
everybody is part of my lesson. I either have people feeling comfortable
when they come to the board, Then I am convinced that everybody, some
people, you know, because of their colleague is doing something for them.
“Something I am going to do it for myself.” Its easier then and “at the end

of the class when I go home, I have to go do this” (the students will tell

themselves).
(Interview, April 18, 1997).

Learning science was for Mr. Tshabalala an act of active engagement in the discourse
community of science, as a social construction to which students will be expected to
participate outside of school. Part of his expectations was for his students to develop
confidence in their ability to participate within these social discourses. Furthermore he

was more explicit about his attention to gender in the classroom:

I have to admit, my experience, especially the African schools is that the
girls adapt much quicker than the males but unfortunately, you know,
sometimes because of time constraint and because when we want the class
to close we miss that... girls are more, who speak more freely in the class
and who try to socialize and that are willing to attempt any what’s name but
that also varies with the classes because if you go to the science class, you
will sometimes get that reaction is almost equal at a particular point, you
understand. It varies from, in that particular class you will discover that
there are many women who will volunteer to learn very much but without

I38

being sexist, we will miss all those students who are very, very sharp to
influence the others. May be tomorrow we will then look at the gender
equality in class and say, hey why can’t we have women. But at the moment
I am allowing freely those who want to, sort of, people, the other group. I
wouldn’t like to see the other sex part of it eventually influence the others,
you understand. But if the female are quite faster. Lets use them as an
examples.

(Interview, April 18, 1997)
Mr. Tshabalala struggles with the notions of gender equity and inclusive participation in
his classroom. While on the one hand he consciously embraces a discourse of non-
sexism, where he tries not to see the students’ sex and its social meanings, he understands
the limitations of such an approach in terms of promoting broader goals of gender equity
in science education. He resolved the dilemma by calling on and actively seeking out the
girls in his science classroom, thereby addressing the broader issue of equity even while
temporarily suspending his immediate concerns with “inclusive participation.” Group
work, however, where girls could assume leadership roles while allowing for inclusive
participation by all help to resolve the dilemma in ways that minimize the contradictions
between his goals for teaching.

In the same vein, Mr. Tshabalala struggled with the issues of language in the
context of equity and participation. While some of his students wanted to participate in
the classroom discourses using their mother tongue, Mr. Tshabalala insisted that they use
English but quickly backed off when one female student insisted on using IsiXhosa to

respond to questions from her classmates:

it was the question of her lingua franca, she stood up and spoke in IsiXhosa, of
which that was wrong in the very multi-lingual environment you know, that was
completely wrong she needs to speak in English. Here she was ready to, and
very sharp (intelligent) but she was unable to express herself. She is very, very,
very intelligent but we need to work on her weaknesses. You know, it’s a
trivial weakness, as such.... well the question is this, in an environment where
we have almost seven languages at school. It is even more complex than her

139

(original) school. We almost cover almost ten of the languages as such". Some
others will dominate. So the question is this, if they allow IsiXhosa so to speak,
then what about SeTswana, then what about the SeSotho, what about the
Tsonga, you understand. Then eventually I will have to apply the principles of
this country to learn the eleven official languages, you understand. But now,
just for the sake of being procedural, and two in trying to use the language that
they are going to use in the exam. That is why I prevented her from using
IsiXhosa, you understand. Politically there is nothing wrong, nothing wrong
completely. But in terms of firstly preparing for the examination of which the
question will be in English, then it is good that I should just allow them to use
English....l suppose the woman can speak English because she got a very good
symbol (grade in her first attempt of the matriculation examination). Yes, in
biology, well you know, when I do the administration part of it, I normally
check their previous year grades.42

(Interview, April 18, 1997)
The language dilemma in Mr. Tshabalala’s classroom has several dimensions: First the
language diversity in his classroom, second the imperatives of the national examination,
third is the need to provide his students with an infrastructure for practicing the language
of power which they don’t often have except at school or when they have to interact with
white people in town, and lastly is the issue of student discourse and participation in
class. For example, were he to allow one particular African language to be used in class,
he risked marginalizing other Ieamers in his linguistically diverse classroom. Whereas if
he completely shut off students who were inclined to participate in their own languages,
he would compromise his goals of equity and participation. Added to the latter set of
considerations, is the expectation for him to prepare the students for the matriculation
examination and the need to provide them with the language skills to negotiate the hostile
terrain outside of school. All these factors complicated Mr. Tshabalala’s task regarding

language and participation. His was, therefore, a practical solution of drawing the

 

“ Unlike in the case of Mr. Sithole in Evaton, Soweto is the largest Black township (5) in South Africa and
is much more heterogeneous and linguistically diverse than any of the schools profiled in this study. It is,
therefore, not uncommon to find more than seven language groups in a classroom.

’2 In terms of the rules for the matriculation examination, students who want to improve their overall
performance in the examination (and their chances of getting a university entrance clearance) have to re-
write all the matriculation subjects including those in which they might have done well previously. They
take the subjects as a single package.

140

students’ attention to the importance of using English, but also not allowing language to
constrain the discourse in his classroom. With competing goals of equity and quantity,
his was almost a no win situation.

In another lesson, with a “regular” group of matriculation students”, I observed
Mr. Tshabalala engage the same kinds of issues of language. The difference in the latter
case was that the students in the “regular high school” were much more vocal on the issue
and actually raised it and debated him on the need to use English. In that situation, Mr.
Tshabalala backed off much sooner than in the case of the female student 'cited earlier.
He had asked students to summarize the day’s lesson in their own words and after several
students tried to do this in English and getting stuck at certain points, they each continued
in their mother tongue and asserted their right to do so under the new constitution of
South Africa.44 Mr. Tshabalala explained that once he had pointed out the need to use
English for examination purposes, he saw no need to labor the issue further so as to
prevent it from getting in the way of effective participation and learning.

I noted earlier that the lesson observed subsequent to the group teaching activities
(referred to above) were much richer in terms of illustrating the non-traditional aspects of
Mr. Tshabalala’s classroom practice. Students participated more and Mr. Tshabalala was
more at ease in pursuing the goals of equity, quality and quantity in the science
classroom. How then do we make sense of this persistence of transformative aspects of

practice in spite of the challenges and tendencies towards modal practice? And what

 

’3 In 1998, the Finishing school project was suspended by the government due to lack of funds and Mr.
Tshabalala and other teachers at the finishing school returned to their original schools.

’4 The South African constitution recognizes eleven official languages, viz. English, Afrikaans, IsiXhosa,
IsiZulu, SeSotho, SeTswana, Tsonga, TshiVenda, SiSwati, IsiNdebele, SePedi. Under this constitution,
students have a right to an education in their own language, “where practicable.” This reversed the
previous government’s policy of two official languages, English and Afrikaans.

14l

meaning did his practice have on his life? To answer these questions, we need to

understand his work within the context of his own life experiences.

LIFE STORY AND WORK EXPERIENCES

At the time of our first meeting for this research project, I had known Morapeli
Tshabalala for at least thirteen years. We first met in 1984 at a special, all-expense-paid,
pre-university program for Black students who had interests in science and technology
careers. The program, offered by one of the Historically White Universities (HWU) in
South Africa was sponsored by a consortium of South African companies and their
American partners who had resisted the call for divestment in Opposition to the apartheid
policies of the day. Although most of us were younger at the time, politically we were
wise enough to see beyond the pre-university program that was being offered. We joked
about how the two sets of institutions, the multinational companies and the university
concerned were using us as shields in their fight against political pressures to show a
distinct break with apartheid. Few amongst that group of fifteen who were in the
program had the political maturity and understanding that could match Morapeli’s.
Although we had been selected on the basis of our previous performances in science and
mathematics and on the strength of the recommendations of our school subject masters,
we spent long nights in debates and discussion about all sorts of political subjects other
than the politics of science and mathematics. Morapeli’s insights were invaluable in
these discussions.

Despite the fact that our lives took separate directions after that pre-university
program, most of us have kept close contact. Morapeli and I have remained friends ever

since especially as we both ended up in the teaching profession. Although we had spoken

142

on the phone once or twice after my departure to the United States of America (USA) in
1992, when we met for the project, I had not seen him in over five years. After I
explained to him that I was doing a research project on “science teachers who teach
differently from the traditional practice,” he invited me to take a look at his classroom.
As he put it, “you (the researcher) might be interested in some things that are happening
here.” I quickly negotiated a release from work to do “a pilot study” on the two teachers
in the Gauteng province. I used the opportunity to make similar arrangements with Mr.
Sithole, another old friend who was teaching science in a different township in Gauteng
and with whose practice I was familiar. Morapeli was, at this time, engaged to Boitumelo
and they were expecting their first child. I soon found out that, although he was excited
at the prospects of being a husband and father, he was also nervous about the
commitment. He was unsure about the time commitments he would now have to make in
view of his very demanding practices at school. As noted earlier, he was leading the
finishing school initiative, which he believed provided him the space to pursue a
potentially transformative agenda inside the classroom, in ways that he was not able to do
at his old school. The Finishing school with its weaker leadership and the prominent role
he was playing in its day-to-day running allowed him relatively more space to shape a
potentially transformative agenda in his classroom. In many ways, he found time to be
alone with his students without inspection from those in authority. His life story should
help us understand what it is about his own personal circumstances that made him
committed and willing to act out his transformative visions. And, how we can learn more

about commitments to transformative practice from his life experiences?

143

The cynics at his school seemed to think that it was the influence of his college
experiences that made him more “energetic” and “provocative.” In an earlier case study I
wrote for presentation at a conference, I described his college experiences and tried to
relate them to what I was seeing in his classroom (Jita, 1997). Upon reading that paper,
Morapeli was not impressed with the limited approach I had taken to talking about his
life and how it shapes what he does in his classroom. He felt that his whole life
experiences contributed in significant ways to the construction of an identity of a

transformative teachers. His comments on the paper were as follows:

I think it (the paper) was a very good examination actually. It presents a
picture of myself - the comments you have made make me to realize, you
know, that how important the informal discussion is... there are things that I
did pick up, for example, .my speaking and my speech, you know. I also
feel that there are other things that were overlooked. Yes, in the discussion
as such especially, the educational side of it. . .the concentration of the
whole paper was focused on the higher education, Ja. That is, mostly on my
teaching on- on - about my college life. Yes and what I did at the college.
The question is what happened in the high school? What is - what was my
situation in the high school? What about the earlier life than that? .la. What
is the correlation between the primary life, possibly the secondary life and
the tertiary life? So that when somebody look at the person and make some
assessment they should be able then to make, you know, a link between the
two and the changes in - Ja - in educational life. You know, starting from
the primary one to — up to particular present.

(Interview, July 23, 1997)
Although Mr. Tshabalala found something good to say about the paper, like the fact that

he was able to look at a number of facets of his background and see some links between
them and learn more about himself, he was not satisfied with other aspects of the paper.
For instance, although articulated politely, I realized his discomfort with the unedited text
(verbatim transcription) of his utterances. Despite his admission that his manner of
“speaking and speech” reflected who he is, speaking and writing are two separate
activities. Had I given him the opportunity to write his responses down, his language and

utterances would have been more polished than I had reflected in my paper (and it would

144

still reflect who he is when he writes). This was an important research dilemma for me as
I had come from a standpoint that seeks to grant voice to the participants in my project. I
had been critical of previous research that speaks for the teachers. I wished to hear more
of their authentic voices. I had not problematized this issue of voice in the way Morapeli
was raising it. His argument was in line with Bakhtin’s recognition of multiple voices
and the choice of which voice he used at a given point was as important in defining him
and his message. I have continued to cite his utterances almost verbatim although I
struggle with the kind of characterizations others may make of him from these unedited
citations. Secondly, despite the fact that Morapeli is not a life historian or researcher, he
was convinced that something about the totality of his life experiences has made him
what (and who) he is. That is, it was more than just what I had focused on that drives his
classroom practices and life experiences in general. He felt that more needed to be said
about his primary school experiences, high school experiences, and other ‘changes’ in the
circumstances of his life. For him, it was his life as whole that needed to be examined
and discussed to understand his practice.

I will now attempt to bring out some aspects of his life that may help us

understand the interactions between his commitments and actions a little better.

The life story
Born in a “traditional Zulu family” of parents who were denied any rights to
education, Morapeli has become one of only two children within the family of eight

children to go beyond grade seven.45 Reflecting on the situation of his parents, he blames

 

4SAlthough Morapeli’s mother and father had six children together, four boys (three older than Morapeli)
and two girls (one older than him), they lived with and grew up with his half brother and cousin sister —

I45

both the institutionalized racism within the South African farming sector and his
“traditional African environment” for his parents’ lack education and resulting hardships

that they had to endure:

Well I am saying, they were born in a Zulu traditional environment. You
know, school generally was not encouraged as such and secondly, you are
born in a white farm where any black kids were not allowed to attend the
schools. And secondly, besides that you do not have faith then, you are just
brought up in a traditional African environment as such, so you live in the
way of the traditionalist as such, who don’t specifically encourage the
question of schools, the question of religion, the questions of “civilization”
as such, you know. They suffer most of the hardship as such. So that is the
type of life that my daddy comes from.

(Interview, February 17, 1997)
His comments, however, suggest a differential influence of the two factors in his father’s
situation. That is, while the traditional environment did not encourage his father to
receive education of the kind that was offered by the missionaries, he suggests that
institutional racism and the relations of class exploitation between the white farmers and
their black laborers prevented him from receiving any education. Through this system
his parents were sure to remain an abundant source of cheap labor for the farming
economy. The story of Morapeli’s mother also follows a similar pattern, privileging her
with only three years of education. This “traditional” African’s ambivalence toward

education in South Africa is well documented (Bozzoli, 1991).

Cultural conquest versus education for empowerment
The first schools in South Africa were established by the Dutch colonialists, for
their slaves, in the Cape in 1658 (Behr and Macmillan, 1971). The Dutch East India

Company (DEIC) which had brought its own slaves to work in the Cape began recruiting

 

making it a family of eight children. The cousin sister, who came to live with them after her father
(Morapeli’s paternal uncle) passed away in her teens is the other member of the family who has advanced
beyond grade seven. Like Morapeli, she’s also a teacher in one of the schools in SOWETO.

I46

local Africans of mixed origin to participate in their schools. Their recruitment drive,
however, did not extend far enough to reach many of the indigenous African areas further
from the outposts in Cape Town. It was not only until the missionaries came in, with the
express purpose of ‘civilizing’ the natives, that western type education began to spread
across to the indigenous populations of South Africa. The story of missionary expansion
and the spread of their (western) forms of schooling is an all too familiar story of
conquest and cultural imperialism (Carnoy, 1974). Missionary schooling was often used
to destroy and substitute native cultural symbols and traditional educational practices
with western type practices and belief systems (Mkhonza, 1997). With the missionaries,
began the first systematic cultural conquest and conversion of the Africans in South
Africa.

At the same time as this cultural conquest and conversion was happening, there
was also a conquest of the Africans at the political and economic levels. The
promulgation of the 1913 and 1919 land acts, which essentially dispossessed Africans of
any land rights, accelerated the processes of conquest. Through these acts, white farmers
were accorded land rights to vast agricultural and residential areas previously owned and
inhabited by communities of African peoples. Coupled to the fact that most African at
the time did not have a franchise, the conquest was thoroughgoing. Wealthy and
educated Africans at the Cape were allowed to vote, however, thereby complicating the
processes of resistance towards missionary education. The ambivalence on the part of
some Afi’icans toward missionary schooling arose from the fact that while missionary
education provided a platform for political and sometimes economic advancement for the

natives, it was at the same time a symbol and vehicle for their cultural and religious

147

conquest. Missionary education had as its primary goal, the conversion of the natives to
Christianity and destruction of the traditional practices and ways of life. White farmers,
who now owned not only the rights to the land inhabited by most Africans, also assumed
ownership of the peoples who lived on the land. They apportioned to themselves the
right to determine what would happen to all those who lived on their land, and their
families. Missionary propelled cultural imperialism, combined with racial domination by
the Afrikaners and the British, and with the working class exploitation of Black families
by the white farmers to make for a vicious system of racialized capitalist exploitation in
pre-apartheid (pre - 1948) South Africa. It is this system of combined forces of
domination and exploitation to which Morapeli’s parents were victims.

Taking the only logical escape route out of the farm labor bondage, his parents
relocated to Soweto - a new township that had been created to keep black workers out of
the city of Johannesburg after work hours. This is where Morapeli was born, just after
the sociopolitical tensions of 1960 that resulted in the life imprisonment of Nelson
Mandela and his comrades with scores of other people killed or fleeing the country. He
was born in an area of Soweto called Zola - - often referred to as “deep Soweto” because
of its distance from the Soweto highway where most white folks and others who live
outside of the township would end up on their tours to the area. Soweto highway is just
on the outskirts of the township, and areas closest to it are considered friendlier to
tourists, most of whom are white folks from the suburbs or from abroad. Deep Soweto
on the other hand, which is made up such places as Zola, Emndeni and Naledi, is

considered dangerous and less friendly to outsiders.46

 

’6 This is most probably a stereotype, however, as most white folks and tourists never even get to these
areas because of their unfamiliarity with the places and the roads. As far as I can establish, to this day,

148

Early education

When Morapeli was seven years old and getting ready to begin school he lost his
older brother to a short illness. According to Mr. Tshabalala, the tragic experience of
losing his second brother was a significant turning point for his father. It drove him
closer to the Christian faith as he “became more of a pastor-like at the church”
(Interview, February 17, 1997). It is under these conditions of a family that had been
transformed so much, both by culture and religion at the one level and by the major
political and economic “regimes” of the 19603 at another level, that Morapeli began his
schooling at a primary school in his neighborhood. His family believed very much in the
“power of education,” that it would provide the children with better chances at life than
the parents had. His early experiences of school were not pleasant as he had to deal with
negative teaching practices and bullying by others at school. (Interview, February 17,
1997). Change came in his life, at the beginning of the senior primary phase of schooling
(grades 5-8).47 At this level, the bullying stopped, and the teachers were more committed
to a richer program for the learners. School started an hour earlier, with the first hour
devoted to a number of things over the week. Sometimes it was academic development,
and at other times it physical and athletic development (Interview, February 17, 1997).
Morapeli tasted success both inside and outside of the classroom and schooling became

less of a nightmare. He continued his primary schooling until another set of tragic

 

there has never been a (tourist) map of any of the black townships or residential areas of South Africa.
The names of the three areas, for instance, have a much more positive meaning than the concept of “deep
Soweto”: Zola means a place of calm; Emndeni means a place where families live; and Naledi means a
place where stars shine.

7 The lower and higher primary phases were often offered at separate schools. This trend has now been
reversed, yet again, in the history of Black schooling in South Africa. Primary schools now offer both
lower and higher levels in a single building.

149

circumstances forced another transformation in his life and that of his family. This time
the tragedy was both personal and political. Just as he was entering secondary school

with one of his remaining brothers, the political tragedy of 1976 disrupted their advance.

The events of June 16, 1976 and their impact on Mr. Tshabalala

The Nationalist Party (NP) which had won the 1948 elections on a promise to
Afrikaner domination of social life proposed a new language policy for Black schools
that would be implemented in 1976. Black children were to learn an equal number of
subjects in both English and Afrikaans as media of instruction. This meant a radical
change for most black children who could barely cope with Afrikaans as a compulsory
foreign language in their curriculum, and with one other foreign language (English) as a
medium of instruction. To add Afrikaans as a second medium of instruction would not
only have been burdensome but would have entrenched the dominance of the Afrikaners
over Black people in South Africa. Academically, the situation would also have been
untenable as some related subjects would have been learned in different languages. For
example, a student would learn mathematics in English and Physical sciences in
Afrikaans. Making sense of mathematical and scientific concepts in two different foreign
languages was an impossible demand on Black children. Faced with the choice between
these two foreign languages of domination, most people in the black communities opted
for English."8

In its miscalculation, the nationalists attempted to force this policy through even

though there had been various community and parliamentary voices against it. Things

150

came to a boil when in June 1976, students decided to challenge the government on this
new school policy. On June 16, 1976 riot police mowed down groups of unarmed Black
children who had gathered at a soccer stadium waiting to be addressed by their leaders on
the planned protests. This marked the beginning of what was to become a full scale and
sustained onslaught by the white “Nationalists” against Black children, in many
townships across the whole country. Morapeli’s entry into secondary school was caught
up in that national tragedy of June 1976. His descriptions of the 1976 and 1977 tragedies
capture the sense of chaos and leadership crisis that had developed as a result of the
killings and the jailing of student leaders and the abdication of duty by government
officials:

. (a)round about 1976, we shifted into the Secondary School but then
because of this uprising (it was decided that) no people should attend school
until the government changed the laws on the languages and the use of
Afrikaans - because the government was trying the suppress English as one
of the main subjects of teaching, the medium of instruction of course...l had
to delay for two years, because 1976 we did not attend school, 1977, at a
particular point we had to stop...lt was just unfortunate that there was
chaos, there was no governance at all. Both in terms of local government
and provincial, especially in my area. It was the most violent area, I mean
a lot of people were taken to jail. A lot of student leaders around were in
prison. So it was very, very difficult to operate without the leaders. Soweto
itself was then a police state or rather a soldier’s state, or towns rather. So
as a result it was difficult for us. So, I had to be moved from that
environment.

