Changing Teaching, Changing Times: Lessons from a South African Township Science Classroom

Changing Teaching, Changing Times Lessons from a South African Township Science Classroom

BOLD VISIONS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Volume 8 Series Editors Kenneth Tobin The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA Joe Kincheloe McGill University, Montreal, Canada Editorial Board Angela Calabrese Barton, Teachers College, New York, USA Peter McLaren, University of California at Los Angeles, USA Margery Osborne, Centre for Research on Pedagogy and Practice Nanyang Technical University, Singapore W.-M. Roth, University of Victoria, Canada Kiwan Sung, Woosong University, South Korea Heinz Sunker, Universität Wuppertal, Germany

Scope Bold Visions in Educational Research is international in scope and includes books from two areas: teaching and learning to teach and research methods in education. Each area contains multi-authored handbooks of approximately 200,000 words and monographs (authored and edited collections) of approximately 130,000 words. All books are scholarly, written to engage specified readers and catalyze changes in policies and practices. Defining characteristics of books in the series are their explicit uses of theory and associated methodologies to address important problems. We invite books from across a theoretical and methodological spectrum from scholars employing quantitative, statistical, experimental, ethnographic, semiotic, hermeneutic, historical, ethnomethodological, phenomenological, case studies, action, cultural studies, content analysis, rhetorical, deconstructive, critical, literary, aesthetic and other research methods. Books on teaching and learning to teach focus on any of the curriculum areas (e.g., literacy, science, mathematics, social science), in and out of school settings, and points along the age continuum (pre K to adult). The purpose of books on research methods in education is not to present generalized and abstract procedures but to show how research is undertaken, highlighting the particulars that pertain to a study. Each book brings to the foreground those details that must be considered at every step on the way to doing a good study. The goal is not to show how generalizable methods are but to present rich descriptions to show how research is enacted. The books focus on methodology, within a context of substantive results so that methods, theory, and the processes leading to empirical analyses and outcomes are juxtaposed. In this way method is not reified, but is explored within well-described contexts and the emergent research outcomes. Three illustrative examples of books are those that allow proponents of particular perspectives to interact and debate, comprehensive handbooks where leading scholars explore particular genres of inquiry in detail, and introductory texts to particular educational research methods/issues of interest. to novice researchers.

Changing Teaching, Changing Times Lessons from a South African Township Science Classroom

By

Jonathan Clark False Bay FET College, Cape Town, South Africa and

Cedric Linder Uppsala University, Sweden University of the Western Cape, South Africa

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM / TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 90-77874-20-8

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://www.sensepublishers.com

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All rights reserved © 2006 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

ix

Explanation of Terms

xi

Points of Clarification

xiii

CHAPTER 1: Lessons from the Context-Bound Chalkface 1.1 Introductory comments 1.2 “To infinity and beyond” – South Africa post-1994, a curriculum in flux 1.3 The role of teachers at a time of innovation and change 1.4 Overview of book

1 2 5 7

CHAPTER 2: Setting the Scene: The Township, the School, and Its Students 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7

Kubukene township Yengeni High School Gangs, gangland and vigilantism The students Large, mixed-ability classes Corporal punishment The Science Through Applications Project (STAP)

13 13 17 20 23 25 27

CHAPTER 3: School and Staff 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Yengeni High – The school as a site of struggle, a (brief) historical overview 3.3 Yengeni High as a dysfunctional school 3.4 Some theoretical considerations 3.5 Availability of teaching time 3.6 Losing out 3.7 “Slip, sliding away” with the 9D’s 3.8 Teachers’ absenteeism 3.9 “Two schools in one”

v

35 37 39 40 43 45 46 51 56

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3.10 The principal as “gate keeper” 3.11 Towards an understanding of non-teaching – The concept of moral minimising 3.12 The impact of the COSAS “week of action” 3.13 Nomzamo working as a constrained individual 3.14 Some thoughts in closing

58 60 63 68 71

CHAPTER 4: The Role of Students at a Time of Innovation and Change 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12

Introduction On large classes and “the dilemma of not knowing” The art of hiding and “curtain walls of silence” On passive students and not speaking out in class On passive behaviour and student questioning (or a lack thereof . . . ) A “double bind” On crackles and sparks The role of language in the learning of science Speaking Reading Writing Some thoughts in closing

77 79 81 85 89 94 96 102 107 111 118 120

CHAPTER 5: Nomzamo – A Science Teacher 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Introduction The role of subject communities Subject matter and identity Nomzamo – from student to teacher “Science has become my life, really . . . ” Some thoughts in closing

129 131 133 134 160 170

CHAPTER 6: Adrift on the Sea of Change . . . 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6

Introduction – teachers’ knowledge Nomzamo’s general pedagogic knowledge On content-reduced teaching and a dearth of unsolicited questions Changing practice, changing times In collaboration Some further thoughts on Nomzamo’s experiences of change

177 181 190 197 220 223

CHAPTER 7: The Continuing Dilemma of Continuing Change 7.1 Introduction 7.2 “Reality check” 7.3 Coming down to earth vi

231 231 235

TABLE OF CONTENTS

7.4 The continuing dilemma of continuing change

240

CHAPTER 8: Some Insights and Implications of This Study 8.1 In summary 8.2 Some insights and some thoughts on the implications of this study 8.3 In closing

243 252 256

Appendix

257

Bibliography

261

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Nomzamo, the science teacher whose story we celebrate in the pages of this book. While she must, by necessity, remain anonymous; we want her to know that it was a rare privilege indeed to work with such a person, and to be allowed to share her experiences with a broader audience. Thanks also to the principal, staff and students of Yengeni High who, without any preconditions at all, allowed us to undertake research in their school. We would also like to thank Anne Linder, Michelle Mizuno-Wiedner and Mike Morris for the many generous hours they spent reading, commenting and helping prepare the text for this book. A special word of thanks goes to our respective families, without whose love, support and encouragement none of this would have been possible or, really, have made any sense at all. Financial support from the South African National Research Foundation and from Uppsala University, Sweden, is gratefully acknowledged.

ix

EXPLANATION OF TERMS ACRONYMS

ANC C2005 CEPD COSAS COSATU DET HOD INSET JMB NSC NECC NEPI NGO OBE PASO PRESET PTD PTSA SADTU SCISA SEP SRC STAP STD UWC

African National Congress South African Curriculum Reform Programme Centre for Education Policy Development Congress of South African Students Congress of South African Trade Unions Department of Education and Training Head of Department In-service education and training Joint Matriculation Board National Senior Certificate National Education Crisis Committee National Education Policy Initiative Non-Governmental Organization Outcomes-based education Pan Africanist Student Organisation Pre-service education and training Primary teacher’s diploma Parent-Teacher-Student Association (pronounced “pit-za”) South African Democratic Teachers Union Science curriculum initiative in South Africa Science Education Project Student Representative Council Science Through Applications Project, a curriculum research and development project Senior teacher’s diploma University of the Western Cape

COLLOQUIAL WORDS/EXPRESSIONS

Bundu(s) Dagga Jol Matric Skollie

Wild, open country remote from civilisation Local word for marijuana (pronounced: “dha-gha”) To play, frolic, have fun Grade 12, final year of secondary school A street hoodlum, usually a criminal or potential criminal

xi

EXPLANATION OF TERMS

Sjambok Toyi-toyi Tsotsi Ubuntu Ja “Yho hayi!”

and member of a gang Originally a stout rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide whip A militant dance expressing defiance and solidarity, especially during political demonstrations A usually flashily dressed black street thug, frequently a member of a gang (similar to skollie) Human-heartedness (equivalent to Chinese jin); quality embodying all the traditional virtues and values of Africa Commonly used Afrikaans word for “yes” Xhosa exclamation of amazement or surprise (in English – literally, “Whew, no!”)

TERMINOLOGY

African Coloured Students

Township White

xii

A member of one of the black indigenous peoples, as distinct from “coloured”, Indian, white or Khoisan people. South African of racially mixed descent. Regarded by some as a racist term: hence “coloured” and “so-called coloured”. Youth at school are called, interchangeably, pupils and students. Now officially referred to as learners. African youth at school almost invariably refer to themselves as students. Urban area set aside for black occupation. Usually people of light skin colour and/or European descent.