(Interview, February 17, 1997)

Tshabalala’s descriptions of the 1976/77 tragedies express ordinary students’ concerns at
the time. He worried a lot about the absence of responsible leadership. Given that he had
just graduated from primary school at the time, his cry for leadership both from the adults
who were operating the local and provincial government offices and from the more senior

students who were leading the protests (most of whom had either been jailed, killed or

 

’8 It is not clear what the rationale for this choice was, but speculation is that English provided a better
means of communication at a much broader level (than Afrikaans which was a local creole of the Dutch
settlers with their slaves at the Cape during the 19‘h and the early parts of the 20‘h century.

15]

skipped the country to avoid detention or to train as freedom fighters) is understandable.
His emphasis on governance and leadership (or lack thereof) in analyzing the 1976/77
events is quite curious. Later, I will explore further the whole theme of leadership and
governance for Mr. Tshabalala, since it comes out again both in his college years when
he becomes one of the student leaders, and again during his teaching at the finishing

school when he assumes leadership of the day-to-day running of the school.

Post-1976 schooling experiences

At the beginning of 1978, when things got back to some degree of normality, his
family had once again been transformed in very deep, significant and tragic ways. Their
count on the losses resulting from the 1976 onslaught went beyond the two years of
secondary education that Morapeli had lost, but his brother had also been lost in the
tragedies. He was overcome by the tear-smoke that was often used to disperse groups of
students in schools or on the streets. Morapeli was by now the only remaining boy in the
family, having lost three of his brothers in two decades, one in 1957, another in 1967, and
the last one in 1977. His father had also passed away on New Year’s day of 1978. The
circumstances of his family had now been changed radically, with the loss of the main
breadwinner of the family, his father.

While the whole family was in grief, concerns about Morapeli’s safety demanded
prompt action from his mother. When his father died, the family had been making plans
for Morapeli to taken out of Soweto to a place of relative calm - - in the rural areas of

KwaZulu-Natal. He was to begin his secondary schooling there. When I asked him

152

about the decision to go away from Soweto, he saw it as the only way he survive and

pursue an education:

Well, there was no choice. I was the only boy remaining, actually. In a
sense that I was a young boy who was remaining because my elder (half)
brother never stayed long with us, so I was the only person to remain in the
family. So the only way of saving me because at a particular point the
police were raiding from house to house. Checking for all the males,
checking for all the boys. So it was difficult and I had to move to
(KwaZulu-) Natal.

(Interview, February 17, 1997).

Although evading the government networks was not easy for Morapeli, he eventually
found a place in a school ZSO-km away from home, in the northern part of KwaZulu-
Natal.49 He lived with relatives and walked three to four kilometers to and from school
daily. His stay with relatives was short-lived as he moved from one relative to the next
until he decided to rent a place of his own. Since he was a freelance amateur
photographer, he used those skills to generate the income he needed to pay the rent. In
this way, he made enough money to survive on his own, and as he put it he would have
been able to “pay three times as much of what they wanted (for rent)”

On his own initiative and resources (both financial and human), he managed to
get himself accepted into one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the region, and
probably in the country as whole. The school, Ohlange high school was (and still is) a
well regarded boarding school for Black people, with a very rich social and political

history in South Africa. Founded by the first president of the African National Congress

 

’9 The Department of Education had by this time issued a directive for schools not to accept students from
Soweto and other urban townships without prior permission from the head office in Pretoria. Secondly, to
be accepted at a local area school one had to produce a residential permit which indicates that you were
either born there or that your parents live and work in the area. On both counts, Morapeli came through by
forging documents and paying bribes to the various layers of gatekeepers.

153

(ANC)5°, Dr. John Langalibalele Dube, the school boasts of a diverse and prominent list
of alumni including some of the current parliamentarians, academics, and business people
in the country. In many ways, the school was a bastion of Black pride, attracting
Africans from far and wide across the whole continent of Africa. Ohlange was the first
school, in South Africa, to be started by black people with the aim of liberating
themselves from white domination and missionary imperialism. Dr. J.L. Dube, the
founder of the school, was a theologian (of the African Evangelical church) who studied
at Tuskeege under the tutelage of Booker T. Washington and had been exposed to the
debates of the Black nationalists in North America and the Caribbean in the last quarter
of the 19th century. Although he was of the royal family, and thus born to lead, he opted
out of the hereditary leadership position and chose a more religious and political
leadership position instead. He became a pioneer and leader in the African Evangelical
Church. He also led a campaign to collect contributions from the community for the
building an institution for Black education - -the Ohlange school complex (Ohlange
began with three different levels of education, viz. The lower primary school level, the
higher primary level, and the secondary level). In the process of raising these funds
(from within the community), he used his “hereditary powers” as heir to his father’s
throne, to sell some of his cattle and ‘tribal’ land as a personal contribution to the
initiative. The whole notion of self-reliance formed the central pillar of his fund raising
campaign and leadership. The name of the school itself was another signifier of this
principle. It was to be a community school and was named Ohlange, which means

“Nation” (or Nationality). Mafukuzela, J.L. Dube’s community name (which means

 

’0 The African National Congress, is one of the oldest liberation movements in South Africa which won
power to govern the country in the first democratic elections in 1994. The party was, until recently, led by

154

someone who works hard), had himself had transformative experiences both in South
Africa and abroad. He had, as a result, reconfigured his basis for leadership and power
within the Black community. Rejecting the traditional notions of hereditary rights to
leadership, he used his commitments to the liberation and self-reliance of the Black
people to build an institution that would compete with and challenge the dominance of
missionary ideals. His commitments, visions and actions transformed many lives well
beyond his time and reached others beyond the borders of his own country.

With this background in mind, it is not surprising that Morapeli’s aspirations were
also (re) modeled by the Ohlange experience. Describing the shifts in his aspirations at

the new school, here is what he had to say:

This is where my life changed actually, where I got into the class and
found that everybody wanted to become engineers, some wanted to become
lawyers, and doctors. There was a very competitive spirit. Secondly this is
where I discovered my ability that l have got, you know, mathematical
abilities as such, because 1 come into a school where people just knew
themselves ‘I am number one in this class’, somebody said ‘1 am number
two’. ‘If you want math come to me’. Somebody else said that ‘if you
want English, come to me’. We never get beaten by anybody. So that’s the
competition that was within the class. So, in a sense it helped me a lot to
adapt to Durban...

(Interview, July 23, 1997)

The Ohlange experience provided further resources for the transformation of Morapeli’s
life experiences. His dreams for the future took on a different character. Career options
widened for him at Ohlange, and like many of his classmates, he aspired to be an
engineer. In addition to the school’s focus on achieving excellent results in the
matriculation examination, students at Ohlange were given extensive lectures on African
history and the politics of the school. They were also taken on scheduled visits to J.L.

Dube’s grave (within the school premises), to pay their respects and make their pledges

 

president Nelson Mandela - who has now been succeeded by his former deputy Thabo M'beki

155

to take his work forward. Visits to the local community which included service learning
projects were also used both for pedagogical and broader purposes of building students’
commitment to the ideals of social transformation in the way Mafukuzela had done for

them:

You see the spirit that the students have has always been taken from the founder
of the school. They say, “you are in Mafukuzela‘s place, you must understand
the term Mafukuzela - - ‘Man who struggled' - - understand. To lead his nation.
So, all of us were ordered to use the same spirit, we had to work and struggle
hard, you see, to be something. So you discover that the encouragement we got
from the institution, the encouragement we got from reading about the founder
and being told about the founder of the school you know and being taken into
his grave when you arrive in there ‘there lies the man who worked hard for what
you see around here’, you understand. And he died in 1946, very ill but eager to
go forth. So, that itself motivated a lot of students as such, motivated all of us,
do you understand? One of the things that helped us a lot was having political
speakers coming to Ohlange itself. It was a great motivation because that kept
my interest, you know and the focus on politics, you know, from high school to
college and even outside - even to today. You studied that, some of the student
who studied at Ohlange became politically motivated and they became great
leaders as such, you see. You find leaders like Luthuli, who actually lived
within about- - I think - - it is about forty kilometers from Ohlange, which is in
a place called Tongaat, you know.5| Those are the people we got motivation
from and from Mafukuzela himself. There were a lot of motivations. That is
why President Mandela, in 1994, went to cast his vote at that institution because
that was an institution which was built out of hardship and the grave of the first
president J. L. Dube is there, so he (Mandela) had to lay to lay a wreath and
then go in and vote.

(Interview, July 23, 1997)

The historical significance of Ohlange and the kinds of experiences he was exposed to at
the school collectively shaped Morapeli’s political outlook and in many ways helped him
craft an agenda for transformation in his own work. How these experiences played out
in his life as a teacher is an important question for this study.

Although Morapeli had gone to KwaZulu-Natal in search of a decent chance at a
secondary education, he got much more than he bargained for. He got himself admitted
into a school with a lot of social, cultural and political capital. He developed both

politically and spiritually (by now he had joined the Seventh Day Adventists), to the

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articulate Morapeli I first met at the pre-university program in 1984. At Ohlange, his life
became transformed in ways he could never have anticipated, growing up in “deep
Soweto” in the 1960s and mid 19703.

After completing high school at Ohlange, and working briefly for a year and half
as a teacher in a private school, Mr. Tshabalala went to a teacher’ college in the
Johannesburg area. After four years of work, he completed a secondary teacher’s
diploma with specialties in mathematics and biology. He began his teaching in 1992 at a
township school in Soweto, teaching science and mathematics to various grade levels at
high school. He has also pursued interests in music and sports at school and in the
community.52 At the time of our first interview for this study, he was the de facto sports
master of the two schools where he worked (the finishing school and the parent school to
which the finishing school was attached). While at high school and at the college, he had
been active in student politics and served on various committees in this regard. He is also
an active member of his religious community, taking over from where his father left off
although in a radically different religious community - - the Adventists. Becoming a
teacher was not a straightforward decision for Mr. Tshabalala. A number of existential
circumstances, which have a bearing on who he is and the kind of teacher he becomes
shaped his decision and approach. In the next section, I examine the issues that shaped

his entry into the profession.

 

5' Chief Albert Luthuli, who became the last president of the African National Congress before it was
banned in 1961, went on to become the first Nobel peace prize laureate from South Africa.

52 Recently, Mr. Tshabalala appeared as a guest in a local television news cast of the South African
Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), giving perspectives on the Black school rugby development program in
Soweto, in a discussion of sports transformation in South Africa (reviewing progress in transformation of
what used to be ” whites-only” sports in the country).

157

THE JOURNEY INTO TEACHING
Asked why he became a teacher, Mr. Tshabalala refers to his strengths in “helping

others” and his ability to explain complex details, as motivating him into the profession.

I started teaching in 1986. In 1987 l was full with work, 1 had spent most of
my time (on teaching my students), this is where I discovered my talent.
That I am very good in teaching mathematics because I have got
approaches, and that I am good with students, they always listen, rating me
as one of the best teachers at the end of 1986. In 1987, you know, I
discovered that l was helping a lot of people. The question was that 1 had
no papers, no diploma at all. Then 1988 I decided, I have to go straight to
the college. Then I went to the college. Actually that was the first eye-
opener course that I ever done in my life.

(Interview, February 17, 1997)

The experience of teaching as an “unqualified” teacher in a private school, together with
his experiences as a student at Ohlange high school where he was frequently asked to
help out in explaining subject matter to his classmates brought him closer to teaching.
Though the “desire to help others” and his strengths in “explanations” were the
motivating factors, they were not the decisive factors. The ultimate decision to enter the
profession was determined by a complex web of life situations that saw him unable to
gain entry into university to pursue his first career choice in engineering. He then
registered for a degree in commerce through a correspondence/distance learning

9

university, but ran out of funds in mid-stream and had to find a “way to survive.’ For
him, like most teachers of his generation, Morapeli’s entry into teaching was never a
straightforward career choice. It was dictated by the complex set of political, social and
economic conditions of his existence. Unlike many others, teaching was actually a
distant choice among his career options (though remote indeed). It was only after a year
and half of what he considers a “rewarding experience,” of teaching in a private, under-

resourced inner city school that had been established in response to student flight from

township schools (which had broken down in terms of the “culture of teaching and

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learning”), that he saw his way clear into the profession. Asked about the decision to
teach, Morapeli responded as follows:

Let me start by saying teaching was one of the challenging things, but if you
have gone to a college, you were sure of finding a teaching post. And
secondly, 1 had to work because I had no (financial) base. My mother was
struggling. She needed the help, and studying through university, especially
correspondence university, was going to waste a lot of time and I needed
something that would redirect me to a career and to work to survive. So I
felt that I should then join teaching. Then ljoined teaching, you know.
Remember, I already since from Standard eight (grade-10) class I had been
helping my colleagues in the class so that itself, you know, motivated me a
lot and the experience of working 1986 half and the full 1987, that itself
motivated me a lot. But the only problem was that l was just calling myself
a teacher but I had no papers.

(Interview, February 17, 1997)

The practical concerns of job security also came into the picture in his decision to become
a teacher. In fact, up until about the early 19905, teaching was probably the most secure
and decent employment for Black students who aspired to some form social mobility.
The job came with a promise of a guaranteed housing subsidy, which made it attractive in
a context where descent housing was privilege, and generous medical insurance for all
those dependent on prospective teacher in addition to the opportunity to “help” raise and
educate children in the community. As with many other features of a discriminatory
society, the levels of security varied by gender. Women were relatively less secure than
their male counterparts. For instance, falling pregnant as a single female guaranteed a
loss of the privileges and similarly married women had to give up their families before
they could qualify for a housing subsidy.53 Most significant is the fact that Mr.
Tshabalala’s decision to return to college was influenced by the desire to challenge the
“teacher qualification discourse” (Walker, 1996) in Black education. For, although he

felt good about his teaching at the private inner-city school, without a credential, he

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would never be adequately recognized for it by the education system and his
contributions would remain marginal in the larger scheme of things in South Africa.
Morapeli believes that he entered college “badly prepared” for teaching, though. In his
opinion, the high school experience had merely capitalized on his strengths in the
sciences and mathematics - - bringing them more into the open and leaving his weakness

in the languages intact:

Then I went to the college. Actually that was the first eye-opener course that
l have ever done in my life. It looked like my first day of school, because I
met people who quickly discovered that I got an English problem, they sat
on top of my head.

(Interview, February 17, 1997)

Part of his preparation to become a teacher included a language development program.
At the college, he came across a number of teachers who were willing to assist him to
develop into the kind of teacher he wanted to be. They engaged him, on his weaknesses
and were very demanding of him in this regard. They gave him a second chance that
both his high school and the universities (that rejected him for his first choice careers)
had failed to provide. He was given a very demanding program that would help build his
language competence (Interview, February 17, 1997). Not only was the program
designed to meet his immediate needs, but it was shaped in such a way that it appealed to
his experiences as an African student in a college that recruited most of its staff from a

pool of English-speaking white lecturers in South Africa:

What I was happy about (is that) they taught me to think, through
African literature as such, you could learn a lot because they were teaching
African literature, sort of, they were teaching what you know, lets say, most
of the books were talking about African life, traditional life, African leaders,
political leaders. I mean they talked about the whole African genesis as
such and how African history developed.

(Interview, February 17, 1997).

 

5’ Most of these policies and practices have since been outlawed by South Africa s new constitution which
was certified as the supreme law of the land by the constitutional court in Mandela in 1997.

160

From his descriptions of some of his college experiences, one gets a sense of a vibrant
community where teachers paid attention to his needs and interests, engaging him with
curricular activities and allowing him to develop as he chose within the program. At the
end of four years Mr. Tshabalala qualified as a teacher and set off to begin his new career
(yet again!) at a well built but poorly resourced township school in Soweto. Mr.
Tshabalala taught at Maxima until 1996 when he was seconded to the Finishing school.
The Finishing school began in 1996, with about 130 students. They used the same
building as his original school but were managed separately by a new principal and staff.
This is where I first observed him teach the science lessons discussed in the first segment
of this chapter. As noted earlier, Mr. Tshabalala saw his transfer to the new school as an
attempt to marginalize him for his questioning stance towards the administration and for
his classroom practice that went against the grain. Determined not to let the experience
(of being marginalized) break his spirit, Mr. Tshabalala quickly rose to the challenges at
the new school. Because of his commitment to the notion of “second chances” at the
Finishing school, he took charge of a number of responsibilities to make the school and
its idea of “second chances” viable. Some of the responsibilities that he took up were
management responsibilities like publicizing the school to the community through
various community radio programs, admitting the new students and allocating them to
various classrooms in the school. All the leadership roles he took up at the Finishing
school were voluntary and not paid for. For him, the Finishing school provided a
window of opportunity to pursue his visions of crafting a potentially transformative

practice:

161

Now this is where I could practice my own independence with my students
as such.

(Interview, June 18, 1997).

Despite all the constraints referred to earlier, Morapeli’s classroom practice contained
elements of a very progressive practice. He had students working in groups, drew from
their experiences to present lesson material, allowed them to participate more in the
lesson, asked them to take the classroom floor to demonstrate things to their classmates
on the chalkboard, and allowed them to engage in rich discussions of each others ideas.
His expectations went beyond the demands of the matriculation examination, although he
held his students to its standards as well.

Tracing the development of his classroom practice over time leaves one with
some sense of despair at the thought of what it will take to sustain such practices.
Morapeli is up against very tough challenges, human and structural, and he is fully aware
of this. His story paints a picture of a profession that militates against change, directly
through sanctions or indirectly through the intervention of third party stakeholders and
lack of support. Both his colleagues and the system he works for were not supportive of
efforts at change. How is it that he is able to continue with this costly and risky agenda
of classroom change?

What makes the case of Mr. Tshabalala more significant is the fact that a fairly
large number of Black teachers in South Africa have experiences that are somewhat
similar to his; having lived under apartheid and having their “careers” as students and
their family lives disrupted at several points due to the politics of the time, and having
entered the profession through the college of education (as opposed to the university
qualification) route which was cheaper, often considered less demanding, and more

certain in terms of completion time and employment prospects. The experiences of Mr.

162

Tshabalala thus provide a window into the major themes in the lives of the many in his
cohort. Understanding his life experiences and how they shape his identity as a
transformative teacher, therefore, helps us understand a lot more about teachers and
teaching in South Africa and elsewhere. To engage in a practice that challenges the
traditional models of teaching in South Africa, Mr. Tshabalala had to have developed a
strong counter-identity to help him resist the status quo. He used his experiences and

personal history to craft such a counter-identity of resistance.

MARGINALIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A TRANSFORMATIVE

IDENTITY: A RESTATEMENT

The major theme in trying to make sense of Morapeli Tshabalala’s experiences in
relation to his commitments and actions in the classroom practices revolves around his
own marginalization within the education system, and how he struggled to overcome it
by constructing an counter-identity at each level of education. His parents’ belief in the
“power of education” became for him an ideology through which the counter-identities
were constructed.

As with Mr. Sithole, Morapeli grew up in the African townships, and lived many
of the values of his community. In his discussion of his practice, he also speaks in terms
of “helping others” who are less fortunate in his community. For him the issues are a
little different though. His concerns with inclusion are located firmly within a context of
his own multiple marginalizations within the education system. That is, the counter-
identities he used to craft what I have referred to as a transformative practice has its

origins in his attempts to resist his own marginalizations with the education system. The

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most salient experiences of marginalization from which he crafted his multiple identities
of resistance were in respect of his race, socioeconomic status, limited success in
learning the two apartheid official languages, and his teaching of the less successful

students at the finishing school.

Racial identity

First, on the basis of race, he was offered an education that was inferior to his
counterparts in the white, colored and Indian suburbs of South Africa. Up until 1994,
Black education was funded at less than half of what schools in the suburbs were
receiving in the form of government subsidies (SAIRR, 1995). These fimding patterns
had an impact on the types of resources schools could provide for educating the different
groups of learners. Consequently, Morapeli received most of his early education in
schools that provided very limited opportunities for success and development. As if that
was not enough, his early secondary schooling was disrupted for two years while
authorities tried to push through a language policy agenda that would legalize the
marginalization of Black students in schools across South Africa. The minority
government tried to force its policies on Afrikaans to children in Black schools, a move
that would have made it much more difficult for Black learners who wanted to leave the
country in search of a better education abroad. Under these circumstances Morapeli still
managed to construct a counter-identity. His counter-identity was based largely on the
aspirations of his parents for all their children. His parents constructed their lives around
the need to provide better opportunities for their children and the need for a “good

education” featured prominently in their aspirations. From the time they decided to run

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away from the farms, to spare their children of the hassles of forced labor on the farm, the
Tshabalala’s had resolved for themselves the debate on the need for a good education for
their children. For them, education was a powerful tool for liberation that no one could
ever take away. With these kinds of values and emphasis on education, Morapeli stayed
in school and sought better opportunities for learning, until he was himself in a position

to create such opportunities for others less fortunate than him.