POINTS OF CLARIFICATION

1. Jonathan Clark and Cedric Linder together crafted the research reported on in this book, but it was Jonathan who spent the many necessary months in Nomzamo’s classrooms. 2. The terms African, Coloured and White are used in this book. Seeing as these groupings underpinned the political system of racial classification that characterised apartheid, these divisions have been invested with considerable (often emotive) meaning in South Africa. Our use of these terms is in no way an attempt to legitimize these categories, nor a denial of the complexity of social constructions such as race, ethnicity and culture. However, in common with the majority of South Africans, we continue to use these terms in a non-pejorative way in our everyday speech. Similarly, the term black also appears in the text – sometimes (quite intentionally) it is used as a collective term to describe all people who were discriminated against under the apartheid system. On other occasions, it is used synonymously with the term African. In general though, Nomzamo and her students at Yengeni High are referred to as African, and Jonathan, white. The Xhosa are the second largest ethnic group in South Africa after the Zulus. IsiXhosa is spoken by around 7 million people. 3. Seeing as the majority of South African teachers are women (64%), we have intentionally chosen to use the feminine gender for pronouns which apply to teachers. 4. Nomzamo and Jonathan’s conversations together were always held in English, which is not Nomzamo’s primary language. Extracts from interviews have been included verbatim, and we have not, as a rule, edited either Nomzamo’s or Jonathan’s comments. However, in order to assist the reader to make sense of our dialogue, we have sometimes included a short explanation in [square brackets] in the text. Less frequently, we have taken the liberty to add to the text – by placing an expression in “parentheses”. The same approach was adopted in the transcripts from the student interviews. 5. During the more descriptive accounts, such as the narrative fragments and the extracts from the journal entries, both past and present tense have been used. Each chapter (bar the final one) has a set of endnotes attached to it.

xiii

POINTS OF CLARIFICATION

When work which has also been referenced in the main text appears here, then only the author(s) and date of publication are noted. However, if it is not referenced in the main text, then the full citation is given. 6. In South Africa, the different years of schooling are officially referred to as Grades 1–12. 7. All proper names used in this book are pseudonyms, including the names of schools which Nomzamo attended and at which she taught. The one exception is Jonathan, who is usually referred to in the interviews as Jon – the name by which most people (including Nomzamo) tend to call him. 8. Dates are written in the following format: DD/MM i.e. 12/1 means 12th January.

xiv

CHAPTER 1

LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXT-BOUND CHALKFACE 1.1. INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

In this book we are going to explore issues relating to educational change. We will do this by drawing extensively on a case study of a science teacher we have called Nomzamo, who works in a large, over-crowded and under-resourced urban secondary school called Yengeni High, a school typical of those found in African townships throughout South Africa. The main theme revolves around Nomzamo’s experiences of implementing an alternative curriculum programme in her classroom. What happened to her during this process provides a rich basis for exploring some of the complexities of teaching science in an educational setting full of constraint and contradiction. But this is not only Nomzamo’s story; it also involves the hundreds of students she teaches on a daily basis, her colleagues in the staff room and an institution which still bears the scars of its apartheid past. The story is set against the backdrop of an education system which is itself seeking to implement a programme of the most fundamental reforms. It is also a story about collaboration, and has things to say about the vital role which a reflective dialogue can play in helping a teacher make sense of the “puzzles of practice” thrown up by her introduction of an innovation in her classroom. Yet more than anything else, it is a story which attests to the power of individual agency, and is intended as a celebration of the actions of an ordinary teacher whose willingness to leave the well-worn path of familiar practice stands as a beacon of possibility in a context which seems to be so often devoid of hope. While it relates the highly personal experiences of a single teacher, we believe this story provides insights into the challenges to practice, and constraints on change, which countless others face in their working lives in schools not only in South Africa, but also across the world. Finally, while this book is set firmly in the present, it is at the same time a journey into the past, and draws extensively on both Jonathan’s and Nomzamo’s experiences over the years of having taught in township schools. As such, it is a uniquely South African story which seeks to shed fresh light on how the legacy of apartheid education has (and continues to have) a major influence on teaching and learning in this country. Presented as such, this book may appear to the reader to be somewhat unusual, and relative to the conventions which inform much of the research in science education in South Africa, this is undoubtedly true. Yet there are, we believe, good reasons for breaking with tradition in this way, particularly since we find ourselves at such a critical juncture in our country’s educational history, where

1

CHAPTER 1

the wholesale reforms sweeping through the system are expected to bring about major shifts in the forms and function of teaching and learning in the classroom. As reported research over the years has shown, the process of curriculum change entails the most daunting challenges, no more so than at the crucial stage of classroom implementation; and it is here that we believe that as South Africans, we have a serious problem – for in common with other developing countries, there is a dearth of reported research on what actually goes on in and around science classrooms. We would contend that we have so little understanding of the “realities of schooling at the chalkface”, that it hardly seems an exaggeration to propose that we know virtually nothing at all about how individual teachers cope and respond to the challenges of practice, either under existing conditions or when faced with implementing change. This is a state of affairs which stands in stark contrast to that found in the developed world where, as Hargreaves (1994) reminds us, the literature on teacher learning and change is replete with theories and understandings of what has come to be known as the change process. Furthermore, and to make matters worse, whereas there is a strong academic tradition of theorising education in South Africa, this has not as yet translated into a tradition of research into curriculum transactions in schools. This is a real problem, seeing as analysts of curriculum change processes have long called for rigorous, in-depth studies of the school milieu. As Dalin (1978, p. 1, cited in Crossley and Vulliamy, 1984) reminds us: “Understanding the culture of the school is essential if we are to identify change strategies which will succeed in the complex task of renewing the educational system”. 1.2. “TO INFINITY AND BEYOND” – SOUTH AFRICA POST-1994, A CURRICULUM IN FLUX

With the coming to power in May 1994 of South Africa’s first democratically elected government, a vigorous effort has been mounted to overhaul the country’s education system.1 In the decade since then, wholesale reforms have swept through the system, intended to bring about major shifts in the forms and function of teaching and learning in the classroom. These reforms are centred on an ambitious plan entitled Curriculum 20052 (C2005) that intends to revolutionise schooling in this country through the introduction of an outcomes-based education (OBE) curriculum.3 The high rhetoric of national policy documents call for a curriculum that is learner-centred, holistic, unbiased, integrated and relevant, to develop critical citizens who can participate actively and responsibly in a democratic, multicultural society.4 This is to be achieved by adopting a model of transformational outcomes-based education that “involves the most radical form of an integrated curriculum”.5 Teaching and learning, according to the tenets of OBE, will replace the alltoo-ubiquitous pedagogical style of rote learning so prevalent under apartheid.6 A central aim of OBE is to shift from teacher-centred to learner-centred approaches, 2

LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXT-BOUND CHALKFACE

to foster critical thought and to focus on developing appropriate skills, by drawing on work that is relevant to the students’ lives. Assessment as it is presently conducted will disappear, to be replaced by a system in which students’ achievement of outcomes, at their own pace, will be recognised.7 In short, it is envisaged that education as we know it in South Africa will never be the same again. Yet, as experiences over the past few years have shown, OBE is a complex educational model, and critical issues relating to its suitability as a reform movement for South Africa have been raised in a number of published articles8 with areas of contestation centering around epistemological, political, moral and implementation difficulties. In a seminal paper on the implementation of an OBE model in South Africa, Jansen (1998) suggests that the current status of education in this country militates against sophisticated curriculum reforms such as OBE. His thesis is that OBE will fail because it is a policy being driven, in the first instance, by political imperatives which have little to do with the realities of classroom life. And that rather than spawn innovation, OBE will in fact undermine the already fragile learning environment in schools and classrooms of the new South Africa. Besides adding his voice to those who question OBE’s epistemological orientation9 and raising important political objections,10 Jansen argues persuasively that OBE will fail because it is based on flawed assumptions about what actually happens inside schools, how classrooms are organised and what kinds of teachers exist within the system. Particularly since over-crowded and underresourced classrooms are the norm in South Africa, we have an environment which directly militates against the conditions of OBE’s success.11 For us, what is perhaps his most cogent point concerns the fact that, for OBE to succeed even in moderate terms, a number of interdependent innovations must strike the new educational system simultaneously. For example, support of OBE’s implementation requires trained and retrained teachers, radically new forms of assessment, parental support and involvement and so on – in other words, an entire re-engineering of the education system. However, for all that, as events over the previous few years have shown, OBE is likely to remain dominant as a curriculum model for a long time to come. As Le Grange (1999) puts it, languages of critique (as reflected in the academic literature) do very little to transform schools and help teachers cope with change: Few would disagree that our schools need to be transformed by eradicating legacies of apartheid and replacing them with the qualities of democracy, equality, justice and peace. Given existing realities in South African schools this cannot happen overnight and indeed will be a long-term process. The sooner we start, however, the sooner our goals may be realised. What we will need to do is move beyond the languages of critique prevalent in the South African curriculum reform debate. Further, we need to recognise the utopia of languages of possibility and instead seriously consider languages of probability12 for curriculum reform in South Africa. The South African OBE model provides spaces for transformation which did not previously exist. (p. 79) 3