Socioeconomic identity

The second form of marginalization he experienced was based on his
socioeconomic status. This is the kind of marginalization he experienced when he
arrived at the exclusive boarding school in KwaZulu-Natal. Unlike many of the students
at the school, who were from rich backgrounds, his was a very modest home. In fact, his
parents had only enough to pay his initial fees into the school. He had managed to get
himself admitted into this exclusive school, and was not about to give up on the
opportunity because of his modest background. To survive and stay in school, he did
everything possible to raise funds including doing laundry for his classmates for a fee and
taking pictures at every school function he could attend (Interview, June 18, 1997). He
developed a counter “identity of excellence” in order to gain acceptance and favor from

his schoolmates as an outsider from Johannesburg:

...There was a very competitive spirit. In June I was top (in mathematics)
because after June I was marked as “this guy is dangerous” and people
started noticing. Ja, then during study time, I used to help my friends
especially those who came from Johannesburg, and other colleagues that I
was taking the same courses with. that motivated me a lot. This is where
I discovered possibly I should take teaching but initially I had thing of
wanting to become an engineer.

(Interview, February 18, 1997)

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The desire to do well at school in order to gain acceptance and recognition from his
classmates is what I refer to as the “identity of excellence.” It is a counter-identity that
Morapeli constructed due to his experiences of marginalization at the school. Although
this “identity of excellence” did not directly impact on his socioeconomic status, it
improved his status and acceptance by others who were more privileged than he was and
allowed him the opportunity to receive an education similar to some of the privileged

within his community.

Special education identity

At college he was marginalized as a less successful learner in the official
languages (then, only English and Afrikaans). Mr. Tshabalala was never as successful in
the two official languages as he was in his mathematics and sciences. In the
matriculation examination, he obtained lower grades for the languages and excellent
grades for physical science, mathematics and biology. By rule, however, he could not be
granted a matriculation exemption with this mixture of grades. Languages, more
especially English, weighed heavily in determining the quality of a pass that was awarded
at the matriculation level. He entered college with this combination of matriculation
grades and was immediately identified and labeled as a special language case. His
marginalization at the college only became significant in the context of him being labeled
and placed in the “special program” of language development. Other than that, he was an
excellent student, who led the school in many activities including choir music, athletics
and mathematics teaching practice. It is at the college that he began to develop a strong

counter-identity to some of the dominant practices in education:

166

Well it (the college program) was very good even though it was a very
intensive program, but it did help me in many ways because it raised some
areas, and especially also exposed my weaknesses and most of my
weakness were really corrected. Secondly, I also developed more from
college because I needed to look at the career of teaching as such. I need to
look at that various teaching methods that I needed to have in class and the
approaches that I needed to develop before I go to class. I was exposed to a
variety of things. .. so I think college in a way prepared me for everyday
life. I don’t regret why I went to the college.

(Interview, February 17, 1997).
For Morapeli, college life was about preparation for everyday life as a teacher. As in the
case of Sithole, from his experiences at college he came out with a strong sense of
pedagogical content knowledge and a vision of teaching the marginalized in schools. It is
not clear, however, that he came out with an equally strong vision in terms of teaching for
conceptual understanding, from his college experiences. He continues to study science
part-time through a distance learning college “in order to improve” his own

understanding of science.

Teacher of the “other” identity

The last form of marginalization is what Morapeli talked about in respect of his
secondment to the finishing school. Unlike Mr. Sithole who was leading a quite
revolution in his classroom, Mr. Tshabalala was an open book. He questioned and had
strong opinions on the status quo in his classroom and in the school generally. He
worked openly with an agenda of change in his classroom. He developed a professional
identity counter to the dominant prescriptions of apartheid education, and thereby made
the authorities at his school less comfortable with their own practices as much as they
were with his. He deliberately sought to include girls in science teaching, used the
experiences of his learners to talk about the subject matter, and became an advocate for

the marginalized learners at the finishing school. As a result, he was often marginalized

167

and silenced. He was deliberately seconded to the finishing school where he would
struggle to reconcile his vision of a transformative practice with the public expectations
to drill the less successful students for the matriculation examination. As his district
leadership put out a directive to all schools in the district, he was expected to draft a
specific (development) plan to show how he would achieve a 5% increase in the
matriculation pass rate at his school as a contribution to the provincial campaign to
increase the pass rates in Gauteng (Circular No 5/1997). Indeed, he struggled with these
expectations, and for a time it almost seemed he had given up on the transformative
agenda to science teaching. But as he explained it, his practice has always been what I
have characterized as transformative, only that it sometimes takes longer for him and the
students to get going on the vision (Interview, August 1998). As a result, his vision was
stronger on equity and quantity issues and less so perhaps on quality issues as defined in
Chapter four.

Morapeli Tshabalala’ s is a case of a practice that is constructed around the need
to provide the students with the tools for crafting their own counter-identities that will
enable them to participate fully within the processes of social transformation in South
Africa. By providing them with meaningful opportunities to learn science and be
successful in the matriculation examination in the context of addressing forms of
discrimination characteristic of a majority of science classrooms in South Africa, Mr.

Tshabalala is able to make strides towards his vision of a truly transformative practice.

168

CHAPTER SIX

SUBJECT MATTER IDENTITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A

TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE

INTRODUCTION: GOALS FOR TEACHING SCIENCE

As described in Chapter 3, the case studies of Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala
constituted a phase I component of this study. In Phase II, a survey of teaching practices
of 87 science teachers in KwaZulu-Natal was undertaken. One of the major reasons for
this undertaking was the desire to locate the practices of transformative teachers within a
broader context of school and classroom practices across the range of schools found in
the region. Many of the policy players I had talked with about the study identified the
gap in local understanding of what was happening in most science classrooms across the
province. The discussion of Mrs. Hlophe in this chapter is thus located within this
overall context of the research on the practices of other teachers surveyed in the
province.54

Based on the initial analysis of the data from my observations and conversation
with the two teachers from Gauteng, Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala, I designed a
questionnaire with items that would help me to select a few teachers whose practices

could potentially be read as transformative. The questionnaire contained several groups

of items on topics that I had found to be important in our conversations with the Gauteng

 

5” The general findings from Phase II of the study are reported in depth in a monograph published by the
EPU (See Jita, 1998).

169

teachers.55 On the basis of her responses to some of the topics of interest and on the
strength of her school’s nomination by a number of the teachers and policymakers I
spoke to, I asked Mrs. Hlophe to be a participant in the study. She was also highly
recommended by her school principal whom I had met briefly at a local community
meeting unrelated to the research.

There were several areas of interest in the questionnaire to which Mrs. Hlophe
provided very interesting responses that suggested a very deliberate classroom practice
on her part. First, I noted her strong drive and affinity for the subject matter of science.
Her responses to a set of questions about her motivations for taking up teaching all placed
emphasis on her “love of” and desire to work with the ideas of science, as opposed to
being motivated by her role models who were teachers or by the employment conditions
in the profession or even by the desire to work with young people. Hers seemed to be a
strong sense of identity constructed around the subject matter of science. This emphasis
on subject matter came showed up again in her responses to questions about how to
characterize a good science teacher. Her responses rated items such as “obtain high pass

3’ 6‘

rates, teach pupils to think critically,” “know one’s subject matter,” and “read
professional journals in the discipline” as very important in defining a good science
teacher, relative to other items like “fight for better conditions,” “be involved in sports,”
and “involvement in campaigns for social justice.”

An overall analysis of her responses began to suggest a particular set of goals and

emphasis in her classroom practice. Her responses to items about the emphasis of her

questioning style in the classroom gave a very distinct impression of a teacher who

 

’5 See appendix A for a copy of the questionnaire. Included also is a schedule with a listing of the areas of
interest that I used for purposes of identifying teachers for further interviewing and observation and on the

170

“never” questions for the correct answer but instead uses questions to get at students’
understandings of the concepts. She asserted, for instance, that she never “corrects
students’ errors in front of the class” and never “calls on another student for a correct
answer.” Instead she “asks a student (who cannot give an answer) another question” or
calls on “students to discuss the question and the answer.” Her style of teaching also
emphasized group work and collaboration among the students. In contrast to the three
goals of teaching for Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala, Mrs. Hlophe’s goals for teaching
focused primarily on preparing students to do well on the examinations by developing
rich conceptual understandings of the major concepts of science. In our conversations
about her responses and later about her observed classroom practices, the two themes of
accountability and conceptual understanding came out as the major anchors of her
practice, although her style of presentation also sought to bring out the voices and
experiences of all her students.

Before the conversations, her questionnaire responses were puzzling in a few
respects that made her an even more interesting candidate for this study. First, although
she was low on the need for advocacy for “social justice” and “better conditions for
teaching,” she believed very strongly in the importance of teaching students about “the
relationship between science and culture,” the “relationship between science and
socioeconomic development” and the need to “apply science concepts to real life.” This
was despite her citation of “resources” as a major factor that limits her teaching of
science. The second issue was the fact that in spite of her qualifications and her views on
the importance of reading professional journals and newspapers and the need to “improve

one’s knowledge of science,” she was negative about the need for teachers to register for

 

basis of which Mrs. Hlophe was selected for participation in this study.

171

higher qualifications. Based on these puzzles and understandings emerging from her
questionnaire responses and the recommendations of her principal and subject advisors, I

arranged to observe and interview her about her beliefs and classroom practices.

A VIEW INTO THE CLASSROOM: PART I

Mrs. Hlophe teaches a physical science course to 10’h graders and mathematics to
11’h and 12th graders at Khulani secondary, an elite boarding school in KZN. She is also
the school’s science Head of Department (HOD), one of several women occupying senior
positions at the school including the position of deputy principal. On all the occasions I
was able to visit Mrs. Hlophe’s classroom, she was teaching a chemistry section of the
syllabus. In my observations of her lessons, I noticed that she began all the lessons with
some kind of a problem to be solved. Sometimes the problem was a real-world problem,
while at other times it was a constructed situation to help students grapple with particular
concepts in the subject matter. For example, when she taught a section on molecular
orbitals to her 10th graders, the problem to be solved was on how to use the molecular
structures of the atoms and molecules of particular elements to explain their behavior in
different chemical reactions. She combined this section with another on the periodic
table and gave the students groups of elements from the periodic table (e. g., the “Noble
Gases” or Group VIIIa elements and the “Alkali Metals” or Group Ia elements) and asked
them to predict which ones would react more or less and why. This was not a kind of
problem that related directly to the life world of the students, but as she explained it to
them, it formed a basis for later discussions about how and why things react in the way

they do in industrial chemical and natural reactions. The constructed problem was rich,

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conceptually, as it allowed students to integrate different concepts in science and make
defensible predictions based on their understandings of scientific models of subatomic
organization and motion.

In other lessons that illustrate her use of problem posing approaches for
conceptual development, she used stories to set up the specific scientific problems for
students to solve. The stories she told were often real-life stories or constructed tales
from the events that are common within the culture of the students. In one such story that
she used with her 10th grade class, she was able to explore ideas about phases of matter
and energy (sound and heat) in a way that located their discussion within the cultural
context of her students. In one of our conversations, she described the lesson in the
following way:

You know, like I told them the other day, “You know I have got a problem
at home. Mr. Hlophe (her husband) likes tea so much but my problem is
that whenever I make him tea I have to boil water first.” and they said “Ja,
like dah, everybody does that.” But 1 have to boil water, make tea, and take
ice cubes put them in the tea. “Ice cubes?” and I said ja, and then I said can
anybody try to explain why, you know, is this man bothering me? Does he
want to chase me away from home or what? Because, I don’t understand, if
he wants cool drinks why doesn’t he ask for Coke or Sprite or something
cold? Why does he want tea? I have to plug the kettle, put the water on and
then make it cold. You know, and we will start discussing maybe because
you know, okay, okay. What’s the effect of ice in that, right? Now try and
think what would happen when you know, ice gets into the hot water? What
happens? And then they would say “la, 1 have seen it. It cracks. It makes a
sound.” “Ja, what makes the sound?” Why? And then they start saying,
“Okay, so we go back to the particle model of matter when ice gets heated
up, what happens to the particles, where is the sound coming from?” They
link it with the (theme on) sound we did. So, it’s eh... you know, just that
relaxed mood when I introduce a lesson, go to class, don’t have a book, just
sit on the table and we just talk, you know.... At the end of the lesson, okay,
ja, now you will find this on pages so. Do that for your homework and then
tomorrow we will go to the lab and do this and this and this and this, you
know. So, now they know that what the (theme on) heat that is in this book,
the (theme on) sound they have Ieamt in this book, it relates to Mr. H lophe
wanting tea at home. Ja, you know, you link what you do in class with,
with the outside life.

(Interview, August 28, 1997)

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Several observations can be made about the nature and content of the story described in
Mrs. Hlophe’s comments.

First, it is a story about culture. It describes an everyday event which students can
identify with, that of making tea for Mr. Hlophe in this case. Second, although it is not
clear that Mrs. Hlophe had it as one of the major issues of the story, it provided
opportunities for students to reflect on the culture and some of its practices. Some of the
questions she raises rhetorically in telling her story, such as “Is this man bothering me?,”
“Does he want to chase me away?,” or even the question on the meaningfulness of his
request for tea with ice cubes, had the potential to provide opportunities for examining
the power relations embedded in these kinds of family relationships within the culture.
Many of her students, as natives of the culture, do not have as many opportunities to
examine critically some of these taken-for-granted practices. In addition to its richness
for exploring scientific processes, her story also presented an opportunity for a critical
discussion of culture and its practices. However, unlike Mr. Juluka who took the risk and
allowed his lesson on the “human circulatory system and the heart” to cross the borders
of science into a discussion of housing and urban policy in South Africa, Mrs. Hlophe’s
goals for the lesson were different. She was primarily focused on getting students to
develop deeper conceptual understandings of the subject matter of science through the
use of the culturally relevant lesson material. It was not clear from our conversations that
a cultural critique was as much a part of her plan as the desire to move students to a
conceptual understanding of the subject matter was. This leads me to the third point
about the story, that is, in addition to its cultural content; the story has a science content.

It allowed for a discussion about sound, the phases of matter, conservation of energy, and

174

 

 

the scientific explanations of changes in matter and energy. It is these concepts and
explanations of scientific phenomena that Mrs. Hlophe seemed to have intended for her
students to understand and develop during the lesson.

Fourth, the story is about the use of scientific knowledge and phenomena in
everyday life. In this case, it is about the relationship between science and culture - - a
relationship that never ceases to be problematic. Oftentimes culture is proposed as an
explanation for lack of opportunities in science, especially for women. Many of the
cultural practices within Africa have not escaped such criticism with regard to the roles
that they assign to women and girls in schools and society (Osler, 1997a; Sebakwane,
1997). Against the backdrop of the criticisms of culture and its role in limiting
opportunities for young women to pursue science, Mrs. Hlophe’s stories, which bring out
processes and experiences from the home into the public discourse of science become
very significant. What makes the lesson exceptional is her use of what is normally a
cultural practice of domestication and oppression, that of making tea for a “demanding
husband,” in a way that sheds it of its oppressive features to become a tool for reflection
and empowerment in the science classroom. She ably brought the private into the public
sphere in ways that those who have felt oppressed by the cultural practice could still use
the experience to make sense of their world. The limits of what she could achieve within
the framework of her primary emphasis on conceptual understanding, as opposed to
adopting a broader framework that includes cultural critique, was noted earlier. My point
in this dissertation is a cautionary one for many of the science reformers who advocate a

practice that incorporates culturally relevant materials and ideas. It is not enough to bring

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in materials and experiences from the students’ life world, but how such materials and
ideas are used in the classroom is of equal importance in transforming science education.

The final point about the story is that it illustrates, concretely, Mrs. Hlophe’s
attempt to orchestrate a “relaxed classroom environment,” that is safe for taking risks
intellectually. As she described it, “The science stories from the (social) world of the
learners help to take out the tension in the classroom” (Interview, August 28, 1997). She
hypothesized that in view of the students’ familiarity with the examples, stories and
themes from the culture, they would relate better to the science concepts and principles
conveyed by the stories and examples.

When Mrs. Hlophe was not telling a real-life story to lay out a scientific problem
or constructing a simulated problem from the subject matter, she engaged her students in
hands-on laboratory activities in ways that approximate events in the real world. In one
of the hard core chemistry lessons Mrs. Hlophe planned to simulate the industrial
preparation of nitric acid in the laboratory. It was interesting to note her changing role in
the lesson - - from that of being a story teller who leads the discussion and questioning, to
that of being a leader in a process of collaborative inquiry into aspects of a scientific
experiment that failed to yield the expected results even after several trials and variations.
The lesson took the forrrr of a laboratory demonstration of the Preparation of Nitric
Acid through the catalytic oxidation of Ammonia. The demonstration was used as a
basis for discussing two industrial processes involving nitrogen viz. the Haber process for
preparing ammonia, and the Oswalt process for preparing nitric acid. In the next section,

I will discuss some aspects of the lesson that help bring out the important features of Mrs.

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Hlophe’s classroom practice. Before that discussion, however, it is important to say

something about the context within which her practice develops.

SCHOOL AND CLASSROOM CONTEXT

Mrs. Hlophe teaches at one of the elite schools in the townships of KwaZulu-
Natal. As noted earlier, she is the head of science at the school, a position to which she
was appointed nine years ago when she first moved to the school. Prior to her move to
Khulani high school, she taught science at another elite boarding in the province. Her
move to the new school was in response to a newspaper advertisement of a senior
position at the new school. According to her principal, she was one of the ‘best qualified’
science teachers on the interview list when she applied for the position (Interview with
the Principal, August 04, 1997). In the context of an education system where fewer than
40% of the science teachers had any qualifications at all in science, a university degree
with a science major was indeed an asset.56 For Mrs. Hlophe the move to Khulani
secondary represented an opportunity to advance within the profession and get
recognition for her abilities and strengths as a science teacher. Here is how she described

the move to Khulani:

I applied, I got interviewed, which means I performed well because I got
promotion and then I got the senior post.

(Interview, August 28, 1997)
Although she had no doubts about her qualifications for the senior position, the

appointment of several women as senior teachers at Khulani, including Mrs. Hlophe and

 

’6 The school was administered by the Department of Education and Culture in the homeland of KwaZulu.
Research by Reddy, et al (1997) suggests that the percentage of qualified science teachers in the homeland
of KwaZulu was less than 40%. KwaZulu has since merged with Natal, an area around Kwazulu which
was administered by the central government and preserved mostly for white people and urban Blacks. The
province is now called KwaZulu-Natal.

I77

one of the two deputy principals, was indeed a significant sign of change within the
education system where men dominated most of the senior appointments in secondary
schools. This was more so for Khulani, a school that had been conceived of as an elite
boarding school for boys. Due to the rising demand for science and commercial
education by girls, however, the idea of a boys’ school faded before it could even take
root. Forced to admit girls in its first year, the school had to quickly convert one of the
dormitories built for boys into girls’ rooms. As a legacy of its conception, Khulani
continues to admit more boys than girls, especially those who live in the student
dormitories. There remains two blocks for boys and one for girls in the housing facilities
at the school.

As a special school, designed to be one of the elite schools, and sponsored by a
number of large corporations in the province, Khulani was designed to provide higher
status to those who could afford to pay to attend the school. Access to the “cultural
capital” (Bourdieu, 1977) of the school is facilitated by the rather close involvement of
the large corporations in the affairs of the school. With its technical, commercial and
science streams, it was hoped the school would be a resource for industry with regards to
the supply of an educated workforce. Or if industry did not need them as workers as has
been the trend throughout the 19903 with an economy that is continuously shedding jobs
instead, the hope was that there would still be political and financial spin-offs for the
corporations’ contribution to improving Black education. It is interesting to note,
however, that even though girls were originally not meant to benefit from the cultural
capital at the school, significantly more women were appointed to senior positions than in

many of the regular high schools in KwaZulu-Natal. The reason for this is not clear, but

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may have something to do with the nature and quality of the applicants and the processes
of appointment at the school. As a school that was built and sponsored by captains of
industry to, among others, win political favor from the anti-apartheid movement at the
time, the criteria for selecting teachers was different. The selection processes were more
open and public, with a selection committee made up of representatives of industry and
the officials of the Department of Education in KwaZulu making the decisions on
appointments. This was a variation (or actually a deviation) from what had been the
normal procedure of recommendations by the circuit and district inspectors who
themselves often delegated the task to school principals. The school principals, many of
whom are men, would in turn promote members of their own clubs and networks.
Women, however qualified, were disproportionately prejudiced by these appointment
procedures. 5 7

The formal program offered at the school seems to confirm the hunch about
Khulani serving as a place where dreams are shaped or shattered. According to the
principal, all the grade-12 students are made to enroll for one extra subject in their final
year of high school, increasing their course load to seven subjects. As the seventh subject
is not used to compute the student’s average grade, it only works to their advantage in
that it is included in their certificates only if it is passed but not added to the grand total in
calculating the student’s average percentage. Historically, most White schools register
their students in seven, eight or more subjects for the matriculation (Grade-12)

examination. The down side of this subject packing is that students may end up with

 

’7 Under the new legislation, the SASA, appointments are made through an even more public process of
interview and selection by a committee that includes representatives of the Department of Education, the
Teacher Unions, The Parents committee of the school, and the teaching staff of the particular school.