CHAPTER 1

Yet when it comes to implementing curriculum changes, the issues run very deep indeed. For there is no escaping the fact that even in developed countries with well-qualified teaching forces and a multitude of support factors favourable for change, successful implementation has proved difficult at the best of times. In the case of developing countries the current conditions and educational practices are so unfavourable, and the conditions necessary to support change so noticeably absent, that Van den Akker (1998) questions whether the gap is not in fact too large to even attempt some of the ambitious curriculum initiatives planned. We read this as a caution, seeing as the South African education system spans such a range of contexts – from affluent First World, to impoverished rural Third World; from schools which have endured years of extended political contestation to those whom apartheid privileged and thus essentially left untouched. Furthermore, whereas over the past twenty years the experience of many teachers in countries throughout the world has been of continuous curriculum change, often externally imposed and soon succeeded by further change,13 this has clearly not been the case in South Africa. Indeed, it can be argued that prior to the latest wave of reforms, the country was effectively trapped in what amounted to a decades-long curriculum time-warp. This is no more evident than in a subject such as physical science. Over the years, numerous articles have drawn attention to the poor state of science education in South Africa. For instance, Kahn (1993, p. 13) sums up the situation when suggesting that “the picture is one of a colourless science, poorly taught [and] involving little contact with experimental activity”. In many respects, the science curriculum followed what Robyn Millar (1987) describes as the “standard science education” (SSE) view of scientific method and experimentation. To elaborate, it is worth quoting him in full: The popular image of science is of knowledge discovered in laboratories through experiments which validate the knowledge and guarantee its reliability and trustworthiness. The rhetoric of school science draws on this popular image, justifying the prominence of experimental work by pointing to parallels between the pupils’ activity in the classroom and the professional activity of scientists. This image of school science has proved a constant strand in science education writings for the past twenty years and more. (p. 109) An “inquiry approach”, which emphasizes hands-on, student-centred, discovery learning attained the status of near orthodoxy among some science educators in South Africa.14 Furthermore, notwithstanding the obligatory idealised statements of intent which for years prefaced official syllabus documentation (such as, “students should be encouraged to do independent investigations”) the syllabi were so content-dominated that science was rarely, if ever, presented as being anything other than a disconnected sequence of ordered facts – hence Khan’s (1993) observation that few students had the opportunity to engage in practical work. But perhaps most damning of all, the focus on content and the academic bias of the syllabi tended to encourage rote learning and transmission modes of teaching, 4

LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXT-BOUND CHALKFACE

something which Muller’s (1987) research revealed to be a tendency present in science classes at all levels in South African schools. For years then, science syllabi, which by and large defined teaching and learning in the subject, remain firmly locked in the past. Not only did they fail to relate to children’s life experiences, but they allowed little scope for dealing with current and, more importantly, local issues. Consequently there remained at all levels of the curriculum a distinct lack of relevance. As someone who has plied her trade as a science teacher for more than a decade, this is, as it were, the default setting of Nomzamo’s own practice, and the base from which she must work while attempting to bring innovation into her classroom. 1.3. THE ROLE OF TEACHERS AT A TIME OF INNOVATION AND CHANGE

Across all subjects, the centralised, highly prescriptive curriculum and the system of authoritarian control, which characterised apartheid education, effectively discouraged the professional initiative of most South African teachers. The doctrine of fundamental pedagogics15 has also had profoundly detrimental effects on teachers’ thinking and practice.16 This, we believe, has major implications for the present reform initiatives, particularly as one of the most significant lessons from curriculum development elsewhere in the world is that successful curriculum innovation hinges on teachers, who are the key to interpreting policy visions.17 While the official position is quite unequivocal in acknowledging the central role that teachers will play in the implementation of OBE at the classroom level18 ; what seems to be lost in the rhetoric is an acceptance that the introduction of any new curriculum poses a range of challenges to teachers with regards to the underlying assumptions and goals, the subject demarcations, the content, the teaching approach and the methods of assessment.19 Indeed, the difficulties that teachers face in introducing innovative programmes into their classrooms have been documented by a number of researchers as being overwhelming.20 Here we surely need no reminding that it is axiomatic that educational policy implementation is far more complex than policy formulation, and that there is a vast gap between established educational practices and new education policy principles (a point made in Crossley and Vulliamy, 1984, amongst others). If we return to Curriculum 2005, the successful implementation of such a radical system (relative to what precedes it, that is) clearly demands significant changes in both the pedagogy and the professional practice of teachers in the classroom. Gray (1999b) highlights some of the implications of this for science education21 – teachers will no longer use pre-determined curricula, supported by standard textbooks. Instead, teachers are expected to become curriculum developers, producing material to suit their context, with an emphasis on the development of appropriate skills and attitudes and a de-emphasizing of science content knowledge. Teachers are also to move away from a “transmission” mode of teaching towards more “mediated, constructivist” models of learning – all of which implies a radical departure from existing practices on the ground. 5

CHAPTER 1

Again, international research has shown that it is typical for teachers to experience great difficulties in making the sorts of changes to their practice demanded by shifts towards student-centred learning22 and as noted by Van den Akker (1998), the problem in developing countries is even more severe.23 The lessons are clear – without considerable teacher-support and development, curriculum initiatives will invariably fail to be implemented as intended by the purveyors of policy.24 As Webb (1997) quite succinctly sums it up: Teachers’ relationships to change and innovation are very intertwined with many other features. In order to gain any significant instructional change, one must first reach vast numbers of teachers, who differ greatly in their beliefs, content knowledge, preferred teaching styles, and the conditions under which they teach. The differences among teachers are so great, and their participation so varied, that any classification of their roles greatly simplifies a multifarious reality. As Tolstoy cogently depicted in War and Peace, the great battles are won or lost by individuals in the field acting upon their own interests, motivation, and will to win, influenced little by the commanders, generals, and others acting from headquarters far behind the front lines. (p. 73) Reflecting on the situation as it unfolds in South Africa, it does seem somewhat ironic that the present process of curriculum development in many ways replicates the “centre-periphery”25 models of the past. The problem is that such an approach to curriculum development, in which content is developed and refined at one level to be implemented at another level, reduces the teacher’s role to that of a technician given the responsibility of putting the designers’ theories into practice. In the face of such a reform, it is hardly surprising that teachers react negatively or apathetically to new programmes which do not fit their educational contexts or match their inclinations or capabilities.26 Pedretti and Hodson (1995) put it as follows: This approach to curriculum development fails to identify and engage teachers as the key agents of change [our emphasis], and ignores the uniqueness of educational settings . . . No account is taken of teachers’ own experiences, personal theories and values. No account is taken of the particular constraints of particular learning/teaching environments. Educational change is seen as independent of the social context in which it is formulated and the social context into which it is to be implemented. Curriculum implementation problems are conceptualized in terms of teachers’ failure to understand the designers’ intentions . . . Continued failure of the innovation can and will be blamed on the teacher. (p. 467) The challenge clearly lies in finding ways to actively engage practising teachers more directly in the curriculum development process. Yet this is not an easy matter at all. For a start, in order to move beyond the traditional notion of “teacher as technician” in the curriculum implementation process, the teacher’s role needs to be conceptualised in more complex terms. For the introduction of any new curriculum material is by no means “pedagogically neutral” and the implications 6

LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXT-BOUND CHALKFACE

of any change (however gradual or incremental they might be) necessitate, as we have argued above, a reconsideration of teaching/learning methods and priorities and strategies for assessment and evaluation. Nor is it a value-free activity – for the teacher who is tasked with implementing curriculum changes in her classroom, it involves a reconsideration of what Bruner (1986) would call the teacher’s “stance” towards (amongst other things) knowledge, scientific inquiry, learning and education in general. In this respect, one also needs to acknowledge that a teacher brings to the task of teaching a personal complex of beliefs, assumptions and experiences that collectively constitutes the “educational situation”27 within which change occurs. This point seems particularly relevant to us here in South Africa – a country with a system of educational provision that spans a wide range of contexts, staffed by teachers whose levels of preservice training differ markedly, and whose experiences (and expectations) of teaching and learning differ in turn by extremes. In order to make sense, then, of the problems teachers experience with changing their practice, it is critical that one develops a sense of the classroom and school world as they see it, for it is only then that one can begin to understand more of the meanings and frameworks of their actions.28 Teachers are undoubtedly “key agents of change”; perhaps it would be useful to extend this metaphor to view our teaching corps as a highly complex amalgam of groupings of practitioners, who, as “keys”, come literally in all shapes and sizes, able to “fit” any number of doors. Developing then our understanding of how teachers can be used to unlock the door(s) of curriculum change is a challenge to be faced throughout the world. 1.4. OVERVIEW OF BOOK

Chapter 2 begins the process of building a descriptive account29 of the context within which Nomzamo plies her trade as a science teacher. Following a brief introduction to what we have called Kubukene township, we will enter the school for the first time to be presented with a description (at this stage, on a somewhat “bricks and mortar” level) of Yengeni High. This leads into an account entitled “Gangs, gangland and vigilantism”, which we have included in order to help locate the “school in community”. We will then turn our attention to the children, and learn something of the hundreds of students whom Nomzamo teaches on a daily basis. We will then raise a number of general issues relating to the students that have an important bearing on subsequent events during the trialling exercise. Finally, we introduce the work of the “Science Through Applications Project” (STAP), the curriculum development project whose materials it is which Nomzamo trialled in her classroom. The first major theme to be explored in the book is the extent to which context plays a powerful role in influencing the development of a teacher’s pedagogy. In Chapter 3, the spotlight will fall on “School and staff” to reveal, in the context of large, overcrowded and under-resourced schooling, the extent to which deeply ingrained practices of both teaching and learning are (often quite inadvertently) potential inhibitors of change. The first half of this chapter is devoted to 7

CHAPTER 1

considering how a range of contextual factors, grounded in the overall functioning of the school, has a significant effect on Nomzamo’s attempts to bring about change in her classroom. When it comes to the staff, it will become clear just how much Nomzamo’s actions are heavily influenced by the institutional practices and working relationships of the community of teachers at Yengeni High, as well as the extent to which having to function as a constrained individual without the benefit of a collaborative, supportive group of fellow teachers, has a negative impact on her practice. As the trialling exercise progressed, it became evident just how much students were being asked to change their practice and adapt to new ways of learning. Clearly no easy task, particularly given the dynamics of Nomzamo’s classes which were filled with such large numbers of students who varied by degrees in both ability and motivation. Chapter 4 is devoted then to considering how students too, play a pivotal role in limiting a teacher’s attempts to shift the focus of teaching and learning in her classroom. Here it will be argued that complex issues relating to language and culture need to be carefully considered, not least the problems faced by both teacher and students in having to study science through the medium of a second language. In order to develop a more critical understanding of the “dynamics of change” in a context such as Yengeni High, the introduction of innovation in a classroom will be conceptualised in terms of a dual process – whereby a teacher has to grapple simultaneously with changes to both her own and her students’ practice. Yet whatever role “school, staff and students” play in influencing the development of a teacher’s pedagogy, it is the teacher’s person or self which remains the final arbitrator in determining what emerges as classroom practice. In our study we have adopted an approach advocated by proponents of life-history research (such as Ivor Goodson), who have called for a return to the use of personal biographies in studying educational issues. To this end, Chapter 5 is devoted to a narrative account which highlights those aspects of Nomzamo’s career and life history which she articulates as having played (or continue to play) a major role in influencing her work as a science teacher. This account will also serve to introduce the reader to the striving, purposeful science teacher alongside whom Jonathan worked over the months of their collaboration together. With Chapters 3 to 5 having provided the platform from which Nomzamo’s professional actions can be considered, the focus in Chapter 6 shifts to her personal experiences during the implementation of the STAP programme in her classroom. The discussion which follows is structured around a consideration of three main categories of teacher knowledge.30 The impact which working in a dysfunctional school setting has on Nomzamo’s general pedagogic knowledge will be considered first. The extent to which her subject matter knowledge is, like her general pedagogic knowledge, context-bound and influenced by amongst other things the nature of the interactions between herself and the students she teaches 8

LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXT-BOUND CHALKFACE

will be next. The third (and most extensive) point of focus will explore through a number of narrative accounts, specific examples of where Nomzamo came to confront, and then work through, limitations in her own instructional practices in ways which led to the growth and development of her pedagogic content knowledge. This in turn will provide an important vehicle for considering, from Nomzamo’s own perspective, some of the complexities of the change process. We will also acknowledge the pivotal role which a reflective dialogue plays in assisting a teacher to reflect on her teaching. And confirm that the collaborative partnership between Nomzamo and Jonathan played a key supportive role at the time that she was grappling to come to terms with the changes being wrought in her classroom. We will draw Nomzamo’s story to a close in Chapter 7 by forging a link between the trialling exercise and Nomzamo’s post-STAP experiences, and in so doing consider issues pertaining to what we have termed “the continuing dilemma of continuing change”. This will lead, by way of conclusion, to Chapter 8, where we will take the opportunity to highlight what we believe are some of the more significant insights which have emerged from this study. NOTES 1 In the period from 1994, Jansen (1998) identifies three national curriculum reform initiatives which have focused on schools. The first was an attempt to purge the apartheid school syllabi of racially offensive and outdated content; while the second introduced continuous assessment into schools. The third, and most ambitious curriculum policy being the introduction of OBE and the launch of C2005. [See Jansen, J. (1997). Essential alterations? A critical analysis of the State’s syllabus renewal process. Perspectives in Education, 17(2), 1–11.] 2 The year 2005 indicates the final year of implementation in all school grades, as originally planned. 3 As Sanders (1999) points out, the curriculum proposals mirror almost exactly the structure of the New Zealand national curriculum and the New Zealand Qualifications Framework structure. [See National Department of Education (1997). Curriculum 2005: Lifelong learning for the 21st century. Pretoria: National Department of Education.] 4 Department of Education (1997a). 5 Department of Education (1997b). 6 Mason (1999). 7 Sanders (1999). 8 For example, Chisholm and Fuller (1996), De Clerq (1997) and Mason (1999). 9 McKernan (1993) challenges the “means-ends” OBE stance that views knowledge as instrumental rather than as contextual, emergent and constructed. [McKernan, J. (1993). Some limitations of outcomes-based education. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 8(4), 343–353.] 10 It may well be, as Jansen perhaps somewhat cynically concludes, that OBE as a reform movement is an act of political symbolism, in which the primary preoccupation of the state is with its own legitimacy, and as such has very little to do with bringing about substantive change to teaching and learning in the classroom. 11 By way of example, Jansen points out that the management of OBE multiplies the administrative burdens placed on teachers – they have to reorganise the curriculum, increase the amount of time allocated to monitoring individual student progress against outcomes, administer appropriate forms of assessment and maintain comprehensive records. 12 Le Grange draws on the work of Deever (1996) who develops what is (in our opinion) a pragmatic approach which acknowledges that appropriating a language of probability involves accepting that

9

CHAPTER 1 certain organisational patterns and practices (of schooling) will not likely change soon. [Deever, B. (1996). If not now, when? Radical theory and systematic curriculum reform. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 28(2), 171–191.] 13 This is a point made by Levin and Riffel (1998). In the international arena, the progressive movement of the 1960s was replaced by the “back to basics” of the 1970s and early 1980s, and has been followed by a whole variety of other movements. 14 The effectiveness of this approach to teaching science has long been called into doubt. In particular, it has been sharply criticised for reflecting an inadequate understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge and the processes of science. It has been more than twenty years since Woolnough (1983) quite bitingly described guided discovery learning as being at times no more than “stage managed heurism”. [Woolnough, B.E. (1983). Exercises, investigations and experiences. Physics Education, 18(2), 60–63.] 15 Fundamental pedagogics is a homegrown South African product which, drawing on Dutch phenomenological philosophy, claims to have developed a science of education. Useful critiques of fundamental pedagogics are provided by: − −

Enslin, P. (1988). The state of pedagogics. Perspectives in Education, 10(1), 67–74; Morrow, W. (1989). Chains of thought: Philosophical essays on South African education. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, pp. 36–52.