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more subjects than they can cope with, leading to a drop in their performance overall. In
addition to the subject-packing at Khulani, all the matriculation students have to write
their examination with at least four subjects on the higher grade to ensure that they
qualify for a matriculation exemption.58 Given this deliberate design of the formal
curriculum and the conditions of relative privilege at Khulani, the school has consistently
achieved between 98 — 100% pass rates in its matriculation examination. In 1998, for
example, when the provincial percentage pass rate was below 50%, Khulani still
managed to achieve above 90% pass rate.

The context at Khulani is such that the expectations for both students and teachers
are immense. The students are expected to consistently achieve high on the national
examinations. Such an environment may begin to conjure images of highly structured
classrooms with teachers beating hard on the national requirements. Most schools that do
well on these examinations, especially the formerly whites-only schools, have used that
model successfully in the past (Personal Conversation, Science subject Advisor, May
1997). An alternative view, however, is the one illustrated more graphically by the case
study of Mr. Sithole. Mr. Sithole works hard to establish a good track record in the
matriculation examination pass rates so that the need for tight instructional supervision,

especially by the inspectors, is removed, thereby providing him with the space to stretch

 

Provisions are also made for the appointments to be challenged in cases where the candidates are not
satisfied with the conduct of the selection process.

5’ For matriculation examinations, students have a choice of writing their subjects either on higher or
standard grade. A third option called the ‘lower grade’ was only available to white candidates. The
number of subjects written on higher or other grade determines whether a student receives an endorsement
that allows him/her automatic entry into university or not. Therefore, the more subjects one has on the
higher grade, the better the chances of receiving the endorsement (called an exemption in South Africa). A
healthy balance is therefore needed, where students take a certain number of subjects on the higher grade
and others (supposedly the most difficult for them) at other levels. Schools often find ways (not entirely
legal) of making these selections for their students. Given that most schools are only interested in the
number of passes, not the quality, they often encourage students to register as few subject as they can on
the higher grade, thereby limiting their chances of going to university.

I80

the classroom curriculum with the students. What students learn in the science
classrooms like that of Mrs. Hlophe at Khulani secondary is not immediately obvious
from a description of the school context. A much closer view into the classroom is
needed to make such a determination about what science is taught and learned in her

classroom.

A VIEW INTO THE CLASSROOM: PART II
All of Mrs. Hlophe’s chemistry lessons that I was able to observe, took place in

the physical science laboratory of the school.59 The laboratory is very modest with three
rows of workbenches, each with its own sink and water outlet.60 Mrs. Hlophe worked
from a demonstration bench in the front of the room near the chalkboard. From time to
time, she would disappear into the chemical reagents’ room in the front of the laboratory
behind the chalkboard. A group of 34 students, her largest class, sat on the three benches
in row 1, with three of the four girls in the classroom seated together in Bench no 1 in the
front row (one girl was absent on the day of this observation).
A few segments from the lesson will illustrate some of what I found to be the notable
features of Mrs. Hlophe’s classroom teaching. The lesson was a continuation of work
begun the previous day when the Ieamers had tried to prepare oxygen by heating
potassium permanganate to release the oxygen gas. In their first attempt, the experiment
failed to release the required oxygen gas.

On one side of the chalkboard, Mrs. Hlophe had written a “simple procedure” for the

day’s experiment:

 

’9 The school has two science laboratories, one for biology and another for physical science.
6° See appendix G for a sketch of the room and seating arrangement.

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1. Put Concentrated ammonia in test tube and heat

2. Pass Oxygen through the solution

3. Hook the heated Platinum/Copper to the side of the test tube
4. Record

(Observation, September 04, 1997)
Approaching the task like a seasoned senior laboratory scientist working with novices,
she began to engage her students on how they were going to get their reagents or more
specifically the reactants they were interested in for the experiment. That is, she asked
them questions about how they would go about preparing the Oxygen needed for the
oxidation of Ammonia and how they would then prepare the required Ammonia. Before
students could answer the question she continued her introduction of the lesson
(suggesting that she was using the question rhetorically to set up a problem for them).
She then told her students that they were about to solve the same problem that the
Germans confronted during World War 1. Her single lesson deliberately integrated
different sets of chemical processes and reactions in order “to explore the ways in which
chemists typically go about solving complex problems of everyday life” (Observation,
September 04, 1997). As she continued to introduce the lesson, she briefly told the tale
of how the Germans who were using sulfuric acid to generate nitric acid for their
explosives could no longer get their supply of saltpeter (sodium nitrate) from Chile. As a
result, they had to find alternative ways of making the nitric acid they needed for their
bombs. To bypass the ban on the sale of Chilean saltpeter, the Germans discovered a
longer process to make the nitric acid. The process combines two chemical reactions or
processes now called the “Haber process” and the “Ostwalds process” named after the
scientists who made the discoveries, Fritz Haber and Wilhelm Ostwald respectively. She
opined that the discovery of this alternative method by the Germans is what prolonged

the World War. The students listened attentively to the story and frequently interj ected

I82

with questions that sought clarification or restatement of what she was saying. They
asked such questions as “What is saltpeter?” “Where is Chile located geographically?,”
“Are Haber and Ostwalds German names?” to which some of the students in the
classroom volunteered answers. The students themselves at the direction of the teacher
answered all the questions. After about 10 minutes of introduction, she went back to her

original question about how the students would prepare the reagents for the day’s

experiment.
81: (on the basis of the theory discussed in earlier lessons) Well, I will react concentrated
Sulfuric acid with any Nitrate Salt.
T: Go ahead, take Sodium Nitrate (a salt) and work out the equation to test that.
S2: (interjecting) No, he is confusing Oxygen (preparation) with preparation of Nitric Acid
from Nitrate salts of alkali metals.
T: Yes, can you see 81 (By now S] has realized his mistake and was ready to take another

shot at the first question again) OK. let’s think about it some more.

Pause (1min)

T: Because of what happened yesterday — - referring to the failed attempts to generate
oxygen from potassium permanganate - - today I’m going to use Potassium Nitrate.
What am I going to prepare?

SS: (No response while Ieamers brainstorm among themselves.)

T: Today I am going to use Potassium Nitrate and Manganese dioxide and not
Potassium Pennanganate to prepare what?

S3: Oxygen

T: Yes! Oxygen.

There was a pause of about two minutes while the teacher tried to set up the experiment
using a spirit bulb to burn the salt (as there was no gas in the laboratory). The experiment

involved connecting the production of Oxygen from the thermal decomposition of

61

Potassium Nitrate; and using the oxygen released to oxidize ammonia. After two

 

6’ See Appendix H for the experimental set up.

183

successive attempts by the teacher to conduct the experiment with no signs of success,

learners began to interj ect possible explanations for the failure of the experiment:

81: There is not enough oxygen being released.

T: Yes, oxygen is a good combustion agent (implying that the fact that the oxygen
indicator failed to burn continuously confirmed Sl’s explanation.) What are the
other reasons?

82: Problem is with the poured indicator.
T: Explain that.
S3: (Interjects) The problem is with the platinum that we are heating.
T: What about it?
S3: By the time it’s taken to the flask, it’s already black and has lost heat.
T: (Writes the two explanations proposed by the students 81 and S3, on the board):
“not enough heat/catalyst loses heat before being introduced into the flask.”
S4: The solution is still basic and not acidic.
T: What’s the connection between that and heat?
S4: (Pauses to think)
S4 + S6: Propose a method to check if the ammonia solution in the flask is acidic or not —

ammonia combines with oxygen to yield among others nitric acid. Can we use the
indicator? (Pointing at the litmus paper)

T: Yes, but I don’t want to write that down because it relates somehow to reason
number one i.e. not enough oxygen.

S7: The problem is really with the catalyst. We need the catalyst; it needs heat to work.

T: Yes, the catalyst would continue glowing if the experiment worked.

At the end of this discussion, the teacher conducted the experiment again using Potassium
Permanganate and again it failed. She again discussed possible explanations for the
failure with the Ieamers. Then she again tried with the ‘salt peter’ (Sodium Nitrate) and
again the experiment did not work and students reasoned with her on the possible
explanations for their findings. She promised to bring in another salt that released
oxygen, that is, potassium chlorate, for yet another attempt.

By this time, the class was vibrant with activity and discussion. Students
reformulated their seating groups into even smaller groups to explore their explanations

for the failure of the experiment. Mrs. Hlophe left them for a while (about 3 minutes),

184

while she returned some of the reagents to the reagents’ room. Upon her return, she
refocused their attention to the problem of the day by writing out the chemical models
(equations) that explain the reactions they were trying to demonstrate. These chemical
models were then discussed drawing upon previous knowledge as she continuously asked
students if they’d ever seen some of the chemical compounds involved in the reactions.
Students provided physical descriptions of some of the compounds they had seen. For
example, students started to talk about the medicinal use of potassium permanganate,
whose name in IsiZulu means all cures or medicine for all diseases, suggesting its
medicinal use for treating a number of common illnesses within the culture. The lesson

ended with a reading assignment on the reactions of nitrogen in the textbook.

SOME IMPORTANT FEATURES OF MRS. HLOPHE’S PRACTICE

Several important features are worth noting about the lesson just described. First,
Mrs. Hlophe had no problems working through the failed experiment. Every time the
experiment failed, she would engage students in a scientific discussion about it and then
go on to demonstrate an alternative way of setting it up with a different set of reagents
each time. She had no problems responding to the exigencies of the moment that
required her to think differently about the subject matter and demonstrate that to her
students.

Second, throughout the various experimental trials, she kept her leamers’
attention and participation by frequently asking them to reason with her through what
was happening. Her questions were constructed in such a way that the learners had to use

scientific concepts to reason and account for the particular observations they were

185

making. Hers was an environment typical of real life-settings where supervising
scientists induct novices into the problems of experimental work in science laboratories.
In such settings, it is not uncommon for neophytes to be inducted into the field by using
exemplars, familiar problems and other major experiments in the discipline, more akin to
what Thomas Kuhn (1970) refers to as the initiation into the ‘dominant paradigm’. In
this case, the teacher was using a familiar experiment in science on the preparation of
nitric acid to induct students into the dynamics of conducting scientific experimentation
in the context of exploring important concepts in the science of chemical reactions. Her
design of the classroom environment was such that Ieamers were encouraged to take
intellectual risks by proposing various explanations for their observations. Most of these
explanations were well reasoned and plausible and she accepted them, often, with a
requirement for the students to elaborate on what they meant and/or to relate their
responses to the problem at hand. There were some distinct lapses, however, when she
failed either to acknowledge or to probe a learner about his/her explanation. In the
foregoing illustrative segment of her lesson, one instance of such a lapse occurred when
she failed to push S4 to relate his prediction that the acidity or otherwise of the solution
had something to do with the problem of not being able to demonstrate the presence of
oxygen. Such lapses were few and far between, though. For the most part students in her
classroom did expect to be asked for elaboration on their responses or explanations. I
found it remarkable that an experiment that had failed repeatedly was being used as an
opportunity for rich learning in this classroom, attesting to what I think is Mrs. Hlophe’s

comfort in the “neighborhood of science” (Roth, 1987).

186

Another interesting aspect is how she set up the problem for the day in her
introduction. She located it within human experiences of World War I, and the
interactions of science and society. She was using the subject matter to raise issues about
the use and misuse of science in the service of war during World War I. This was a very
powerful contextualization of a robust chemistry lesson. Through the failed experiment,
she was able to set up a powerfirl context for conceptual understanding of science, the
major goal of her practice. Missing from her discussion of the social impact of scientific
knowledge were critical ideas about power, knowledge, and social reconstruction. For
example, in her discussion of the events of World War 1, she made no references to the
circumstances that led to the war, its consequences, lessons from the experience and other
such important historical details. Although I felt she had succeeded in using the brief
historical sketch of aspects of the war to set up the science problem for the day, I
wondered about why she had not explored other issues of historical significance about the
war, as a way to connect science to issues of equity in society. In her response to my
musings about this, she acknowledged that she had held back on some of the historical
details deliberately because she felt that the connections would not be immediate for her
students. Her decision was influenced by the dictates of the present curriculum, which
provided her students with no opportunities for learning about the history surrounding the
events of World War I or 11. She made a judgement that her students, who were pursuing
either a technical or science stream, and therefore do not take history as one of their
subjects, would be confused if she got into further details about the war. Again, unlike
Mr. Juluka, Mrs. Hlophe felt constrained by the dictates of the curriculum prescriptions

into limiting her “border crossing” to the discipline of history. Although she was

187

enthusiastic about connecting science to society through exploration of real-life problems
in her classroom, Mrs. Hlophe was hesitant about linking the subject matter from the
different disciplines of science and history in this particular case. She viewed the
discussion of World War I as firmly located within the discipline of history (and not
science) which her students would not have the tools, the interest or the privilege to study
at their particular school. As a technical, commercial and science school, Khulani
provided no place for history or social studies in its curriculum offerings. A subtext of
this story is the fact that Mrs. Hlophe did not view the absence of a connection to history
as a limitation of the present science curriculum that requires her to intervene by helping
students make the connections.

The demonstration lesson provided students with opportunities to practice some
of the important scientific skills and “habits of mind” (AAAS, 1989) such as
brainstorming, identifying problems, and attempting to solve them by providing plausible
scientific explanations and testing them out. Uncharacteristic of Mrs. Hlophe’s lessons,
the experience also provided students with a rare opportunity to question the distribution
of resources in schools and society. Since they were using Copper as the catalyst for the
reactions instead of Platinum that is suggested in their textbooks, the students began to
ask serious questions about the provision of facilities to their school and others in the
townships. They asked about the lack of electricity in their laboratory, which forced
them to use a spirit burner which some felt did not give enough heat for the chemical
reactions in the experiment. Given the relative privilege of their school compared to
many others in the township, it was significant to hear students begin to even think and

articulate ideas on these issues of power and privilege. Their cushioned environment at

188

Khulani had the potential to insulate them from many of these aspects of the real world of
learning experienced by many of their counterparts in the township (non-boarding)
schools. Schools such as Khulani were designed to provide a buffer effect within the
black communities - - where schools that are better off would counterbalance any serious
challenges to the authorities on the question of resource provision for Black education.
That is, the wealthy in society could cite such schools as examples of what all the others
could achieve, (only) if they made the right connections with business and industry. I
noted, however, that in spite of Mrs. Hlophe’s obvious enjoyment of the unsolicited
comments on the resource provision question, she neither commented nor entertained
discussion of the issue except to acknowledge a student when he/she was on the floor and
chuckled a little at their comments. She was not wholly comfortable with this subject and
just chose to manage the students’ discussion without encouraging or linking it to her
subject matter.

In many other settings, a failed experiment or lack of appropriate reagents would
be enough reason to lock the laboratory and opt for a strictly theoretical discussion of the
chemical reactions. After all, the end-of-year examination only requires students to know
how to read and write the chemical reactions on a paper-pencil test. Why then was Mrs.
Hlophe doing the kind of things she was doing in her classroom? As Somers and Gibson
(1994) would suggest, she acted the way she did because of who she is. In the following

section, I explore the life story of Mrs. Hlophe.

189

THE LIFE STORY OF MRS. HLOPHE

Mrs. Hlophe is a Black woman, in her mid-403, who grew up and lived in the
Eastern Cape before relocating to KwaZulu-Natal to work and begin her own family life
several years ago. She continues to live and work in KwaZulu—Natal to this day. In
contrast to the stories of relative poverty and working against the odds to get the most
basic of opportunities for an education by the other two teachers in the study, Mrs.
Hlophe’s struggles were not about wealth or resources but more about excellence in
pursuing her own educational goals. Born of a middle class family where her mother, her
brother, her uncle and two older sisters were all teachers, hers was not a struggle about
funding for her education. Her parents could afford and had indeed made plans for her to
pursue her dreams beyond high school education. Within her family, there was never any
doubt that she would go beyond high school even though secondary education was not
cheap and readily available within her community (Interview, August 28, 1997). She
began her primary education at a township school in the Eastern Cape and stayed within
the township through 10‘h grade - - the highest grade level at the local secondary school.

Opportunities for education beyond grade-10 were thus limited within her
community and many of her counterparts in the township were deprived of a chance to
study beyond the level of grade-10. Although her own situation was different in that her
farme could afford to send her elsewhere for further education, Mrs. Hlophe was quite
conscious of the dilemmas that confronted many of her schoolmates in the township with
regards to further education. In our conversation about her early education, she

expressed this consciousness as follows:

190

w .. _- .____. .-

 

I went to a secondary school, the only secondary school in the town and eh,
it would go up to, from Form 1 (Grade-8) up to Form 3 (Grade-10).
Thereafter, I had to go out of town for further education or go to the local
factories and work. If your parents could afford to send you to a boarding
school or to Riverside (the nearest city), you know, which was thirty
minutes or twenty minutes drive from home then you could attend school
for further education but most parents could not even afford their own fares
to their places of work. So, if you passed your form 3, you had to go to
work. Ja, at least work for some time, gather some funds and then go back,
if you are keen. So from there, from Standard 9 (Grade-1 1), as it was called
those times, I went to Healdtown High school, a boarding school in another
part of the Eastern Cape.

(Interview, August 28, 1997)

As with other children from the Black townships of South Africa, many of Mrs.
Hlophe’s schoolmates could not afford the cost of further education under these
circumstances. Some would opt out of school to work and raise funds and return to
schools years later to complete their high school education. The legacies of apartheid and
colonialism of the past in South Africa shaped their experiences.

In the latter part of the 19‘h century, the colonial government adopted policies that
prioritized vocational and elementary education for the “natives.” Based on those
policies, only schools that incorporated training for work for the Afiicans were funded by
the colonial government. As argued in Switzer (1993), when the colonial settlers gained
control of their own legislative affairs from the imperial government in England in 1872,
they deliberately limited the funds available for African education and channeled more
into elementary schooling. Missionary schools were encouraged to limit African
schooling to Grade-6, and offer advanced training only to “those that could be employed
as elementary school teachers, semiskilled artisans and domestic servants” (Switzer,
1993, p 132). Many of the missionary schools that provided education to Black people,
therefore, incorporated an almost compulsory phase of “teacher training” as the

preparation for work after grade-6 (and later after grades-8 and 10, when the

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requirements for teaching changed) in order to qualify for the government grants. When
the apartheid government took over the control of Black education in accordance with
newly passed laws in 1953, especially the Bantu Education Act of 1953, they inherited
much of this colonial scheme for Black education.62 In line with their own policies of
racial segregation and the “hierarchy of the races,” the apartheid government continued to
emphasize only primary education for African and teacher education to provide workers
for many of the newly created primary schools in the Black communities. In this way,
the education of Black peoples was deliberately underdeveloped and channeled towards
teaching and teacher education at the teacher-training colleges (now called “colleges of
education”).

In one sense, therefore, Mrs. Hlophe’s background placed her in a position of
privilege, as she was able to pursue her senior secondary schooling in one of the
missionary boarding schools in the Eastern Cape. Boarding schools were a major
contribution of the missionaries to Black education for over a century, as they offered
very strong programs of post-primary education. Many of their programs were similar to
and accredited by the same institutions as many of the common schools in England, thus
ensuring reasonably high standards of education for Africans who could pay their way
into these institutions. Only partially funded by the colonial government, the missionary
boarding schools had to rely on student fees to meet their costs and over the years had to

shoulder more and more of the financial burden for running the school. When the

 

”2 As noted earlier, the Nationalist government came to power in 1948 on a mandate for racial segregation
in South Africa. Accordingly, the central government took over the control of Black education, which had
hitherto been under the control of missionaries and provincial education departments. In addition to the
central control of Black education, the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which became the primary guide for
the underdevelopment of Black education, provided for expansion mainly at the primary school levels.
According to the architects of apartheid education, Black students were to be given only the kinds of skills

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apartheid government took over Black education in 1953, many of the missionary schools
closed down in protest and only a few remained, albeit under very strict conditions and
curriculum prescriptions from the new government.