16 Taylor and Vinjevold (1999). 17 E.g., Sanders et al., (1999) and Taylor et al., (1999). 18 This is made plain in the official documentation – see Department of Education (1997b). 19 Newstead and Bennie (1999). 20 Fullan (1991) and Huberman and Miles (1984). 21 Although his comments naturally apply across all subject/learning areas. 22 Black and Atkin (1996). 23 In any event, Brodie (1998) makes the point that generalised calls to teachers to make a shift from the “old” teacher-centred practices, to the “new” student-centred approaches are not helpful. While teacher mediation is crucial, it is a complex practice, and dichotomies such as “facilitation” and “non-intervention”, as opposed to “direct teaching” are not useful in delineating helpful from unhelpful practices, nor in indicating where particular strategies can be improved to enable better learning. [Brodie, K. (1998). Teacher- or learner-centred: How do mathematics teachers in South Africa teach? In Ogude, N.A. and Bohlmann, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics and Science Education. Pretoria: University of South Africa, pp. 85–92.] 24 Bell and Gilbert (1996), Fullan (1993) and Fullan and Hargreaves (1992). 25 Rizvi and Kemmis (1987) (cited by Hart and Robottom, 1990) describe this model as follows: the curriculum is developed at the “centre” by experts in the education department, who then oversee programme development and implementation (by teachers), which occurs at the “periphery” (i.e. in classrooms). 26 A point made by Hart and Robottom (1990). 27 Feldman (1994). 28 Clandinin (1986). 29 Or a “thick description” as it is referred to in the literature of qualitative research (as in Lincoln and Guba, 1985, and Magoon, 1977). 30 Using the framework proposed by Shulman (1986, 1987).

10

LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXT-BOUND CHALKFACE

Nomzamo is by any measure a remarkable person, a striving purposeful teacher whose professional career has been characterised by a continual seeking out of opportunities to “build herself professionally” (as she puts it). One of her latest involvements has been with STAP, a curriculum research and development project located at the University of the Western Cape. With its emphasis on student-centred activities and collaborative group work, the STAP materials embody an approach that is markedly different from those generally adopted in South African schools. With students being encouraged to take more responsibility for their own learning, the pedagogy inherent in the “STAP approach” also requires a significant shift in teaching style, not only in terms of instructional practices, but also in how the teacher manages a broader role in the classroom. During the trialling of the STAP materials in other schools, Nomzamo visited teachers and listened to them (and their students) unanimously pronouncing the programme “stimulating and useful” yet heard too of their difficulties as they sought to shift the emphasis of their pedagogy away from “chalk and talk” and faced the challenge of having to rethink, often in quite uncompromising ways, the nature of their everyday practice. She sat and watched the various ways in which the STAP programme demands a measurably higher level of teacher and student engagement than conventional science lessons, and observed first hand, the teachers’ struggle to develop teaching and learning strategies that would allow them to make fuller use of a more flexible curriculum resource such as STAP. Now it is Nomzamo’s turn, for she has agreed to trial the latest draft of STAP’s Grade 9 programme in her four classes at Yengeni High – the large, over-crowded and under-resourced secondary school where she is the senior science teacher . . .

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SETTING THE SCENE: THE TOWNSHIP, THE SCHOOL AND ITS STUDENTS 2.1. KUBUKENE TOWNSHIP

Kubukene is no different from so many other townships that mark the urban landscape of South Africa. From the time when the first dwellings were built in the early 1960s, its history reflects the struggle of African people against apartheid, in particular against the segregationist policies which sought to deny them the right to live and work in white urban areas.1 For many years, the Apartheid State pursued a deliberate policy of providing poor-quality housing, and the provision of other basic facilities – schools, clinics and recreational areas – was withheld. The inevitable outcome of this wanton neglect and under-provision of basic facilities is the over-crowding, squatting and squalor found in townships occupied by Africans to this day. Following the abolition of the “pass laws” in June 1986 these problems have been compounded by the dramatic increase in the number of African people moving into urban areas.2 While great strides have been made in the past few years towards addressing infrastructural inadequacies (such as sewerage, water supply, electricity, telephones and rubbish disposal) and while there has been a steady improvement in the provision of basic social services, the quality of life for many of the people who reside in Kubukene remains marked, not just by poverty, but also by high levels of crime and violence.3

2.2. YENGENI HIGH SCHOOL

Yengeni High is set deep in the residential heart of Kubukene. It is one of the oldest schools in the township and moved twice before settling in its present location in the early 1970s. Surrounded by wire-mesh fencing, the buildings face away from the busy road which fronts the school and are bordered on the other three sides by the shack-filled yards of the small, semi-detached dwellings that are characteristic of much housing in the township. Over the years a number of prefabricated classrooms have been added to the assemblage of single-storey brick buildings which make up Yengeni High, so that now there is a ragtag collection of 34 venues of different sizes4 – all in various states of disrepair. In addition to the classrooms there is also a single laboratory, one home economics centre and a room that houses the small, but well organised school library. In one of the buildings, the partitions between two classrooms have been removed to create a larger venue. This room functions as a “hall” of sorts,

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although it cannot accommodate more than 100 or so students (let alone the whole school). All the classrooms are fitted with fluorescent lighting and a single power point, many of which are periodically stolen or vandalised. A rundown block of toilets is set off to one side of the school, behind which there is a small storeroom containing little more than an assorted collection of broken tables and chairs. The dilapidated remains of what were once a tennis court, and a rubble-strewn field with rugby posts at each end, are the only recreational facilities available – although no one plays rugby and the school soccer team practices at another venue. The administration block lies at the centre of the school and contains the staff room, staff toilets and a number of offices that are shared by the various senior staff – the departmental heads (HODs) and the second deputy principal.5 There is a single public phone and a small kitchen for the teachers’ use. The staff room has a number of standard-issue teacher’s tables (there is often no space for them in the overcrowded classrooms) and plastic chairs similar to the ones that the students use. The cupboards dotted around the room are shared amongst the teachers, most of whom have been allocated a single shelf each. The principal and his first deputy have rooms in a separate wing of the administration block, which also contains the empty secretary’s office. Most of the school’s printing is done here, on a Roneo machine in the first deputy’s office; while an old photocopier in the principal’s office is carefully nursed from one breakdown to the next. In recent times there has been a spate of burglaries at Yengeni High and all (remaining) valuable items – ranging from the school stamp to the soccer team’s “kit” are kept carefully locked away in a walk-in safe which, with its concrete ceiling, is the only really secure room in the entire school. There are 29 class groups at Yengeni High. The junior classes are almost all seriously overcrowded (they are rarely less than 60 students assigned to each class). Here the limiting factor is the shortage of classrooms, which places severe constraints on the number of class groups that can be accommodated. While there are a few unoccupied rooms these are almost always in use by some of the “split subject groups” that inevitably arise in a typical school day. Clearly, the school is bursting at the seams. The school has a staff complement of 51 teachers (which includes the principal and the other senior staff) for a student body of just over 1,850.6 At the time of the trialling exercise, besides the caretaker and his helper, no other non-teaching staff was employed at Yengeni High. Consequently, all of the basic day-to-day administrative duties have to be handled by the principal or shared out amongst his two deputies and/or the HODs. In terms of financial support, the subsidy from the local education department is based on the number of students at the school. While the education department provides funding to cover the cost of textbooks and stationery, the undersupply of textbooks is almost always a problem.7 With no cash reserves of its own worth speaking of, the school is forced to operate in financially constrained circumstances and, given the level of poverty in the local community, the school struggles to attract additional funding and is hard pressed to collect even its modest school 14