Healdtown was no ordinary boarding school, as it was a school with a long
tradition of excellence and opportunity for Black students. Built by the Wesleyan
missionaries as part of the “Watson Institutions” (as the Methodist schools were called)
in the 18403, Healdtown became a key institution for post-primary education of Black
people in the Cape. By the turn of the century, Healdtown had come to be regarded as
the “best teacher-training institution of its kind in the Cape” (Switzer, 1993, p.129). Mrs.
Hlophe’s high school education, therefore, was relatively prestigious and prepared her
decently for her life and activities beyond high school. Recounting her experiences at
Healdtown in view of her own experiences as a teacher in KZN, the contrast was very

clear:

When I think back to my own schooling comparing it with what's
happening now that I am a teacher, I feel I was fortunate to go to Healdtown
you know, for my high schooling and learning. Healdtown was an
institution that had everything. We had the best laboratories. There was a
junior laboratory, there was a junior block for Standard Sixes Grade 8) up to
Standard 8 (Grade 10) and there was a senior block. The junior block had
everything - - it was a complete school on its own you know, and the senior
block was like another school, all round, as I said, you know. Unlike with
what I have observed in our (Black) schools where we have one laboratory
for every. That little lab we have been to (for the class observations), its
used by the whole school and sometimes there is a clash, because of eh, I
am doing science and somebody you know, sometimes three people want to
use it and then we have to take apparatus from there to class. Eh, I hope, I
hope that is going to come to an end and I think Healdtown was in that
position because it was run by White people. So it was of the same
standard with the whites’ high schools, in the neighborhood. You know,
they all live together in Riverside and ...you know they would just take up
the phone and phone whoever needed to be phoned for whatever. We used
to have truckloads of materials coming to school and now it puts one in a
difficult situation when we have to improvise and theorize about things that

 

they would need for work in their “reserves” and not to be prepared for competition with white students for
any advanced training (Rose and Tummer, 1975; Kallaway, 1984).

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you know are so easy to understand when you actually see them and do, you
know. (Interview, August 28, 1997).

In describing her own schooling at Healdtown, Mrs. Hlophe talks about the rich
experiences she had where her teachers used all kinds of manipulatives to foster an
understanding of science. Their laboratories were fully equipped and the teachers highly
qualified in their subject areas and spared no effort in maintaining the good reputation of
the school both in academics and Christian values of the missionary establishment. After
completing high school, with a matriculation exemption, she studied chemistry at one of
the Historical Black Universities (HBUs) in the Eastern Cape. Although she was well
groomed academically at Healdtown, she was, by her own account, socially “not ready”
for life at the university (Interview, August 28, 1997). Life at Healdtown had been
tightly regulated and students there had little experience with the kind of independence

she was to find at university:

I went to the University for a B.Sc., which took me five years to complete.
Instead of the normal three years...Well, you know, there where, there were
courses (in the science department) that we used to know that they were not
for everybody. Those would be just impossible (to pass), and I think
basically more than that it was being unprepared for university life. So,
coming from a town where nobody went to school after Form 3, you know -
it was a few individuals who would go there. So you would not have role
models that knew what university life was all about because most of us
would complete Form 3, go for primary teacher’s education, come back and
teach, you know. So, even in my family 1 was the first one to go to
university. I had no idea what university was going to be like. I didn’t
even know whether I should go on with B.Sc. or I didn’t even know what
B.Sc. was all about. You know, so I chose B.Sc. because in my matric I was
already in the stream of mathematics, science, and biology. So, I thought
rather than starting something new, let me go on with what I already know
and fortunately for me, I was doing fairly well in those subjects. So, I
thought, rather than going and do law, or commerce, you know, new things,
let me just stick to what I know. You know, and due to the lack of
vocational guidance, you know, in our schools at the time, we wouldn’t
know what all those things were about. You just look at the people in your
township and say, I want to be like so and so who is a priest, I want to be
like so and so who is a lawyer, without knowing what is involved, you
know in the studies leading to that. So, I would say it’s a combination of
those things and it was in the early seventies, the whole country was
unstable at the time. You would go on strike for months, come back and

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you would have tests under pressure and you would fail. So there was a lot
of, it’s a combination of a lot of things.

(Interview, August 28, 1997)
Her experiences at university were shaped by a complex set of conditions in her life.
Being a first generation in her family to go to'college and surrounded by many role
models who were doing things other than what she was pursuing, together with the
political and academic pressures on students of the 703, her academic success at the HBU
did not come easily. It took more patience and perseverance on her part and confidence
in her abilities and the power of an advanced education by her parents, to see her through
university. On the recommendation of her parents, she completed a Bachelor of Science
(B.Sc.) degree and then pursued a Higher Education Diploma (HED) at an Historically
White University (HWU) in KwaZulu-Natal.

As was the case with Morapeli Tshabalala, Mrs. Hlophe found her experiences at
the School of Education very fulfilling and enriching, both personally and academically
(Interview, August 28, 1997). She developed a whole new confidence in herself and her
abilities to teach. Her experiences of learning to teach were intricately bound up with the
development of her own sense of self. That is, learning to teaching was about improving
and making herself a different and better person. For instance, she had to develop

confidence in her ability to speak in such public settings as classrooms:

It (the teacher education program) has changed me, it has. I think it has
helped. I had a problem. I was so very soft spoken that I was inaudible.
When I got to the University, eh, I had to attend speech and - eh, what do
you say, speech and drama just to cure that. So I took up that short course
(in speech and drama). It was for a semester at the University and you had
to practice and practice, you know, until I got it right and with time, it has
helped

(Interview, August 28, 1997).

At home, she learned from her mother, her sisters, her brother and her uncle who

were all teachers. Mrs. Hlophe characterized these conversations about teaching with her

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kin as rich and formative in terms of her own development of a professional identity as a
teacher:

You know, when we meet in a family union it is just like a teachers’
conference, or something because we always talk about “shop,” we talk
about NATU (the Natal African Teachers’ Union), we talk about CATU
(Cape African Teachers’ Union). You know, about syllabus, you know
about problems of teaching...

(Interview, August 28, 1997).
Mrs. Hlophe’s professional development began from within her own family of teachers
where they shared stories and compared notes about teaching across three different
provinces, where the different members of the family were employed. Through these
experiences and family conversations about teaching, over the years, she has grown to be
the strong teacher leader whom I met at Khulani secondary. Her growth has come in
spite of the limited formal opportunities offered by the Department of Education for the
professional grth of teachers in its employ. Mrs. Hlophe continues to seek out further
opportunities for growth and development in preparation for her leadership roles at the
school. At the time I visited her school, she had just returned from an 18-months leave of
absence to pursue a Masters degree in educational counseling at a university in the USA.
This latest development in her life was motivated by the need to equip herself with the
skills to deal with the “psychological” blocks to students’ learning of science and
mathematics:

They (the students) are so fearful of these subjects (mathematics and
physical science), some of them even fail on the first day just because (they
say) “We are doing math,” you know, “We are doing science,” "We are
going to fail,” you know. So, this is what made me decide I had some skills
which I am going to use for class to be able to handle this because to me it
presented itself as psychological problem and the little psychology I have
done didn’t give me enough skills to deal with it in class, you know.
Making them know that it’s okay, you know. So, I decided to go for it.

(Interview, August 28, 1997)

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For Mrs. Hlophe, learning science and mathematics begins with the development of the
students’ sense of self as science and mathematics Ieamers. Her vision for her role as a
science teacher involves helping the students gain confidence in themselves as learners of
science. Learning to be a counselor was, for her, an important step in preparing for this
expanded role she has defined for herself in relation to the students’ learning of science.
As with counseling, her teaching of science is built around caring for each student in
much the same way as a counselor would base her practice on the individual
improvement of each client under her/his care. Learning in her classroom is thus as much
about the subject matter of science as it is about the improvement of each individual
student. It is on this basis that her non-traditional approach to the teaching of science,
which places emphasis on the subject matter while simultaneously incorporating the

experiences of the students, can be understood.

MAKING SENSE OF MRS. HLOPHE’S CLASSROOM PRACTICE

In the scheme of the vision of transformative practice that I drew up from the
stories of Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala, which described three areas of emphasis for
their practice, Mrs. Hlophe’s practice would fit all the criteria for a transformative
practice. She taught her students in such a way that they would be able to succeed in the
national tests, while developing deeper conceptual understandings of the important
scientific themes. She was also intent on including all students in the lessons by
incorporating examples and stories from their life experiences. Her primary focus was
different, however, making hers a different form of a transformative pedagogy. In

contrast to the other two teachers in the study, she placed more emphasis on the goal of

I97

deeper conceptual understandings of science by the students. Her goals of including
experiences from the life world of her students, and helping them be successful in the
examinations, were driven mainly by the goal of conceptual understanding of science.
That is, instead of dancing to the tune of cultural relevance in designing her pedagogy,
she was instead singing the lyrics of cultural relevance to dance to the tune of conceptual
learning.

Her practice incorporated some important features of what researchers have
characterized as a pedagogy for conceptual understanding. For example, most of her
lessons were hands-on laboratory sessions where students participated in recreating some
of the key experiments in the field of science. When asked about the significance of
laboratory work in her lessons, she confirmed that about four out of five of her lessons
involved some experimental work in the laboratory. The nature of the experiments varied
with the subject matter of the day, from those that involved the learners in conducting
experiments themselves to those that required them to participate actively in a
demonstration by the teacher. In both kinds of experimental lessons, Mrs. Hlophe always
asked the challenging questions that prompted her students to reason along as they
engaged in the scientific experimentation. Although most of what students talked about
in the lessons was prompted by her questions, there were instances where students
responded to each other’s questions and inputs. For instance, students often challenged

each other’s explanations of why things were not going as expected in an experiment.

Mrs. Hlophe carefully designed and managed rich learning environments in which
her students explored the fundamental ideas of science using their experiences of the real

world. In a similar way to the examples of Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala, she

I98

constructed her practice so as to include all students by drawing aspects from their
cultural world, either to set up a problem for the day or a conclusion, or as part of an
assessment task of some important concepts. But unlike both Mr. Sithole and Mr.
Tshabalala, Mrs. Hlophe does not exploit her discussion of the students’ or her own
experiences for social purposes. She, almost, deliberately limits her discussion of the
real-world experiences to purposes of conceptual development of the subject matter of
science. Subject matter is the important theme for organizing her practice to pursue the
goals of what I have called a transformative practice. In the following section, I discuss
how this strong subject matter identity helps to explain Mrs. Hlophe’s version of

transformative practice.

Subject-matter identity and transformative practice

The observations and interviews with Mrs. Hlophe confirmed my earlier
hypothesis about the dominance of subject matter in her identity as a science teacher and
her construction of a transformative practice in her classroom. Unlike Mr. Sithole or Mr.
Tshabalala, Mrs. Hlophe was a science major with a university degree and a stronger
attachment to the subject matter of science. Her background in science was also much
stronger and her pedagogy showed that she was more comfortable, than any of the other

9

teachers in this study, in the “neighborhood of science.’ She designed more hands-on
laboratory experiences for her students; most of which did not work as intended or as
described in the textbooks. Her stronger background in science, however, allowed her to

perceive of different ways to alter the experimental procedures in the thick of things

when the recommended methods did not work. In addition to her versatility with

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methods and content of the experiments, she would challenge the students to reason with
her about the changes she had made. She was confident in her subject matter knowledge
and only used the textbook sparingly, and in fact, predictably at the end of each lesson
when she wanted to draw the students’ attention to sections of the textbook that they had
to read and work on for homework. She was strong in both the content and methods of
science and in designing appropriate learning experiences for the students in her

classroom.

Prior to her recruitment to Khulani secondary, she had worked at a science school
(a special school whose curriculum only provided for one stream, the science stream) in
one of the townships of KwaZulu-Natal. Accordingly, her affinity to the subject matter
of science has been influenced in some important ways by this prior experience of
teaching at an exclusive science school. Teaching at the science school offered the
advantage of a focused program with all the facilities and resources dedicated towards
science teaching and learning. The kinds of conversations with colleagues, the cultures
of working and the networks she built in that context were driven by the common subject
matter of science that she shared with colleagues at the school. The whole school formed
what could be termed a “professional community” of science practitioners that includes
teachers and learners. Such a professional community and its norms had the potential to
shape Mrs. Hlophe’s identity as a science teacher in much the same way as other subject
specialists within many of the departmentalized high school organizations are influenced
(Grossman and Stodolky, 1994; 1995; Little, 1993; Siskin, 1994). As the literature on
professional identity (e.g. Little, 1993; Talbert, 1995) has uncovered about teachers who

work within subject departments, Mrs. Hlophe enjoys teaching science and is loyal to it.

200

She crafts her pedagogy carefully around the major themes of the discipline that are part
of the curriculum for her students. Her subject matter identity is stronger than that of any

of the teachers I studied for this dissertation.

The fact that Mrs. Hlophe is the head of the science department at Khulani
secondary school has its own significance in her construction of a strong subject matter
identity. Unlike the two men in the study who also had leadership identities which they
drew on to craft their classroom practices, Mrs. Hlophe has defined her leadership role in
a bounded fashion that focuses sharply on science as her terrain of influence. Through
her own practice, she sets the teachers in her department a standard when it comes to
teaching the prescribed curriculum in ways that enhance conceptual understanding as
opposed to just cramming the subject matter for the examination. In an illustrative
example of how she plays out the leadership role for all the teachers in her department to
see, she described a situation that she found at Khulani upon her return from the study
leave in the USA. When she reported for work in October, she found a group of 10th
graders who had only covered five of the prescribed 19 chapters in the school textbook.
Out of dissatisfaction and frustration, the parents and the students had just forced their
science teacher to resign and Mrs. Hlophe had to step in and replace the teacher at that
point. Instead of setting the end-of—year examination in November out of the five
chapters and giving students A s and B 3, Mrs. Hlophe felt she had to set an example
about teaching all the important concepts in the textbook before allowing the students to

next grade level.

I just talked to them (the students) and I changed their spirits and said
“Guys, we have to finish this book (the textbook). There is no way you are
going to take examinations in November, because I can test you off these
five chapters and you can all get A’s but next year the teacher who is going
to teach you standard nine(Grade-1 l) is not going to go back” you know,

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“he is going to proceed and this is the foundation of what you are going to
learn in science years later, so we are canceling exams for physical science.
You are just going to work hard when everybody else(in the school) is
taking their exams. We will be busy doing the work. When they finish
exams and go home we will stay behind. Its either you are committed to
that or you just forget about this and then you repeat Standard 8 (Grade— 10)
next year because there is no way you are going to go to Standard 9
physical science not having done this work.” Some where happy, some
where grumbling, you know, but we ended up pushing the work. They
didn’t write exams in November. 80, as we went along I assessed everyone
continuously so that at least they should have a mark (grade) that they are
going to go home with. But we finished the whole thing.

(Interview, October 03, 1997)

Mrs. Hlophe has positive reviews for the 10th grade physical science curriculum, except
for the fact that teachers are not well supported by the Department of Education in their
teaching of the subject. Facilities and supplies are hard to come by from the Department.
In view of her Opinions about the importance of the content at Grade-10 in providing
students with a firm background for further learning in science, she was determined to
help the students learn the important concepts and “finish” the textbook. In her role as an
instructional leader for the science at her school, she considered it important to set an
example about the commitment to the prescribed subject matter - - and “not just a few
chapters that a teacher may feel comfortable with” but all of it (Interview, October 03,
1997). To achieve her goals in this regard, she drew up an elaborate scheme where she
enlisted the support of parents, teachers and the administration to get the 10‘” graders
exempted from the “final examination” in physical science. She also arranged for them
to continue attending classes even after all the other students had left for the end-of—year

holidays.

Her strong commitment to the subject matter and the prescribed curriculum are
the ingredients for a potentially traditional practice. Science as taught in schools and

universities in South Africa and elsewhere has not embraced transformative themes that

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feminist and other critical scholars advocate. An overriding affinity towards science may
thus become a constraint for a teacher who wishes to embrace transformative practices.
How is Mrs. Hlophe’s non-traditional pedagogy to be explained then, in the context of
her strong subject matter derived teacher-identity? As we saw in the latter example, Mrs.
Hlophe was able to negotiate out of the prescribed end-of—year grade level examination
for her students, in favor of some form of continuous assessment of the learners
throughout the lessons. She gathered alternative evidence of the students’ competence
and assigned grades on that basis. Her approach to assessment, like other aspects of her
pedagogy, was non-traditional and would be unexpected of someone with a strong

affinity to a discipline that is largely traditional as science and science education are.

Part of the explanation for her classroom pedagogy lies with her own experiences
and identities, which interact to shape what she does in the classroom. In addition to her
comfort with the subject matter and its methods, and broad pedagogical content
knowledge to craft meaningful learning experiences for her students, and her membership
of the professional discourse communities, Mrs. Hlophe has another identity as an
educational counselor. Counselors and other practitioners in professions of human
improvement tend to rely more on their clients’ willingness and ability to take an
increased role in the activities of their improvement (Cohen, 1989). It is not surprising
that Mrs. Hlophe’s practice is the way it is. With identities as a science teacher and an
educational counselor, Mrs. Hlophe can play both roles of a teacher and counselor at the
same time, allowing for a more constructivist approach to learning in her classrooms.

She can use her subject matter knowledge, knowledge of the Ieamers, and instructional

203

approaches in tandem with her practices of human improvement derived from

educational counseling.

Another clue to her non-traditional approaches to classroom practice may be traced to
her experiences of learning to become a teacher. As someone who was shy and could not
bear to speak to more than two people at a time (Interview, August 28, 1997), she was
encouraged to take classes in Speech and Drama as part of her teacher education
program:

It (the teacher education program) has changed me. It has, I think it has
helped. I had a problem. I was so very soft spoken. I was inaudible.
When I got to the University I had to attend Speech and Drama just to cure
that. I took up that short course. It was for a semester and you had to
practice and practice, you know, until I got it right and with time, it has
helped in many other ways like acting and stage management.

(Interview, August 28, 1997)

The Historically White University (HWU) she attended has a fairly well reputed Speech
and Drama department in South Africa. Although she took the program in Speech and
Drama to build her confidence and ability to communicate with larger audiences, and not
necessarily for it’s creative aspects, it is possible for these creative aspects of the program
to be available as an additional resource for crafting a non-traditional pedagogy in her
science classrooms.

A final point about the resources for crafting a non-traditional pedagogy has to do
with the context of her work experiences. Mrs. Hlophe teaches 10‘h grade science at a
fairly privileged school with more resources than the regular schools in the townships
could ever wish for. Secondly, as 10‘h grade science teacher, she did not have to contend
so much with the burden of preparing students for the national matriculation examination,
although her practice does not depart from what she does when her rotation to teach

Grade-12 comes. As a member of her school’s management team, she also has better

204

opportunities to articulate her ideas and receive a sympathetic car from her colleagues in
management. Add to all that, the kind of reputation she had built over the years at the
science school and at Khulani, which allows her superiors to trust her even on her less
conventional ideas. She is thus able to take risks on the kind of practice that involves
fundamental change in the students’ ideas and which may take a long time to develop and

bear fruit:

I would just say good teaching is the one that’s going to result in a change,
you know, to the Ieamers. If from a teaching they have learned something
new, which makes them change either their perspective on things or in their
life and then I would think that is good teaching. I think this is not
something that you can achieve in one lesson. lts something you can
achieve as you go along so that when you take stock maybe after six months
or after three months you can look at them and say “Okay, (it) looks like
they have moved from that point to that point.”

(Interview, October 03, 1997)
Her expression on good teaching also contains a very important cautionary tale for those
of us who wish to study such forms of good practice. Such practices, as she correctly
points out, develop over long periods of time. In our rushed attempts to identify and
describe such a practice by investigating what teachers do in their classrooms on
particular days, we run the risk of missing the boat on the genesis and development of

transformative practices.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

REVIEW OF THE FINDINGS, IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE

AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

REVIEW OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study was to investigate the construction, by Black secondary
school teachers, of practices that have the potential to provide students with much deeper
skills and understandings to participate in the processes of social transformation and
reconstruction in South Africa. Based on my own intellectual history and grounding in
the literature on critical theory and pedagogy, and my experiences of participating in the
struggles to transform classroom practice as part of the political struggles for social
justice in South Africa, I have characterized such a pedagogy as transformative
practice. Using Giroux’s (1985; 1986) notion of “teachers as transformative
intellectuals,” Jackson’s distinction between transmission models and transformative
traditions of teaching, and my own teaching practice within the context of trying to define
a “people’s education for people’s power” (Kruss, 1988; Mashamba, 1989) in South
Africa, I defined transformative practice as the kind of teaching that pays attention to the
issues of voice and inclusion for all students and whose potential consequences for
students are transformative for themselves and their social world.

In carrying out the investigation, I was guided by three research questions:

0 What do some examples of transformative practices in South African

classrooms look like?

206

0 What are the personal, social, cultural, professional, historical and political
factors that help shape classroom practices of the teachers who engage in

transformative practice at various points in history in South Africa?