SETTING THE SCENE

fees. Whatever money does come in tends to be swallowed up by the day-to-day running costs of the school. For example, with so many students to provide for, the end-of-year examinations consume a considerable volume of printing paper and ink, which the school can ill-afford to purchase out of what is, by that time of the year, a depleted school fund. Faced with such expenses, there is precious little money left over to build up a bank of resources that can enrich teaching and learning (there have been a spate of burglaries in recent years). While the school does receive an annual maintenance grant from the education department, given the poor state of repair of some of the classrooms, this money tends to get used up within the first six months of the year. If a more serious problem arises, the school has to join the queue petitioning the department for additional funding and endure the not unexpected bureaucratic delays which invariably ensue. An illustration of this arose during the trialling exercise, when the roof of the home economics centre collapsed, and there was an almost two months’ delay (and a number of very wet and rainy days) before work commenced on a new roof.8 The poor state of repair of some of the prefab classrooms was a constant headache during the trialling exercise, and since one was the homeroom of one of her classes, it was a problem which directly impacted Nomzamo’s teaching. The following accounts reflect the steady disintegration of this classroom over a period of a couple of months: 12 May: The floor has started to cave in near the back of the classroom. Besides the inconvenience, it means that there is less floor space upon which to rest a chair and it creates a hazard for anyone trying to move around the class. 28 May: The gaping hole in the floor seems to be spreading – two more sections have collapsed now and some students’ chairs are literally hanging on the edge of these holes. The leak in the ceiling is also worse after this week’s rains and a number of the ceiling panels are starting to peel off. Later in the day, the principal pops his head in the door to view again the latest damage. He is clearly disturbed by what he sees and says that he will ask the contractors, who are still busy putting the final touches to the Home Economics Centre’s roof, to give him an idea about how much it will cost to shore up the floor and fix the leaking roof. Walking back to the admin building, he talks of the uphill battle to stop the school falling into disrepair with such a small maintenance budget. As he explains it, most of this year’s money is going to be consumed by routine work such as fixing up the lights, mending broken windowpanes and replacing stolen locks and doors.9

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8 June: The floor has collapsed further and two of the girls in the group at the back of the classroom have taken to standing up/leaning over their table, which is balanced somewhat uneasily across one of the holes. Next to them, two other students have actually taken to resting their chairs on the bottom of the hole, i.e. on the pavement of the schoolyard – a somewhat comic sight which lightens an otherwise depressing scene . . . 28 July: How much worse can conditions get in this classroom? The group of girls at the back have now had to move. A broken chair lies discarded in the hole and their two abandoned tables lean precariously against each other, catching the dripping water from the leaking roof which puddles on the floor. Fresh cracks are now spreading to other parts of the floor, which grows increasingly unsteady beneath one’s feet. To add to the mess, the holes in the floor have started to fill with discarded sweet and chocolate wrappers and empty cool drink tins. And the damp piles of rubbish are starting to smell. Yet ironically enough, although the classroom might be on the verge of abandonment, all the broken windowpanes have recently been replaced and all six fluorescent lights shine brightly to dispel the gloom of a mid-winter’s day. A similar problem with two other prefab classrooms resulted in their abandonment for the rest of the school year. While it must be recognised that the material conditions at many black schools are far worse than those experienced at Yengeni High,10 it is worth closing our brief introduction to the school with the sobering (and undoubtedly highly debatable) thought that when it comes to school resourcing, conditions under which teaching and learning take place at Yengeni High are in some respects as constrained today as at any time during our recent apartheid past. As Nomzamo so pragmatically put it: Nomzamo: But there are things that you can never change. Jon: What can’t you change? Nomzamo: The numbers for instance, you can never change the numbers [of students and the student/teacher ratio] at Yengeni. Because the numbers at Yengeni will stay like this as long as we have 51 teachers and these buildings that we have. So the only solution is a new school building and that is 15 to 20 years down the line. So we are actually stuck with this for the next 15 years or so, so you just have to learn to live with it and make the best out of it that you can . . . This is not to say that some things have not improved in recent years – they clearly have. But some of the perennial problems remain – as noted above, the pivotal limiting factor at the school is not a shortage of teaching staff but of available classrooms, which, together with the ongoing shortfall in other educational resources – be they textbooks, teaching aids or supplies for the science laboratory – defines Yengeni High as a typical under-provisioned township school. 16

SETTING THE SCENE

Given the considerable impact which the activities of youth gangs seems to have on Nomzamo’s practice (and the events which unfolded later in the year), they are therefore a specific aspect of “school in community” that is worth dealing with separately.

2.3. GANGS, GANGLAND AND VIGILANTISM

As alluded to earlier in this chapter, townships like Kubukene are characterised by a high level of crime, and Yengeni High has the particular misfortune to be situated in a part of the township that has been plagued in recent years by a growing problem of gang violence. Whilst it is unclear just how many of its own students are involved in the activities of these gangs, fighting during the year resulted in the death of at least two of the school’s students. The indirect impact this violence seems to have on schooling at Yengeni High is worth dwelling upon. First and foremost, the area around the school is dangerous and this creates an underlying anxiety for both teachers and students. As Nomzamo put it during one of the interviews: . . . particularly the place that the school is in, it is not at all conducive to good learning – this is the worse place [her emphasis]. Maybe if the school were somewhere else, and even the area was much better than what it was, maybe it would help! In the past there have been incidents where teachers have been robbed, so Nomzamo is naturally wary about finding herself alone at school after hours (most other teachers tend to leave school as soon as possible after the end of school). This means that besides one hour per week of extra lessons with her Grade 12 students, Nomzamo is reluctant to schedule extra-curricular activities with her other science students. Nomzamo struggles to reconcile this constraint with her professional sense of duty in which she views her role as a science teacher in broader terms than simply one of teaching the syllabus.11 Whenever there were gang fights in the area (as in the killing of the two students mentioned above), the school was affected for days afterwards – the students tended to be restless and distracted and class attendance, which was erratic at the best of times, suffered as well. Naturally, this was something that could be very frustrating for Nomzamo: Nomzamo: They [the students] were worse today, I dunno . . . Jon: You felt it as well? Nomzamo: Ja . . . the other thing is with this thing of gangsterism and so on going on, their minds just get taken up with what is happening outside. So, that’s another thing – and you will find that they are busy talking about this grouping [of gangsters], or whatever . . . (Later) Jon:

It just felt as if they [the students] are not there, they’re not engaging! 17

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Nomzamo: Ja, and yesterday some kid had to be rushed away because there were skollies [gangsters] who came in to hunt him . . . so he had to be hidden out of the school. (She agreed with me that the students just were not interested.) Jon: It’s as if there’s no spark . . . Nomzamo: The spark is this thing which is going on! This is what they are keen to talk about . . . particularly the boys. Even the boys’ attendance is dropping because some are running away [from the gangsters]; some are staying at home just until they see how things are. If anything, the situation deteriorated as the year progressed. During the runup to an inter-school science competition which Nomzamo helped organise, one of her major concerns was a fear that gangsters would disrupt proceedings. While the event itself was a great success and passed without incident, Nomzamo’s sense of foreboding was not entirely misdirected – a car filled with visitors from a local university was held up at gunpoint as they were leaving the venue. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Soon after this competition, the local community’s frustration with the police’s inability12 to deal with the rising level of crime in the township boiled over. “Spiralling crime: Angry citizens strike back” proclaimed a banner headline in a local newspaper, and an accompanying picture showed a naked man being escorted along a street by men carrying sjamboks (quirts). In conjunction with drivers from one of the local taxi associations, residents had begun a vigilante campaign aimed at local criminals (“these youngsters are terrorising us and they must be taught a lesson” a spokesperson was quoted as saying). Alleged offenders were subjected to a particularly South African version of street justice: after a summary trial at the local taxi rank, the “guilty” person(s) was given a violent public beating before being paraded naked around the township. As the weeks passed, the beatings became progressively more severe and eventually a number of people were killed. Given Nomzamo’s previously articulated fears for her personal safety and the fact that the taxi rank is within a couple of hundred metres of the school, she had strong opinions to share: Nomzamo: Their number is 10333, not 10111 [the police emergency number]. If you call them [the taxi drivers], they come immediately and they attend to what you are saying immediately. Unlike 10111 . . . (she laughs) Jon: And the police just stick around or keep out of the way? Nomzamo: They stand there, and watch! And then the ambulance also comes, and then it waits until the beating is finished and then it takes them to hospital. So there’s nothing they can do. Even the police they just stand there and watch. (Later) Jon: 18

How has it made the atmosphere at the school since it started?

SETTING THE SCENE

Nomzamo: It hasn’t really disturbed the school except if it happens over lunchtime. Then if they [the students] have to come back and there’s something still going on there, and then they will want to stick around and watch. But then the other time, the taxi men came here to the school and they said they don’t want to see Yengeni kids there watching when they are doing their thing – after a misunderstanding over a [local] TV interview which happened. The taxi men claimed that one of the kids who was wearing a Yengeni uniform, appeared on TV and was saying that they don’t like what the taxi men are doing, it’s very barbaric, they are people who are barbaric and uneducated. So they came here to the school looking for that child, and wanted to know if this is the view of the school or . . . So the parents were called in to go and apologise to the taxi men because they were very angry actually. And then the school apologised on behalf of the school. Although they told them that she [the student] was saying her own thing, she was not sent by anyone to say that. In fact we are not against what they are doing, if it is putting the township into order. Jon: What do you feel? Nomzamo: I think it’s great! We are afraid to walk around wearing earrings because of these kids [gangsters]. So if there is someone who can sort them out, let them do . . . It’s actually teaching people a lesson, even those kids who used to come here selling things – computers, stolen things. They don’t come any more. They are saying: “Yho, the taxi men . . . ” Which means that even that black market of stolen things is going to end. Then people’s things are probably going to be safer now. We walk around now without taking rings and earrings off because we know that within this area you are safe. Taxi men are watching over whatever could go wrong . . . (Later) Jon:

So, it gives people a greater sense of security and that sort of thing. Is that quite a common feeling amongst the staff? Nomzamo: Ja. Jon: Is anyone opposed to it? Nomzamo: No-one. I’m not saying it’s a nice thing, seeing someone being beaten to death. I’ve never watched anyway, I’ve never gone closer to the whole thing. Jon: Do some people [teachers] go and watch? Nomzamo: Ja, some people do go over and watch . . . These events are a poignant reminder that violence is resorted to, not only in reaction to political but also to social problems, and reinforces the commonly held view that violence has become part of the fabric of many South African communities.13 That the school had to apologise for the “wayward” comments of one of its students also points in quite sobering terms to the complex (and in this 19

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instance potentially dangerous) dynamics that exist between Yengeni High and elements in the local community.

2.4. THE STUDENTS

As part of her teaching load, Nomzamo is responsible for teaching general science to a total of 238 students in four Grade 9 classes. All four classes are, to varying degrees, overcrowded – ranging in size from the 9E’s, which is the smallest with 47 students on the roll, to the bloated 9C class with 71 students. Many of Nomzamo’s students live within walking distance of the school, while some travel by bus from one of the informal settlements14 or neighbouring townships. Most children come from what are, in a South African context, typical urban working-class families.15 Nearly half of them come from single-parent families and, as is common in this community, nearly all live with one or more members of their extended family. A small but still significant number do not live with their parents at all, but typically with one or more of their grandparents.16 The students range in age from 13 to 21, with the majority between 15 and 16 years old; the boys are on average slightly older than the girls. Yengeni High is deeply embedded in a Xhosa cultural and linguistic milieu, with only ten of the Grade 9 students indicating that they speak a primary language other than Xhosa. While some students were born outside the city, only a handful are recent arrivals. Most children had attended one of five primary schools in the immediate vicinity surrounding Yengeni High. While this may be of little or no significance, it does perhaps point towards a fair degree of continuity within the school community; for instance in 9D, 12 students had attended the same primary school together. Faced with so many students, it is hardly surprising that at first it becomes difficult to distinguish, in anything other than the most general terms, between the four classes. Besides the 9E’s who are perceived by their teachers as being, on average, academically more able, the other three classes are typified by the kind of extreme mixed-ability grouping so common to township schools. Yet for all that, as the trialling exercise progressed, each class began to emerge in sharper focus, each characterised by its own dynamic of student-student interaction, each evolving its own special relationship with Nomzamo and, critically, each responding in different ways to the innovation which was STAP. Here are snapshots of the 9C’s and the 9E’s, the two classes who represent, in Nomzamo’s eyes at least, the extremes of ability/motivation with which she has to cope. The Grade 9C’s The 9C’s are the largest of the four classes with 71 students (or thereabouts) on the register. Given its unwieldy size, and generally more erratic pattern of student attendance, it is really no surprise at all that there was always some confusion about exactly how many students there were in this class. With an almost equal 20

SETTING THE SCENE

split of girls and boys, it has a significant number of students (10) who have failed a grade since reaching High school – five have repeated Grade 8, and five were repeating Grade 9. Because of these “repeaters”, it is also the class which has the biggest range in ages – two students are still only 13 years old, whilst eighteen are 17 or older and the oldest student is 21 years old.17 Walk into their home room and it’s a picture of squalor and poverty: a dusty floor, scattered with discarded sweet wrappings, chip packets, tissues and scraps of paper; broken window panes and the faded paint on grimy, bare walls. “Tyson II”; “F. . . you” and “I love ladys”, are but some of the scribbles and scrawls of graffiti which cover the display board spanning the back of the classroom. Look up and you’ll see a sagging ceiling with its torn, shredded panels attesting to the poor state of repair of some of the classrooms and the random acts of vandalism that the school periodically endures. On a “good day” one is faced with the sight of more than 65 students, some seated two to a chair; jam packed into the four rows of desks which crowd the room. Since daily attendance was quite erratic in 9C, on most days there were usually more manageable 50 or so students in class.18 Irrespective of the number of students attending, the front row of desks reaches almost to the chalkboard; and there is hardly enough manoeuvring space to allow a teacher to write freely on the chalkboard or turn around and comfortably face the class. Even though the 9C’s, like most other students at Yengeni High, spend virtually the entire school day cloistered together in their classroom, it is a bleak, colourless place with no decoration of any kind adorning the walls. In response to my query about why it was that the classrooms (besides the inevitable graffiti) were devoid of posters and charts, Nomzamo explained how things just never seemed to last on the walls – teachers would stick things up and students would scribble on them and then they would either vanish or be found tornup and crumpled on the floor.19 There seems no sense of belonging, nor of ownership – visit after the students have drifted off home in the afternoon, and besides the day’s accumulated rubbish on the floor, no hint of the students remains – no clues as to who they are and what their interests may be. Without the physical presence of students, the rundown classrooms of Yengeni High are depressing places, no more than cluttered shells filled with an assortment of wooden tables and orange, plastic chairs, many in various stages of disrepair. Given a combination of factors – its unnerving size, poor academic performance and reputation amongst teachers as being a “difficult” class, it is not surprising that of the four classes, the 9C’s evoked the strongest feelings in Nomzamo: There was a class which I really hated initially – the 9C’s, I hated those students because they were always noisy, rowdy, you’ve got boys who were smoking dagga, were not fit to really be in class. They were the biggest [class] but you hardly get all of them at one time. I really had problems with that class!