0 What does this suggest about what form(s) of transformative practices should

be fostered and how it/they might be fostered?
My review of the literature in science education pointed to a gap in our understanding of
the non-traditional models (or the non-transmission models to use Jackson’s language) of
teaching that can be characterized as transformative and how to account for them. We
are beginning to know more about the different versions of these non-traditional models

in science education, thanks to the work of researchers in the “feminist frameworks to

,9 ‘6 9, (6

science education, cultural frameworks, conceptual understanding or constructivist
frameworks,” science-society-technology (STS) frameworks.” We know much less,
however, about the “eclectic frameworks” that seek to combine aspects from a number of
these other frameworks, in order to define a practice of science education that promotes
conceptual understanding of the key ideas of the discipline while paying attention to
issues of social justice in the classroom. Rodriguez’s (1998) socio-transformative
framework which combines the concerns of the social constructivists and the concerns of
multiculturalists, and Osborne and Barton’s (1998) liberatory pedagogy framework
which brings together the feminist concerns and critical theory are the most recent
examples of such eclectic frameworks. Transformative practice, as defined in this study,
is another example of the eclectic frameworks. It pays attention to issues of voice,

inclusion and social consequences of teaching and learning science. Very little work has

been done to describe grade-level classroom attempts to realize the goals of any of the

207

eclectic models to science teaching, and from my review none has been done from a life
history perspective. My study is the only example, I’m aware of, that uses a life history
perspective to investigate pedagogical change in the classrooms of Black secondary
school science teachers in South Africa.

The major assumption on which this study was based is that teachers construct
their classroom practices fundamentally on the basis of who they are, what others think
of who they are, and how others define them. Data on the life history accounts of what
it means to teach secondary school science differently and specifically what it means to
the teachers who engage in such a practice under conditions not particularly favorable to
such innovations was collected through interviews, observations and a questionnaire.
Chapters four, five and six presented the case studies of three science teachers whose
classroom practices I have characterized as transformative. The three cases gave us a
portrait of what transformative practices look like, and what it means to engage in such a
practice in some South African schools. Each case study described the vision of
transformative practice that guided each teacher’s practice, analyzed instances of
classroom teaching based on the vision and then presented a life history account of why

each teacher did what he/she did in his/her classroom.

DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS

QUESTION 1: What do some examples of transformative practices in South
African classrooms look like?
With regard to the classroom practices of the three science teachers I observed,

this study found a surprising similarity in the themes that defined what I have referred to

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as transformative practice for each of the teachers. Although they all worked under very
different circumstances and brought to bear very different personal histories, their
practice was defined by a focus on the following three themes:

0 “covering the content” and preparing their students to succeed in the

national examination,

0 developing deep conceptual understandings of the subject matter, and

0 including all students in their teaching by constructing what other

researchers have called a “culturally-relevant” pedagogy (Ladson-
Billings, 1994; 1996).
I have referred to these three themes as concerns with “quantity” or “accountability,”
“quality,” and “equity” respectively.

The similarity was surprising in the context of the South African education system
where concerns with “quantity” seem to drive everything in the classroom, with only
occasional focus on “quality,” especially at the grade-12 level where students have to sit
for the high stakes national examinations. Only recently has there been serious mention
of “equity” in discussions about curriculum and pedagogy, even then only for the grade-1
and 2 teachers for whom a new national curriculum has been adopted by the government.
The similarities, however, end here as each of the three teachers put a slightly different
spin to the meaning of this vision of transformative practice in his/her classroom.
Working under different conditions of practice with varying resources for change, each
teacher constructed a different version of the transformative practice defined by the

similar vision.

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Mr. Sithole, who teaches at a regular township high school, worked with a group
of Black students who come from a predominantly low-income neighborhood, and for
whom the national matriculation examination has the potential to open doors to further
opportunities in and outside of school. Despite the time constraints and the lack of
resources in his school, Mr. Sithole ran two parallel programs for all his students in order
to help them succeed in the national examination whilst also setting up a context for
pursuing his other goals of “quality” and “equity.” In his context, the national
matriculation examination was the major accountability scheme within which his vision
of a transformative practice had to be negotiated. For this reason, Mr. Sithole did not
experience his vision of a transformative practice that incorporates the three themes of

,9 ‘6

“quantity, quality” and “equity” as contradictory, as much as he experienced it as
presenting implementation problems of inadequate resources, time and support from the
educational authorities. His was a case of a localized effort, within his classroom and
immediate community, to change the lives and opportunities of a group of students who
have traditionally been excluded from science and science education. If Mr. Sithole had
difficulties finding support to make the small and localized changes that affected the lives
of his group of students, we are left to wonder about the possibilities of making such
changes affecting more than one group of students across his school and across the entire
school system of South Africa.
In contrast, Mr. Tshabalala, who teaches in a finishing school crafted his practice

under a very different set of conditions and constraints. By its very nature as a school for

students who wished to have second or more opportunities at the national matriculation

examination, the finishing school was even more attuned to the accountability demands

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of the national examinations. If success in the matriculation examination meant a lot for
Mr. Sithole’s students and community, then it meant much more for Mr. Tshabalala’s
students and their community. As a recent political experiment at broadening the
democratic opportunities to education, finishing schools were closely watched by many
others within the political and educational system. This raised the stakes even higher for
Mr. Tshabalala. It is, therefore, not surprising that the story of Mr. Tshabalala reads like
that of someone who constructs two different sets of practices for the different seasons of
the academic year. That is, his classroom practice put emphasis on different aspects of
the vision (of quantity, quality and equity) at different periods of time during my
observations. What is remarkable about Mr. Tshabalala is his patience in working with
the students’ and community’s expectations around the national examination, to
ultimately craft a non-traditional practice that has the potential to make even more
meaningful their vision for providing multiple opportunities for the less successful
students at the finishing school. Unlike Mr. Sithole and Mrs. Hlophe, Mr. Tshabalala’s
was a high profile challenge to the status quo and its marginalization of the alternative
definitions of the teachers’ lives and work experiences. As a result, the alternative
definitions of teaching science to the “other,” as exemplified in his practices, were
challenged even more, raising important issues about the conditions necessary for
sustaining a reconceptualization like his.

Mrs. Hlophe, in contrast to both Sithole and Tshabalala, is the Head of
Department (HOD) at a relatively privileged boarding school with better facilities and
resources for crafting an effective practice of science education. Add to that the fact that

she taught a 10th grade physical science class where the demands of the national

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matriculation examination feature less prominently than in the other two cases. Mrs.
Hlophe’s vision of transformative practice was rooted more firmly within the quality
concerns and included experiences from the life world of her students, but deliberately
avoided social and political issues arising from the topics of her lessons. As a result, she
was thoroughly constrained in what she could do with and how far she could go with the
students’ understandings and insights arising out of her lessons. Hers is a case of a very
deliberate act of instructional leadership on how to craft a transformative practice in a
context where to be openly critical and political is not only dangerous but may be
suicidal, both figuratively and literally (see discussion of context later). In many ways,
Mrs. Hlophe’s situation was even more precarious and raises important questions about
the construction of and support for alternative discourses and practices in science
teaching and learning. But more importantly, her situation also raises questions about the
meaning and consequences of such discourses and practices for those engaged in them.
These case studies of the three science teachers help us understand better not only what
transformative practices are but also how they are constructed in different contexts.
Three sets of resources were found to play a critical role in whether or not and how each
teacher constructed his/her own version of what I have referred to as transformative

practice, that is subject matter, context, and the resources of biography.

Subject matter as a resource in transformative practice

In all three cases, subject matter was important for defining the goals of

transformative practice. In the case of Mrs. Hlophe, her whole identity as a

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transformative teacher was defined around the subject matter of science. That is, the
subject matter was a major point of reference for her changing practice.

With the three teachers differing in their attachment to and levels of comfort with
the subject matter of science, it was inevitable that the subject matter would present
different opportunities and challenges to the teachers, making it more or less difficult to
use it as an anchor for crafting a transformative practice. Mrs. Hlophe, for instance, who
is a chemistry major from a local university was able to use her superior command of the
subject matter to craft a practice that places emphasis on “quality” while paying attention
to both “quantity” and “equity.” Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala who are college-
educated teachers (as opposed to university educated) had relatively fewer opportunities
to explore the subject matter deeply at tertiary levels of education. As a result, their use
of and reliance on subject matter to craft an identity of a transformative teacher varied
slightly from that of Mrs. Hlophe.

Mr. Sithole took up an identity of a life-long learner of science while working
with his students to develop deeper conceptual understandings of the subject. She
enlisted for further education courses in science education that placed emphasis on
subject matter development. As a learner of science himself, he became much clearer
about the goals and processes of learning science as much as he was about the goals for
teaching it. That is, taking up an identity of a life-long learner of science allowed him to
step into her students’ shoes, even if only for a moment when he was not in front of them.

Mr. Tshabalala on the other hand, relied on his superior training at college on
instructional design and methodology and his prior experiences of teaching science, to

build a rather strong pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) which he used to

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craft his own version of transformative practice. He was comfortable with the subject
matter of science and helped his students explore the important concepts with relative
ease.

We learn from the case of Mrs. Hlophe that subject matter does not only present
opportunities which enhance the efforts to construct a transformative practice but can
sometimes become a constraint. When teachers of science become attached to their
subject matter and science education programs at school as Mrs. Hlophe is, it is
sometimes difficult to move in and out of it to explore related content areas such as
history that may arise in the context of a science lesson. This raises an important
question about whether it is possible or even necessary for teachers of science to move
comfortably outside of their areas of specialization during their teaching. If the current
versions of teacher education programs in South Africa and elsewhere, which emphasize
a high degree of specialization persist, then it is conceivable that teachers of science will
continue to have problems with aspects of the subject matter that require them to “cross
borders” into other disciplines. Programs in schools and teacher colleges that seek to blur
the borders between various subject matter, e.g., through interdisciplinary curricula or
team teaching or thematic teaching, acquire new meaning in the context of the lessons
about the potential for subject specialization to act as a constraint in crafting alternative
teaching practices. Such in-school programs and the teacher education programs that are
designed to produce liberally educated teachers present science teachers and others with
opportunities to learn to teach comfortably in and out of their respective disciplines. In
the context of the current trends in science reforms that seek to change what and how

students learn science, by focusing on key ideas in the subject matter and paying close

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attention to issues of voice and inclusion in science, it is inevitable that science teachers

will be called upon to deal with issues outside of their traditional discipline.

Context as a resource for transformative practice
A number of researchers have drawn attention to the important role played by

resources in reforming classroom practice (Anderson, 1999; Ball and Cohen, 1995; Jita,
1998; Spillane et al, 1995; Spillane and Thompson, 1996;). In contrast to earlier studies,
the latest work has sought to broaden the notion of “resources” beyond just the focus on
material resources. Spillane et al (1995), for instance, included such things as teachers’
knowledge, commitments and disposition, time, funding and labor and professional
networks in their discussion of resources that explain the variations between reforming
and non-reforming districts in mathematics and science. In their work at the National
Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science
(N CISLA), Anderson and his colleagues define (organizational) resources to include
material resources, e.g. teaching tools, school buildings, and school budgets; human
resources, e.g. teachers’ knowledge, leadership, and access to people with expertise; and
social resources, e. g. the professional standards, shared social histories and a technical
language (Anderson, 1999). In this broadened sense of resources, it is not only schools
and classrooms which have more resources that have a better chance of sustaining
transformative practices, but those with better organization of the different types of
resources to support the vision of transformative practice.

This study found that each of the three teachers worked with different sets of

resources to construct his/her own version of transformative practice within his/her

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particular context. The ease with which they were able to construct these practices also
varied with the nature and organization of the resources available to each one Of them.
For example, Mrs. Hlophe worked in a materially well-resourced boarding school, with a
steady traffic of researchers and policy-makers from local universities, government
research departments and industry forming rich networks for teachers at the schools.
With the experience of a veteran teacher in the profession, and her strong academic
grounding, Mrs. Hlophe had the ingredients for crafting her transformative practices with
relatively much fewer hurdles to overcome. However, the very strengths of her context
were also a limitation that Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala did not have to deal with. For
example, the fact that she teaches at a school in KwaZulu-Natal, where Open political
activism is tantamount to signing your own death warrant, constrained her practice in
some important ways.‘33

Both Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala were not so fortunate. Theirs was a situation
Of poor provision of material resources, with relatively little human and social resources
in their schools to work with. Their stories of practice suggest that they both found
different ways of organizing the resources they had, in ways that helped their efforts at
crafting a their versions of transformative practice in their classrooms. Mr. Tshabalala,
for instance, assumed a leadership role at the finishing school and used it to shield
himself fi'om external pressures while crafting a transformative practice in his
classrooms. That is, since the finishing school did not have positions for a deputy

principal and a head of science, Mr. Tshabalala assumed both roles on a voluntary basis.

 

6’ Although the political violence of the 19803 and early 19903 has subsided significantly, many people in
KZN including teachers are still hesitant about “coming out of the closet” in terms of their politics.

216

As a consequence, he became a de facto instructional leader at the school and had the
space to pursue a transformative agenda in his classroom.

Mr. Sithole, on the other hand, used his leadership positions in the teachers’ union
and in the community as an important (human) resource for crafting his non-traditional
practices. Besides shielding him from unwelcome attention by the school authorities, his
leadership roles in the community gave him access to knowledge, skills, and professional

networks that he could use to craft his classroom practices.

“Resources of biography” or Personal history

Through the stories Of the three teachers we learn about another category of
intangible resources on which very little research has been done to date. This additional
category of resources is what I call the “resources Of biography” or personal history. It
includes such things as one’s experiences of marginalization, experiences of growing
up or living in a particular culture and the experiences of participating in certain
kinds of social or political activities. How such resources of biography are used to
shape classroom practice is the major theme Of the stories of the three science teachers I
studied in this research project. What makes it difficult to conceptualize and study the
role of these resources of biography as opposed to the other resources (material, human
and social) is the fact that they are intangible and inaccessible until teachers begin to
consciously reflect on them. As Dewey (193 8) asserted about the power of an
(educative) experience, it is a potential that leads to further meaningful experiencing.

Such further experiencing, however, can only result from a conscious reflection upon the

217

prior experience. Indeed, experience without a framework for its interpretation is useless,

as is a framework without experience (Bromley, 1989).

(i) Experiences of marginalization as a resource for transformative practice

In telling their stories of growing up Black in a South African society
characterized by the discourse and policies Of racial discrimination, each Of the teachers
tells a story of marginalization in schools and society in general. As students, these three
teachers had to contend not only with the inequities in the provision of resources in their
schools and Opportunities to learn but had to experience school through a curriculum that
marginalized and trivialized their own life experiences. When it was not silent on the
broader experiences of Black people in South Africa, the apartheid curriculum Often
denigrated these cultural experiences. This marginalization of the Black experience in
South Afiica was, however, not uniform with the result that each of the three teachers
tells a slightly different story about his/her experiences of marginalization.

Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe, for instance, constitute the two opposite ends of
the spectrum in their experiences of this marginalization. For Mr. Tshabalala whose class
background put him in the lower echelons of the socioeconomic strata, the experiences of
marginalization were more extensive. He experienced marginalization on the basis Of his
race; socioeconomic status; label as a less successful learner of what was then the two
official languages, English and Afrikaans; and later as teacher of the marginalized
Ieamers (the “other” in the system) at the finishing school. His story describes how he

engaged in a complex process of (re) interpretation of these experiences of

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marginalization to author counter-identities that sustain him and his practice of a
transformative pedagogy.

Mrs. Hlophe, on the other hand, had a relatively privileged background and
schooling experience which played an important role in moderating her experiences of
marginalization. Hers is a story, perhaps, of marginality based on her identity as a Black
person in a society defined largely by white racist priorities.

Mr. Sithole whose experiences Of marginalization would fall somewhere in
between those of Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe experienced race and ethnicity, as the

most significant categories that shaped his experience of schooling.

(ii) Experiences of growing up and living in a culture

All three teachers in this study grew up and continue to live in the African
townships of South Africa. In the context of their own marginalization as members of the
African community, their struggles for an education were not just goals for individual
achievement but were really a part Of a much larger struggle to reaffirm a culture and its
people. For them to receive an education was part of raising the cultural, ethnic, or
sometimes even the racial group in much the same way as the Black American women
teachers talk about their teaching of Black students in Casey’s (1993) study. The
important point is that their education became a communal goal for self-development of a
people. Mr. Sithole, for instance, described how a member of his church community paid
for his registration fees at the college of education when his family could not raise the
required minimum payments. He characterized this event as one of the important turning

points in his preparation to become what I have referred to as a transformative teacher.

219

Although Mr. Tshabalala’s experiences were similar Mr. Sithole’s with regard tO
other community people getting involved in helping to pay for his education, his own
turning point came when he got the Opportunity to attend the first African boarding
school to be founded by an African (leader) in South Africa. As a school founded by Dr.
J.L. Dube on the principles of self-reliance, Ohlange high school provided Mr.
Tshabalala with a tangible experience of what the principle of self-reliance could mean in
practice. In his story he talks about how he developed culturally and politically at
Ohlange when he learned about the lives and sacrifices of people like J .L. Dube who
sought to build the African community.

In talking about the cultural influences on her own identity construction, Mrs.
Hlophe refers to the cultural discourse in her community which already allocated her a
place of leadership within the community once she completed her studies. That is, it was
expected of her that she would pass the junior certificate examination (grade-10 national
examination) at the local school, go on to one of the missionary boarding schools (which
had a good reputation of educating Africans) for senior secondary education, proceed to a
university, and then return to the community as a teacher, lawyer, or doctor (some of the

eminent professions within the Black community).

(iii) Experiences of participating in social, cultural, political, religious and

professional organizations and activities

The social and political activities were more pronounced for the two college
educated, younger male teachers in the study. They used these activities mainly to

develop and pilot ideas about such concepts “democratic leadership,” critique of social

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and curriculum ideas, social participation and construction Of counter-identities of
resistance. It is these ideas, developed formally in the structures of political and social
organizations and informally in the social and political networks that Mr. Sithole and Mr.
Tshabalala sought to bring to their teaching of science in ways that I have characterized
as transformative. Both Mr. Sithole and Mr. Tshabalala had been active members Of
students’ resistance organizations at school and college. In this role, they were privileged
to a number of opportunities to collectively discuss and critique their own experiences of
schooling and marginalization and to formulate counter proposals to the status quo. That
collective identity of resistance developed in the context of the student movements helped
to shape their own individual identities as transformative practitioners years later. As
described in chapter two, many college educated teachers have relatively limited
experiences with broader philosophical debates on curriculum and teaching because of
the illiberal nature of their college preparation programs and the tight control on such
discourses and critiques by the apartheid government. It is in that context that the
experiences and networks that these teachers developed in the social and political
activities became important for visualizing alternatives to the traditional practices Of
teaching science.

Mr. Sithole, for example, used the knowledge he gained during the in—services
courses he had attended as a teacher at an alternative Saturday school community
program for Black students who attend schools in the townships. He talks about his
learning about “group work” and “co-operative learning” in these in-service workshops.
He even had mentors assigned to observe and help him introduce these instructional

practices in his classroom at the alternative school program.

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As a former leader of student demonstrations against discriminatory policies in
the education system, Mr. Tshabalala was not discouraged by the hostile response to his
non-transmissive approach to teaching science at his school. Although he was perturbed
by it, he did not abandon his new ways of teaching. Instead he adapted his practice in
such a way as to make time for a deliberate focus on “covering the content” while
pursuing the other goals of “quality” and “equity.”

For Mrs. Hlophe, who is a university graduate in science and a veteran teacher of
science in KZN, it is the professional networks and to a small but significant extend her
religious community that provided her with the ideas and the opportunities to author an
identity which I have characterized as transformative.

A key point from the foregoing discussion is that, it is not only the experiences of
marginalizatiOn, or of growing in a specific culture or of engaging in certain kinds of
social, political, religious and professional activities that provide a person with the
resources for crafting a transformative practice, but a conscious reflection on and
willingness to learn from these experiences that makes them available as resources for

crafting such a practice.

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE
This study has provided a life history account of the transformative practices of
three secondary school science teachers. Its design as a set of case studies prohibits wide
generalizations to all science teachers or teaching in South Africa (Stake, 1995).
However, researchers engaged in studying reform practices and accounts of how they are

constructed in specific classrooms have a set Of cases to compare with. The contexts of

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these cases and the perspectives from which they were developed should be taken into
account when drawing such comparisons and insights from the study.

An important implication of this study with respect to investigations Of
transformative approaches to teaching is the need to recognize the fact that such practices
take time tO develop and may vary across teachers and contexts. Researchers need to
adopt methodological designs that sharpen the focus on these variations across contexts
and persons.

A second implication of this study relates to the need for the South
African education system to develop a single and consistent vision for transforming
science teaching and learning in ways that would ensure the inclusion of and sponsorship
of the voices of the previously marginalized Black people in the curriculum. The
government’s new curriculum 2005 reform program begins to provide such a vision for
change in the South African classrooms. In its vision, curriculum 2005 reform defines
nine specific learning outcomes around which all science education in schools is to be

constructed. That is, the

use of process skills to investigate phenomena

0 demonstration of an understanding of concepts and principles, and

acquired knowledge
0 application of scientific knowledge and skills to problems

0 demonstration of an understanding Of how scientific knowledge and skills
contribute to the management, development and utilization Of natural and

other resources.

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0 use of scientific knowledge and skills to support responsible decision-
making
. demonstration of knowledge and understanding of the relationship

between science and culture.

I demonstration of an understanding Of the changing and contested nature of

scientific knowledge

0 demonstration of knowledge and understanding of ethical issues, bias and

inequities related to science and

O demonstration of an understanding of the interaction between science and

socioeconomic development (Republic of South Africa: Department of

Education (DOE), 1997b)
The power of this curriculum 2005 reform vision lies in its breadth and depth in covering
a broad range of important ideas from different reform movements as noted in chapter
two. It includes ideas about science and culture; science, technology and society (STS);
science and (in) equity; conceptual understanding and science as a contested social
terrain. It thus constitutes a strong vision for a potentially transformative practice across
the many schools and classrooms in South Africa, injecting issues of social justice,
culture and socioeconomic development into the science classroom. The cases in this
study show how different resources make it easier or difficult for teachers to realize
visions of transformation. This vision of the curriculum 2005 reform will, therefore, only
make sense in a context Of adequate provision of resources for teachers to carry it out in
their classrooms. Different kinds of resources such as material, human and social

resources need to be provided.

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Closely related to the above is the third implication for the need for the teacher
education programs, both pre-service and in—service, to provide teachers with strong
grounding in the key ideas of the content they are expected to teach and to do so in ways
that encourage them to construct their own understandings and also promotes an
interdisciplinary approach to the learning of these ideas. These programs should also pay
attention to developing the teachers’ capacities to make the content more accessible to
their learners and comfort to interact with students’ ideas on the content.

Finally, a major finding of this study relates to the need to pay attention to the
“resources of biography” or personal history that each individual teacher has, as a
potential for supporting transformative approaches to teaching. Teacher education
programs and in-service workshops should be re-organized to allow for teachers to reflect
on their experiences in and out of school and to provide them with the frameworks and
the tools for such a reflection. As Raymond et al (1992) observe, such experiences indeed
serve as “lifelong references for teacher identity”(p.150), a resource which maybe crucial
for some teachers as they seek to craft and sustain a non-transmissive classroom practice.
Only through such a deliberate reflection can personal experience be available as a

resource to support an innovative practice.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
This study investigated the construction of teaching practices that are aimed at
including all students in learning the key ideas of science and helping them to develop a

voice for participating in the discourses in and outside of the science classroom. It was

225

focused on the practices of three secondary science teachers, two men and woman, in

Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces respectively. Further research is needed to:

provide more examples, in different contexts, of practices that bring together
the concerns of several strands of reform ideas around Isocial justice,
conceptual understanding and accountability.

conceptualize of other ways of defining a transformative practice, especially
in the context Of a changing South Africa.

understand better what the rubric Of “resources of biography” includes and to
explore the interactions between these kinds of resources and the material,
human, and social resources.

Given that this research focused more on the teachers and their practices
which I have characterized as transformative further research is needed to find
out what students actually learn in the classrooms of transformative teachers
from a student perspective and whether or not their conceptions of and

interactions with science change as result Of learning in transformative ways.

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AN EPILOGUE

Writing this dissertation has been an intellectual journey of sorts. It is a journey
that began, perhaps, with my puzzling about my own classroom practice. I wondered
about what it would take for teachers to engage in a practice that seeks to include the
experiences of all students and provide them with deeper understandings of the key ideas
in science. As a young teacher, ten years ago, I had tried to develop such a practice in my
own mathematics and science classrooms with very modest results at best.

I remember clearly how as a first year teacher at a high school in Evaton, South
Africa, I caused something of a stir when I shared with my colleagues that I thought more
than half of the students in my mathematics class were likely to fail the regional end-Of-
year examination. This I said in a meeting of the entire academic staff Of the school in
response to a question by the principal for teachers to identify students in their
classrooms who were “at risk” of failing the examination at the end of the school year.
What caused the stir is not the number of students I had identified as being “at risk” but
the fact that I had dared to say this in public or more particularly to those charged with
organizing and managing teaching and learning in the schools. As I came to realize later,
it was not that the teachers at my school did not know that the children I was teaching
mathematics to were “at risk” or that none Of the children in their own classrooms were at
such a risk, but the professional culture Of teaching then, and perhaps still, does not allow
for such a public discourse on what goes on behind the closed doors of each teacher’s
classroom. An admission that even one student was “at risk” was a sure way to invite
“critics” into one’s classroom to “check” on what is going on or not going on. There

could have been many like Mr. Juluka in the academic staff at my school, but none Of us

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as staff members would ever find out about it or even have Opportunities to Observe and
learn from their practice. We all practiced within a professional culture that encouraged a
conspiracy of silence about what it was we were doing in our classrooms, right or wrong.
Mr. Sithole’s low profile revolution in his classroom is, therefore, cultural in this sense.

Indeed the school principal asked several senior teachers at the school to go into
my classrooms and work with me on the problems. For many reasons which included the
fact that I was the only one on the staff with a science degree from a fairly well respected
Historically White University (HWU), and that I had taught sections of the work in both
science and mathematics for the other teachers when they felt less comfortable in their
classes, many of the senior teachers declined the principal’s invitation into my classroom.
Those who did take it up only came in to reassure me that there was nothing miraculous
they or I could do with a group of children who were not “mathematics or science
material.”

I also heard it from the students that they enjoyed my mathematics classes much
more than they had ever done before in their careers as students, but that they also
expected to fail the examination at the end Of the school year. This was partly because,
as they put it, mathematics was just “not their line.” There had to be something I could
for these children to learn mathematics and science concepts in ways that enhanced their
understandings and still make them feel good about their chances to succeed in the
regional examinations. But what it was, I was not sure. For much of what I saw around
me was either beating them (literally) to get ready for the examination or teaching them
to enjoy and understand the key ideas of the subject matter but in ways that did not

necessarily guarantee their readiness for the regional examinations. I couldn’t do both or

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even if I had wanted to wouldn’t know how. As an activist in the “people’s education for
people’s power” movement in the mid-19803, I had rejected the state curriculum and its
accountability schemes such as the regional or national examinations. I had read
Mathonsi’s (1986) extensive analysis of how the state manipulated and used these
examination results as a “mechanism of social control” of Black people and their
aspirations.

I experienced a similar dilemma in my teaching of science except that in science I
gravitated more towards teaching for the examination, although I was aware that some of
my students hardly made any sense of the science concepts I was teaching. Since I was
teaching grades 11 and 12 science, I felt guilty about the need to prepare these students
for the national matriculation examination. By the end of the year, my science students,
unlike the mathematics ones (where I was teaching a gradeIO class), could take the
matriculation examination and succeed, but this was less of a reason for me to be proud.

I felt trapped in this dilemma and to be honest it cut right through my heart.

The power of the stories of the three science teachers in this dissertation, for me,
lies with their ability to demonstrate the art of what many of us would consider the
impossible. That is, teaching science in ways which ensure that all students have the
Opportunity to develop the conceptual understanding of the key ideas while also
developing their own unique voices for participating in the social discourses in and
outside of the classroom. This, they do without being oblivious to the accountability
schemes that define their lives and those of their students. In reading the stories of Mr.
Sithole, Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe, some of what I did in trying to develop my own

classroom practice is affirmed and some Of it not. And further still, some Of my

229

experiences are cast in a different light now that I have read the stories of these three
teachers. Developing these stories of transformative practice in South Africa has allowed
me to reflect on my own experiences and struggles, some of which I had deliberately
buried far away in my memories. Part of what I take with me from the experiences of
doing this research and writing it up in the way I did is about how to open up, first to
myself and then to others about why I do the things I do, personally and professionally.

I do have a story to tell, therefore, about my own experiences and struggles to be
who I am and why I choose to engage in the kinds of professional practices, both in terms
of the research and/or teaching that I do (or hope to do). It does not feel appropriate,
however, for me to tell it in this same document where I have been privileged to the
inspiring and rich stories of Mr. Sithole, Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe. This
dissertation is primarily a small contribution to the struggles to lift their voices as
teachers and to tell their stories of practice without overwhelming them with theory and
my own stories. To the extent that it has been unavoidable to impose a perspective on
their stories, as the primary writer of this dissertation and a vehicle through which their
stories are articulated, enough of the damage has been done. As I continue on this
intellectual and professional journey, there will be more Opportunities to tell my own
story.

I pause to consider the implications of this study for my own professional practice
beyond this research. As I look back at my experiences with research on reform or
transformative practices, I hear three different voices begging for an answer to the same
question: “Are we on the right track?” A teacher in one of the Michigan Statewide

Systemic Initiative (MSSI) focus districts whose classroom practices I had Observed and

230

 

written about, asked me a few months later if I thought he was “on the right track.” I
responded by saying that although I was also not sure what the right track was, I thought
there were some interesting things I had seen in his classroom. I gave a similar response
to Mr. Sithole when he asked the same question. This question was asked of me again
with the other researchers I worked with at the Education Policy Unit (EPU) of the
University of Natal by a senior government advisor to the national minister Of education.
His was in reference to the new education policies designed to change classroom practice
in ways that would make the experiences of all learners more meaningfirl than has been
in the history of South Africa.

I Offer the stories of these three science teachers as part of the response to all these
three voices I have identified in the foregoing discussion. Further stories of
transformative practice, the resources available for its construction, and the policy
framework that supports it are needed to develop a much more comprehensive response

to the question of whether we are on the right track.

A TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE?

In a comprehensive matrix developed for analyzing secondary school science
teaching, Gallagher and Parker (1995) characterized modal practice in science teaching
as, among other things, dominated by factual content with no examples or
interconnections to the real world events, or even to the key ideas of the subject matter.
Gallagher and Parker’s (1995) matrix also draws attention to how such a practice tends to
be “teacher-dominated” with very few opportunities for student-student interactions and

integration of student ideas into the subject matter of science. Many observers of

231

education in South Africa have characterized the practices of Black teachers in the
system as modal and highly “didactic” to use Gallagher and Parker’s terminology
(HSRC, 1981; Macdonald, 1993; Macdonald and Rogan, 1988; Nduna-Watson, 1995).
This is even more so for the Black science teachers. As Macdonald (1993) observes, the
classroom practices of most Black science teachers are shaped by at least three related
features, that is the syllabi, the textbooks and the national examinations. The syllabi lack
relevance to both the students’ and the teachers’ life experiences (HSRC, 1981), and tend
to be both “academic in content and difficult” for the students (Macdonald, 1993: 38).
The only comprehensive study of (science) education in Black schools post-195 3, when
the Bantu Education Act was introduced, was conducted by the Human Sciences
Research Council (HSRC) in 1981. Based on the extensive evidence collected by its
researchers, the HSRC concluded that the teaching in most science classrooms in South
Africa, but especially in the Black schools, prioritized factual knowledge, disregarded
student experiences, and focused too much on tests and quizzes for exam preparation
(HSRC, 1991). Similarly, Macdonald and Rogan (1988) identified a number of didactic
“teaching approaches” that were common to many of the Black science classrooms in
South Africa. Their list includes such things as ‘teachers’ state the facts,” “tells the
students,” “inspects” and “corrects” while students’ activities were characterized by

9, 6‘

“listen(ing), watch(ing),” “copy(ing) notes,” and “answer(ing) exercises.” Nothing in
their observation of “ordinary” science classrooms (ordinary as compared to classrooms
Of teachers who had been targeted for intervention by the Science Education Project,

SEP, which helped them infuse some hands-on activities in their teaching) suggested a

deeper interaction with the subject matter of science by the students.

232

Modal practices of science teaching in Black schools have had devastating
consequences for students, both in terms of denying them access to science and reducing
their opportunities for participation in the social discourses in and outside Of the
classroom. The stories of Mr. Sithole, Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe become much
more significant in this context of a pervasive commitment to modal practice in South
African classrooms. Their pedagogy is different. It seeks to provide better
opportunities for all students to engage with the key ideas of science through the medium
Of their experiences, while also developing a voice through which to participate in the
social discourses in and outside Of the classroom. In their classrooms, students got
opportunities to construct meaning, engage in discussions with others about their own
constructions, (re) present their social experiences, and relate the subject matter of
science to their life worlds. Indeed their classroom practices were radically different
from the modal practices described by Macdonald (1993), or by the HSRC (1981)
reports, or even by the Gallagher and Parker (1995) matrix on didactic practice.

The classroom practices Of Mr. Sithole, Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe are
located within a broader context of a social experiment in transformation towards a
democratic society in South Africa. Voice and participation are some of the key
instruments for the realization of this social transformation in South Africa. In this
context, therefore, the practices of the three secondary school science teachers have the
potential to empower students with the tools for engaging meaningfully in social
transformation.

In the light Of the foregoing discussion, I have characterized the practices of Mr.

Sithole, Mr. Tshabalala and Mrs. Hlophe as transformative. But if a transformative

233

practice has a lot to do with the consequences Of students’ understandings and
knowledge, in terms of their own participation in changing the social discourses and
material conditions outside of the classroom, then the question of whether the practices of
these three teachers I studied is truly transformative remains. For we do not know what
the students did (or will do) long after they have left the science classrooms of these three
teachers. Were they (the students) to participate in the broader struggles of social
transformation in South Africa, then maybe a claim as to the truly transformative nature
Of Mr. Sithole’s, Mr. Tshabalala’s and Mrs. Hlophe’s pedagogical practice could be
made. However, it would still be difficult to isolate the impact of the teachers’ influences
on the students, thereby making us forever uncertain as to whether the three teachers’
practices were truly transformative.

Part of what drove this study on transformative practices were my experiencing Of
my own teachers’ pedagogical practices, especially those of Mr. Juluka, as
transformative. In many ways, this study was my attempt to find and understand the
practices of other Juluka’s in the education system. I cannot claim to have been entirely
successfirl at that, partly because as I have discussed in this study, a transformative Mr.
Juluka for me was not necessarily transformative for all Of my classmates. An important
aspect in defining a truly transformative practice has to do with whether the students in
the teachers’ classrooms experience it as such. The story of transformative practice is,
therefore, somehow a story to be told by the (former) students Of the transformative
teachers. This dissertation has largely been my telling of the stories of the three

secondary school science teachers, and therefore remains incomplete until we know the

234

stories of the students, present and past, and their experiencing of the teachers’ pedagogy
in relation to their own life experiences.

Through this study, the evidentiary burden for defining a truly transformative
practice has been raised. The stories in this dissertation, therefore, provide only part of
the answer to the question of what a truly transformative practice is. In that context,
more stories about what transformative practices looks like for other teachers and their
students need to be told in order to develop a much more comprehensive response to the
questions of whether we are truly on the “right track.” With the skills and experience
developed, especially in the course of doing this research, I hope to contribute further to
. the various efforts to define a much clearer response to the teachers’ and policymakers’

questions about defensible classroom practice.

235

APPENDICES

236

 

APPENDIX A

RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS

l. Questionnaire
2. Topics of interest on the questionnaire
3. Observation and Interview Protocols

237

 

 

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SCIENCE TEACHERS’

A research project to examine the teaching of Science and the school and classroom contexts within which
Science teaching occurs, is being conducted by the Education Policy Unit (EPU), located at the University
of Natal, Durban in a selected sample of schools in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Your
region’s Chief Director has agreed for the region to participate in this project.

Completion of this questionnaire is an important aspect of the research project. The questionnaire requests
information about your academic and professional background, instructional practices in your classroom,
things that constrain these practices and your beliefs and attitudes towards the teaching of Science. Your
responses are very important as they will help to describe the teaching of Science within this sample. Some
of the questions are adapted from a version of the instrument used by the Third International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS) which was recently conducted in over 41 countries, including South Africa.

The information given in the questionnaire will be treated with strict confidence. You, your students, your
school and your circuit will not be identified by name in any transcripts or reports of this research.
Identification numbers on this survey are used primarily for internal record keeping. Based on some
responses, a few teachers will be asked to participate in a subsequent interview and classroom observation.
The name sheets attached to this questionnaire will only be used to identify teachers for the follow-up
observation. Only the researcher(s) will have access to these names (and for research purposes only).
Classroom observation will require no more than 6 hours (about 6 double periods) spread throughout the
school year.

Your participation in this research is entirely voluntary. You may choose not to participate at all or not to
answer certain questions without any penalty to you. It is estimated that this questionnaire will take
approximately 60 minutes to complete.

If you desire further information about this research, you may call or write to Loyiso Jita at: Education
Policy Unit (EPU), University of Natal, Durban 4041; Tel: (031) 260-2641.

Your co-operation in completing this questionnaire will be greatly appreciated.

 

 

’ Science Teacher: refers to any teacher who is involved in the teaching and learning of any one of the
Science subjects including Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and General Sciences.

238

 

SECTION A (Tick relevant box)

 

1. How old are you?

under 25 ........................................................
25-29 .............................................................
30-39 .............................................................
40-49 .............................................................
50-59 .............................................................
60 or more .....................................................

DECIDED

 

2. Are you female or male?

Female ...........................................................
Male ..............................................................

 

3. Which of the following labels best describes you? (note: these labels may be problematic to
some, but are used to disaggregate data based on the legacy of South Africa’s immediate

 

 

 

 

history).
African .......................................................... D
Coloured ....................................................... D
Indian ............................................................ D
White ............................................................ D
Other (please specify) .................................... D
4. What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?
3 year teacher’s diploma ................................ D
4 year teacher’s diploma ................................ D
Degree but no specific teacher certification D
Degree plus teacher certification .................... D
Senior degree but no teacher certification ....... D
Senior degree plus teacher certification .......... D
other (please specify) ..................................... D
5. By the end of this year, how many years will you have been teaching altogether? (to the
nearest whole number).
1-3 ................................................................ D
4-6 ................................................................ D
7-9 ................................................................ D
10-14 ............................................................ D
15-25 ............................................................ D
26-33 ............................................................ D
34 or more .................................................... D

 

239

Is your appointment permanent or temporary?

a) Permanent ................................................
b) Temporary ................................................

 

What is your position at the school?

a) Principal ................................................... D
b) Deputy principal ....................................... D
c) Head of department (Science) .................... D
d) Head of department (other) ....................... D
e) Teacher (post level I) ................................ D

 

Which of the following statements best describe your initial motive(s) for entering the teaching
profession?
a
not a quite great
at all little a lot deal

a) Contact with youth; at ease with young people .............
b) Love of the subject matter ............................................
c) Desire to share one’s knowledge ..................................
(1) Role modeling: influence of former teacher(s)

or of parents who were teachers ...................................
e) Access to higher social status ......................................
1) Success as a student .....................................................
g) Compensating for a perceived educational deficit:

desire to ‘do better than one’s own teachers’ ................
h) A way of earning a living ............................................
I) Favourable working conditions ....................................
j) Job security ..................................................................
k) For lack of something better ........................................
1) Other (please specify) ..................................................

DECIDED [3131:] [31:11:]
DECIDED CIDEI DIED
DECIDED E11313 ClClCl
DECIDED DUE] 1:11:11]

 

 

240

SECTION B

 

9. At which grade level are you teaching Science2 during this school year?
Yes No
a) Grade 8 ...................................................... D D
b) Grade 9 ...................................................... D D
c) Grade 10 .................................................... D D
(1) Grade 11 .................................................... D D
e) Grade 12 .................................................... D D

 

10. How many students are in your class? (Write in the number)
Boys Girls Total

a) Your biggest class ...................
b) Your smallest class ...................
c) On average per class ...................

 

11. What other subject(s) are you teaching during this school year?

Yes

a) Mathematics .................................................
b) Languages ....................................................
0) Social Studies (geography, history,

criminology, biblical studies etc.) .................
(1) Industrial subjects and/or Creative Arts

(including home economics ..........................
e) Commercial Subjects (e.g. economics,

business economics) .....................................
1) None (only teach Science) ............................
g) Other (please specify) ...................................

[31:11:] Cl C] [3!
Ell—JD Cl C] CID?

 

 

12. For how many single periods are you formally scheduled to teach each of the following
subjects during the school week? (Count a double period as two single periods).

a) Science .......................................................................
b) Other (Subjects) ..........................................................
C) None (Free periods) ....................................................

 

 

2 Science Teacher: refers to any teacher who is involved in the teaching and learning of any one of the
Science subjects including Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and General Sciences.

241

13. Approximately how often do you have meetings with other teachers in your subject area to
discuss and plan curriculum or teaching approaches?

Never ...........................................................

Once or twice a year .....................................
Every other month ........................................
Once a month ...............................................

Once a week .................................................
Two or three times a week ............................
Almost everyday ...........................................

[313131313131]

 

14. Which of the following Science related activities have you participated in during the past
year? Indicate approximately how much time you spent in each activity.

5hrs 6—12hrs 12hrs or more

[:1

a) Attended a national Science association]
organisation meeting .................................... D

b) Attended a regional/provincial Science
teachers’ meeting .........................................

c) Served in a school/district/provincial
or national curriculum committee dealing
with Science ..................................................

d) Local teacher discussion or study group
focusing on Science ......................................

e) Attended a professional development session(s)
on Science (please specify under f & g) .........

f)

g)

 

[31:1 Cl [:1 Cl
CID E] 1:] [:1 D
CID Cl El 1:]

 

 

15. Indicate your familiarity with each of the following documents:

never heard not fairly very
of it familiar familiar familiar
a) Curriculum framework for general and
further education and training ....................... D
b) Learning Area Committee Reports ................ D
c) Curriculum 2005: lifelong
learning for the 2 1 st century .......................... D
(1) Natural Sciences Report (technical
committee and support team) ......................... D

[:1 Cl 1le3
Cl C] DC]
E] El CID

 

242

In your view, to what extent do the following limit how you teach your Science class?

a
not at a quite great
all little a lot deal

a) Students with different academic abilities ....... D D D

b) Students who come from a wide range of

[:1

backgrounds (language, economic) ................. D D D D
c) Uninterested students ...................................... D D D D
d) Disruptive students ......................................... D D D D
e) Parents interested in their children’s

learning and progress .................................... D D D D
0 Parents uninterested in their children’s

learning and progress .................................... D D D D
g) Shortage of instructional equipment for

student’s use ................................................. D D D D
h) Shortage of equipment for your use in

demonstrations and other exercises ............... D D D D
i) Shortage of books and libraries ...................... D D D D
j) Inadequate physical facilities ......................... D D D D
k)- High student/teacher ratio .............................. D D D D
1) Low morale among fellow teachers/

administrators ............................................... D D D D
m) Low morale among students ........................... D D D D
n) Threat(s) to personal safety or safety

of the students ............................................... D D D D

 

To be a good Science teacher, how important do you think it is for one to:

not not important very
important sure important
a) Be actively involved in campaigns
for social justice ........................................ D D D D
b) Maintain student discipline in class ........... D D D D
c) Organise sporting activities ....................... D D D D
(1) Fight for better conditions of service ........... D D D D
e) Satisfy the requirements of the
science syllabus ................................ , ........ D D D D
0 Obtain high percentage pass rates .............. D D D D
g) Constantly try to improve one’s teaching D D D D
h) Teach pupils to think critically ................... D D D D
I) Use science lessons to discuss
problems of the wider society ................... D D D D
j) Know one’s subject matter ......................... D D D D
k) Read professional journals and books
about Science education (e.g.
Science Teacher, Archimedes etc.) ............ D D D D
I) Read journals and books in the
discipline of one’s teaching
(e.g. Physics, Zoology, etc.) ...................... D D D D
m) Read local and national newspapers .......... D D D D
n) Register for further education (degree,
diploma, in-service courses, etc.) .............. D D D D
o) Other (please specify) .................................
Cl [:1 1:1 1:1

 

243

 

18.

Using your answers to question 17 (above), would you consider yourself a good teacher?

a) Yes ............................................................ D
b) No ............................................................. D
c) Uncertain ................................................... D

 

19.

List the three criteria from question 17 (above) which were most important in your assessment
of yourself (in question 18). (Choose from letters a-o of question 17).

l) ............... 2) ............... 3) ...............

 

244

SECTION C

 

To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?

strongly disagree agree agree
disagree strongly

Cl
C]

[:1

a) Science is primarily an abstract subject ........... D
b) Science is the same in all cultures ................... D
c) Some students have a natural talent for

science & others do not .................................. D
d) Focusing on rules is a bad idea.

It gives students the impression that

the sciences are a set of procedures

to be memorised ............................................
e) If students get into debates in class about

ideas or procedures covering the

sciences, it can harm their learning ...............
1) Race, class and/or gender matter in

the teaching of Science ..................................
g) Race, class and/or gender matter in

the learning of Science ..................................

131:]
[II]

Cl
C]

DUE] D
BUD D
[31:11:] El
DEC] [:1

 

When planning Science lessons, how much do you rely on:

 

never rarely sometimes always
a) Your own previously prepared lessons D D D D
b) Other teachers or science specialists
in your school ........................................ D D D D
c) Student textbooks ................................... D D D D
d) Other textbooks or resource books .......... D D D D
e) Past examination papers ......................... D D D D
In planning Science lessons, what is your m source of written information when:
own school syllabus past exams & library
experience textbooks document study guides books
a) Deciding which topics to teach D D D D D
b) Deciding how to present a topic D D D D D
c) Selecting problems, exercises
for classwork .............................. D D D D D
d) Selecting problems for
assessment and evaluation ......... D D D D D

 

245

To be good at Science, how important do you think it is for students to:

not somewhat very
important important important

a) Remember formulae and procedures .................
b) Understand concepts and principles .................
c) Understand the relationship between

science and culture ...........................................
(1) Think in a sequential and procedural manner
e) Understand the contested nature of science .......
f) Understand the interaction between science

and socio-economic development .....................

D DDCI C1D
Cl 1:11:11] 131:]
E] DUE] DD

 

In your Science lessons, how often do you usually ask students to do the following?

never or some most every
almost never lessons lessons lesson
a) Explain the reasoning behind an idea ...... D D D D
b) Represent and analyse relationships
using tables, charts, or graphs ................. D D D D
c) Work on problems for which there is no
immediately obvious method of solution . D D D D
d) Write explanations about what was
observed and why it happened ................ D D D D
e) Apply concepts and principles to
real life problems .................................... D D D D

 

In your Science lessons, how frequently do you do the following when a student gives an
incorrect response during a class discussion?

never or some most every
almost never lessons lessons lesson
a) Correct a student’s error in front
of the class ............................................. D D D D
b) Ask the student another question
to help him or her give
the correct response ............................... D D D D
c) Call on another student who is likely
to give the correct response ................... D D D D
d) Call on other students to get their
responses and then discuss
what is correct ...................................... D D D D

 

246

26. In Science lessons, how often do students:

never or some most every
almost never lessons lessons lesson

3)
b)
c)
(0

Work individually without

assistance from the teacher ...................
Work individually with assistance

from the teacher ...................................
Work together as a class with the
teacher teaching the whole class ...........
Work together as a class with

students responding to one another .......
Work in pairs or small groups

without assistance from the teacher ......
Work in pairs or small groups with
assistance from the teacher ...................

DECIDED

E]

DECIDE]

El

DECIDE]

El

DECIDE]

 

following details:

Name:

School:

Telephone:

247

Thank you for the thought, time and effort you have put into completing this
questionnaire. To facilitate possible follow-up activities, will you please fill in the

APPENDIX A
QUESTIONNAIRE ITEMS GROUPED BY TOPIC FOR PURPOSES OF
SELECTING TEACHERS FOR FURTHER CONVERSATIONS AND

OBSERVATION

MOTIVES FOR TAKING UP TEACHING: QUESTION 8
Work with youth

a) Contact with youth

Subject matter of science

b) love of the subject

c) desire to share one’s knowledge

0 success as a student

Early experiences with teaching

(I) role models

g) perceived educational deficit

A job
h) a way of earning a living
i) favorable working conditions

j) job security

k) for lack of something better

248

FACTORS THAT LIMIT TEACHING PRACTICE: QUESTION 16

Student population
a) different academic abilities
b) wide range of backgrounds

Students’ attitude/behavior

c) uninterested students

(I) disruptive students

m) low morale among students
Teacher attitude

1) low morale among teachers
General attitude/behavior

c) uninterested students

m) low morale among students

e) parents uninterested in the children’s education
1) low morale among teachers
(I) disruptive students

n) threat to safety

Resources

0 shortage of instructional equipment for student use
g) shortage of equipment for use in demonstrations
h) shortage of books and libraries

i) inadequate physical facilities

249

Parents

e) parents interested in their children’s education
0 parents uninterested in their children’s education
Independent

j) high student/teacher ration

m) safety

CHARACTERIZING GOOD SCIENCE TEACHING: QUESTION 17
Advocacy

a) involved in campaigns for social justice

(I) fight for better conditions of service

Accountability

e) satisfy requirements of the syllabus

f) obtain a high percentage pass rate

Knowledge

j) know the subject matter

k) read professional journals about science education
I) read journal in the discipline of one’s teaching

m) read local and national newspaper
n) register for further education

g) constantly try to improve one’s teaching

250

Higher Order Teaching Skills (HOTS)

h) teach pupils to think critically

i) use lessons to discuss problems of wider society
Discipline

b) maintain student discipline

Extra-curricular

c) organize sporting events

SELF ASSESSMENT: QUESTION 19

as a good teacher, using grouping in Question 17

BELIEFS ABOUT SCIENCE: QUESTION 20
d) focusing on rules is bad idea

e) debates can harm learning

IMPORTANT KNOWLEDGE: QUESTION 23
Understanding science and everyday life
c) relationships between science and culture

f) relationships between science and socioeconomic development

STUDENTS USING HOTS: QUESTION 24

All the items on this question

251

QUESTIONING STYLE: QUESTION 25
Questioning for the correct answer

a) correct student’s error in front of the class
c) call another student for correct answer
Questioning for understanding

b) ask student another question

d) call on students and discuss

TEACHING STYLE: QUESTION 26

All items on this question

252

APPENDIX Al
PHASE I and II OBSERVATION AND INTERVIEW INSTRUMENTS

Pre Observation Questions

9"N ..Oi—fi

DJ

Teacher Background

educational background and opportunities to learn

conditions of life and work (See Life History Interview Schedule)
beliefs, understandings and personal philosophy on teaching

Lesson/Instruction

What is/are the obj ective(s)?

What is the context? Previous work? Future work? Standard curriculum? Other?
13 there are a particular pedagogical style that you will be using? Why?

Configuration

Who will be in the classroom?

Who are the Ieamers?

-General description

-Any learners requiring special attention? Why?

253

 

 

Science Lesson Observation Guide

Name of School:
Name of Teacher:
Grade:

Lesson(s):

Date:

Please write a short description Of the surrounding neighborhood, school, classroom, and
teacher(s).

Please draw a picture of the classroom here, noting major landmarks.

Please note how many children were present and provide counts by gender and ethnicity/race.
How many were absent?

1. Narrative description. Describe the lesson(s) you observe. What are the teacher’s objectives?
What seem to be the topics and tasks? What is the order? How much time is devoted to each
chunk? Note: This description is the major accounting of the lesson(s). Describe the (shifting)
social organization of the learners and the classroom at different points and in relation to
different activities.

2. Instructional materials. Please describe the materials in the room. Are any books present? If
so, where are they? Of what type are they (trade books, reference books, textbooks, etc.). Note
the publishers and names of any textbook and reference texts used as well as the dates.

Are there displays related to science learning or teaching? Describe or sketch these. Are they
created by teacher, students, commercial publishing house?

2a. How are materials used across the day?

3. Science instruction. The following questions are specifically addressed to aspects of science
instruction.

33. Comment on what it seems that students are supposed to be learning. Does the teacher
explain directly what students should be learning or are activities structured to provide
experience with particular aspects of science? What goals are focal at given points or
across the lesson(s)? Are all students expected to meet the same goals?

3b. Reflect on the conceptions of science represented across the lesson(s). What does it mean
to be scientifically literate at different points across the lesson(s)? Does this differ across

254

the students in the class? [Use observations from across the lesson(s)--what is up in the
room, different activities in which teacher and students engaged, etc. -- to lend concrete
evidence and detail. Try looking for different kinds of ‘scientific events’.

3c. Are there times during the lesson(s) when a significant number of students seem
exceptionally engaged in the scientific work or activity at hand? What are they engaged
in? Are there times during the lesson when a significant number of students seem to be
disengaged or engaged in something else? What are they engaged in?

3d. Reflect on the discourse patterns that you observe during the day.

How do students participate? What kinds of things do students say, how much do they
participate, what are they encouraged to do and not to do?

Who talks? To whom? Role of the teacher in the discussion?

How are students’ ideas treated? 13 there a press for convergence? Is there conversation in
which no one right answer is guiding the discussion?

3e. Do you observe the teacher using any of the specific practices that are associated with the
current reforms (e.g., co-operative learning, solving problems relevant to real life,
engaged in experimental work, using science to construct explanations of reality, etc.)?
13 any special scientific terminology used? If so, what is it? What role does it play in the
lesson(s)? How familiar do students and teacher seem to be with these terms? (e.g.,
scientific process, hypothesis, predicting, etc.). In what context were these terms used?
What role did they play? How were they presented? Used? Discussed? By whom?

3f. How would you describe the relationship between traditional rote and new constructivist
teaching/learning in the lesson(s)?

3g. Any other issues of interest about the lesson not covered in the earlier questions?
4. Assessment-related activities. Does the teacher use any test-preparation or test-related drills or
activities?
What are these like? What is their content and focus? How are they used by students?
How much time is spent on these and when?

Why are these used?

255

 

 

Post Observation Questions

1.

How do you feel about the session? Why? Did you accomplish what you hoped to?
Did anything go differently than what you expected?

Was today a typical day/session? If so in what ways? If not, in what ways? Why?

Follow up on interesting aspects of the lesson. Ask questions to help clarify the
teacher’s understanding and purpose for using the particular instructional goal,
pedagogical tool etc. e.g. I am interested in focusing on some events from the class I
observed.

Observation 1: I notice that [plug in the relevant descriptor] e.g. a lesson that was taught
from a textbook or a segment that looks like it was structured to pursue a certain reform
agenda.

Could you tell me a little bit about [relevant descriptor]?
Where did you get that idea?
What were you hoping the Ieamers would get from the lesson?
How did you think the students did?
13 there anything they had trouble with?
How could you tell?
Why was this a problem?
Is there anything they found easy or interesting?
Why do you think they found this easy/interesting?
How could you tell?
Is there anything you want to follow up on in future classes?
If so, what?
Why is that important to follow up?
Are there differences in the ways that students react to this material?
If so, what? Could you give examples?
Did you teach this material in the same way last year?
If so, can you recall any differences in the way you taught it this year and the way
you taught it last year?
If so, what were those changes?
Why did you make them?
Is there anything that you might do differently next time?

If appropriate, inquire where the teacher learned about each particular reform related
activity in the lesson. On their own? At their school site? District mandate? etc.

Ask a broad question relating to if and how their teaching has changed in the last 5-10
years. Follow up again with the influences that shaped these changes.

6. Opportunity for the teacher to raise issues that have not been covered.

256

APPENDIX B

SIMPLIFIED SCHEME FOR DESCRIBING TYPES OF SCHOOLS IN SOUTH
AFRICA

257

 

la)

1b)

2.

APPENDIX B

SIMPLIFIED SCHEME FOR DESCRIBING TYPES OF SCHOOLS

TYPE OF SCHOOL

Boarding schools

Boarding schools

Colored schools

FOUND IN SOUTH AFRICA‘

DESCRIPTION/STUDENT POPULATION

(Serving White students). Found mostly in provinces with
large rural areas. White boarding schools serve mostly the
richest end of the spectrum. A number of these schools
have always admitted African students from

affluent backgrounds (irrespective of their race). Mostly
single-sex and single medium schools (either Afrikaans or
English medium).

(Serving Afiican students). Mostly located in rural
provinces also. Vary in SE8 of students, with some serving
high end and others the middle class end of the spectrum.
Serve students of both sexes and also cater for non-borders.
A sizeable number of them are religious schools that cater
for specific denominations although they are Open to all.
formerly restricted to students of mixed race. Some high
SES others low SES depending on location. Some serve

Specific religious communities depending on their location.

 

' Under the new SASA of 1996, there are only two types of schools, the private and the public and all the
public schools are open to children from all racial groups. Accordingly, there will now be variations to the

258

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Farm schools

Finishing schools

Indian schools

Inner-city schools

Rural schools

Suburban schools

mostly African and elementary, built on private land owned
by the farmers for children of farm-workers. Low SES.
mostly African and caters only for repeating 12‘h graders.
Visible in poor achieving areas e.g. some African locale.
formerly restricted to Indian students. Mostly very high
SES, but with sizeable low SES ones depending on location
Some predominantly serve specific religious communities,
although they are open to all. Religious rites and holidays
are observed.

mostly private and African. Located in dense areas of town
and attract students fleeing from township schools. Most
are in the business for profit and charge very high fees.
Located in rural areas. White schools comparable to urban
counterparts. Black schools are poorer and built from
community contributions with matching funds from the
government. Most offer regular curriculum program

(all subjects excluding technical subjects). Very few

are comprehensive schools (curriculum includes technicals)
All white and serve the high end of SES spectrum. Most
offer a much broader curriculum with a lot of enrichment
courses for students. At secondary level, most are single

sex and single medium schools.

 

descriptions offered here. Many of the features, however, remain because of the residential segregation in
South Africa.

259

9a) Township schools (Regular). Most are working class schools on the
lower end of the SES spectrum. Few would qualify as
lower middle class (given the open admission policies that
ensure a rather undefined mixing of students from different
backgrounds). Township schools serve Africans only.

9b) Township schools (Comprehensive schools). A recent creation in the aimed at
providing broader curriculum, including technical subjects.
Most are similar to the regular schools but slightly better
equipped and with newer facilities. When they began in
the mid-19803, most of them were characterized by
white principals and senior teachers assigned by the DOE.

9c) Township schools (special programs schools). Very few in number. They
Offer only selected programs only e.g. science school.

10. Technical/Vocational Offer a strictly technical or vocational stream. Very few
serve African communities. In white areas, these schools
are uncharacteristically large and well equipped with a
broad set of curricula offerings.

11. Special schools These are schools for the handicapped. They are very few
across the different provinces and/or racial groups. Most
offer a very restricted curriculum program geared towards
basic literacy.

"‘ Most African schools are single medium schools with exceptions in the townships with

multilingual communities.

260

APPENDIX C: Mr. Sithole’s laboratory setting

 

 

Door 1
Side A

Chalkboard:
Glass cupboard

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stude tables Front bench <——- .14

 

 

Overhead projector screen < —
Teacher’s table I.
‘ Side B ..........

H ‘ r

 

 

 

261

APPENDIX D: (FIGURE 1) A MULTIPOLAR NEURON

Afi 4 Muscle fibre

@{J‘L . Motor end plate

> :— Neurilemma
Axon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Myelin sheath
4—-———-—-"'/ Nucleus
L 4 Dendrite
.2 f Nucleus
Cytoplasm

 

 

262

APPENDIX D CONTINUED

 

Axon branch

 

Cell body

 

Figr_rre 2: Schem of g synapse

 

‘ Axon branch

 

Terminal branch

 

fie Impulse in axon

Chemical substances formed(acetylcholine)
NF__,__.J

[ \

Figure 3: Schematic of a; synapse transfer agross a: synapse

263

APPENDIX D LCONTINUED)

K+++++++++++++++++++

 

Na+++++++++++++++++++++++++
—

 

Figure 4: Nerve Impulse

264

APPENDIX E:

APPENDIX E: MR. TSHABALALA’S CLASSROOM SETTING

 

 

 

 

 

 

bid 1::1 1:1:1

 

 

Chiboard

Windows

 

Bulletin Board

Student desk i

 

 

Doo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

B: BOY

G: GIRL Seating: 4 students/ desk
2 or 3 on desk and
lor2 on a chair placed next to the desk

265

APPENDIX F: THE ALCOHOLS & MONOCARBOXYLIC (FATTY) ACIDS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 CARBON 2 CARBON 3 CARBON
H H H H H H
l I I
PARENT H—C—H H—C—CFH l I
ALKANE I H—C —C — C—H
H H H I I
H H H
H H H
I I I H H H
ALCOHOL H—C — OH H—C —C— OH I I I
I I I H —C—— C — C —O H
H H l | l
H H H
O H o
I I l I I H H "
MONO H—C—OH Prc-C—OH l I ll
CARBO- I H—C—C— C —OH
XYLIC ACID l I I I I
H H H
H H H
METHANE ETHANE PROPANE
T0 T0 T0
METHANOL ETHANOL PROPANOL
T0 T0 T0
METHANOIC ETHANOIC PROPANOIC ACID
ACID ACID

 

 

266

 

APPENDIX G: Mrs. Hlophe’iLaboratorv setti_ng

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Door
> Window
SIDE A
Laboratory bench
B B B B
B (32 G1
_ _ B F B i
B U3 Chalkboard(___1 ~
B B B B '
Overhead projector screen<
SIDE B
B= BOY
G= GIRL

267

Preparation of oggen and the catafltic oxidation of ammonia

APPENDIX H

 

 

 

 

 

 

'0

O\

\

—> Burner

 

 

 

 

 

Copper
wire

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salt e.g. KmnO3

Manganese Dioxide

268

1

concentrated Ammonia

{:02}

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