21

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Nomzamo articulates her dislike of this class in her typically forthright way. Clearly, even within the context of the many other difficulties she experienced in her day-to-day teaching, the 9C’s presented her with some of her biggest challenges and tested her not inconsiderable patience to the utmost at times. The Grade 9E’s By way of contrast, the 9E’s, with only 47 students on the register, is the smallest class which Nomzamo teaches. As with the 9C’s there was an almost equal split between boys and girls, and with none of the students having repeated either Grade 8 or 9 they are also the “youngest” of the four classes – their average age was just under 15 (only five of the students were 16 or older). Like their other teachers, Nomzamo regards them as the most “academically able” class in the Grade and the “easiest” ones to teach. For a start, they were clearly a more “cohesive” class. This was manifest not only in their general classroom behaviour – where they rarely presented Nomzamo with discipline problems20 – but also in their consistently high level of school attendance. Rarely were there more than six students absent from the class. Perhaps most telling of all was the students’ response when they missed classes because of teacher absenteeism. On such occasions, attendance “held up” in 9E much better than in other classes; on one occasion when their teachers were absent for two consecutive periods (3 and 4, on either side of the lunch break), the attendance figure of 41 out of 47 was recorded in period 1 and again at the end of the school day in period 6.21 Perhaps it is no coincidence that nearly a third of the students (14) had attended the same primary school and only two were new to the class this year. From the moment you walk into their classroom, you can pick up that this class is very different from the others in Grade 9. For a start, the classroom is clean, and there’s very little litter on the floor. This certainly creates the impression that the 9E’s take much greater pride in their homeroom than many of their fellow students. While the walls (as with virtually all others in the school) are bare of decoration, there’s little graffiti (and none offensive). The chalkboard looked as if it had been recently washed down and the battered old 5 litre paint tin, which served as a bin, recently emptied. Being a smaller class, it is much less crowded and not only is there space to manoeuvre in front of the chalkboard but it is even possible to get to individual students by moving between the neatly ordered rows of tables and chairs. The students are different too, they seem so much more alive and there’s an eagerness about them which is lacking in some of the other classes. They are by far and away Nomzamo’s favourite class and this showed in the way that she talked about them, “Yes . . . the ones I enjoy the most are 9E, they are even much more livelier than the others . . . Wait till you see the 9E’s, I like them!”, is how she put it before the trialling exercise commenced. Given their status as the more able class, it is not surprising that Nomzamo chose to “lead” off with the 22

SETTING THE SCENE

9E’s for the implementation of STAP, and in this respect they served as the guinea pigs of the programme. When it comes to the students at Yengeni High, there are a number of other issues that are worth paying attention to.

2.5. LARGE, MIXED-ABILITY CLASSES

Large classes are a fact of life at Yengeni High. The figures speak for themselves – in Nomzamo’s case it is a sobering thought that with nearly 350 children in her six science classes she often sees, on days when attendance is high, more than 200 students.22 In the light of this, it is hardly surprising that the constraints to practice imposed by these conditions are a major factor in shaping the form and function of teaching and learning in Nomzamo’s (as in any other teacher’s) classroom.23 For a start, since she is confronted on a daily basis by so many students, Nomzamo has an almost impossible task of keeping track of the academic performance of individual children. Time constraints alone preclude her from little more than fairly cursory monitoring of her students’ homework and classwork activities. As Nomzamo once remarked, “I wouldn’t even think of taking it [homework] in! I’m struggling to even mark tests. So for taking in homework, oh no . . . ”. On an organisational level, the demands of teaching such large numbers of students are further compounded by the mixed-ability nature of Nomzamo’s classes. The extent to which this is a problem is quite graphically reflected in their scores in general science tests, where there is often an extreme variation in marks.24 While the reasons behind the poor academic performance of Nomzamo’s students are, to say the least, complex and multi-layered, what needs to be acknowledged is the powerful role which context plays in students’ educational achievement. In this regard, it is interesting to hear how Nomzamo makes sense of her students’ under-achievement: Nomzamo: One thing being that our classes are too packed, and the moment you go to those classes you just get so depressed because of the huge number that is facing you and you cannot really get to each and every one of them [students], that’s one reason. Also, they are not as advantaged! Jon: They are not as advantaged, okay – what do you mean by that? Nomzamo: Economical advantage, social advantage. Advantage in terms of their parents are not . . . well educated, they cannot even offer assistance at home. Then you have got kids [elsewhere] whose father is an engineer, the mother is a sister in a hospital – he [the student] comes with a biology problem, the mother is there to help; with a physical science problem, the father is there to help. So there are those advantages that exist in other communities. Also, because of those disadvantages our kids are not as keen and as determined to learn, and the whole culture of learning is really going down the drain, bit by bit. 23

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Jon:

When you say it is going “down the drain”, do you think things have got worse since ’94 [the first democratic elections]?

Nomzamo: The thing is, you get different problems – at that time [pre-1994] it was political issues, and now you have got gangsterism. So, who knows what it will be next year? Jon:

What would you see as being your major constraints, as you try to go about fulfilling your duty as a teacher? What would be the things that you would list? What makes your job tough here – you’ve mentioned large classes, what else would you mention?

Nomzamo: Shortage of books. The area [around the school] makes working the hardest. The whole issue of the “culture of learning” not being there in our kids. You know the other day I took the Grade 11’s to a “Year of Science and Technology” EXPO I told them before they even went there that when you come back you are going to write a report, minimum of two pages, include pictures if you can, because they were given handouts there and all sorts of things, that when you are talking about something that you saw there include pictures as well, so that there are visuals of what you are talking about. And you are going to get marks out of 20 for that outing. We went to the EXPO, we came back and some didn’t even bother to write those reports. Some wrote only this amount (she shows me a student exercise book with only half-a-page of writing) for 20 marks, just this amount! When we spent there, something like three or four hours and they give a report only half a page long – they expect 20 marks . . . So, that at the end of the day, our kids also, they are just not serious with their work at all. Clearly, the conditions at Yengeni High impose a range of “constraints to practice” which impact heavily on both teaching and learning at the school. Many of these constraints are not unique to a township setting, and are shared to varying degrees by teachers throughout the world. Functional-logistic problems associated with under-resourced and over-crowded classes; poverty and crime; alienated, under-achieving and poorly motivated students – all are part and parcel of the context of teaching in many different educational settings. However, what is unique about a township school like Yengeni High is that it bore the brunt of a decades-long struggle against apartheid education; and the profoundly negative effect this has had (and continues to have) on the functioning of the school, Nomzamo’s teaching and her students’ learning, is something that shall be considered at length in the chapters to come. Before leaving this point it is important to acknowledge, particularly in the light of Nomzamo’s subsequent experiences during the STAP trialling exercise, that the demands of teaching large, mixed-ability groups requires of any teacher in any context an inordinately high level of organisational skills (and personal motivation). In this respect, it seems then almost paradoxical that a township school 24

SETTING THE SCENE

which is, in human terms, relatively under-resourced, actually has conditions which require the most skilful and resourceful practice.

2.6. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

In an earlier conversation than the one reported above, Nomzamo suggested that, “motivation, respect, a sense of responsibility – these kinds of things, they are really lacking nowadays”. Besides blaming this deterioration in student behaviour on social problems in the local community (such as drug abuse and gangsterism), Nomzamo like many of her fellow teachers, believes that the abolition of corporal punishment25 has also brought about quite a fundamental realignment in student– teacher relationships. As she put it: . . . these days you cannot easily discipline a child because they will tell you about their rights. You want to do this, you cannot because . . . one can sue you, you can be attacked outside. You know, these kinds of things. The excessive use of corporal punishment surfaces in the literature as a typical feature of South African schooling26 and its excessive use in many black schools was a long-standing grievance of student organisations during the pre-1994 “struggle years”.27 Indeed it can be argued strongly that the students’ prior experiences of being beaten, specifically during their primary school years, have had a profound impact on the way that some of them have come to view their role in the classroom – to this day many students remain quite hesitant to “speak out” in class for fear of ridicule or punishment (this issue is elaborated upon in a later chapter). During one of the interviews, Nomzamo’s students were given the opportunity to share their experiences in this regard: Jon: Students: Jon: Luleka:

. . . you were beaten a lot in primary school? (together) Yes! What were you beaten for? For not doing the homeworks, not listening, making noise at the group. Phelo: Failing the test. Luleka: Coming late at school Asanda: For not finishing the work. Luleka: Mr. - - - - who teach me; he even beats for the notes. He said that we must copy his writing, he was not printing. He said that we must copy his writing how could we copy his writing on the board? And if you don’t have that writing he will beat you.28 Jon: How often were you beaten? Students: (together) Yho! most days . . . a lot. Everyday . . . Jon: How were you beaten, on your hands mostly? Luleka: Girls under their feet! Nolisapho: On their bare butt . . . 25

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Phelo:

At the bums! [bottom]

Asanda:

My Xhosa teacher at Grade 7 beat us this way (indicating across the knuckles), and the Afrikaans teacher. And the others beat you here (indicating his buttocks) and the class teacher I was telling you about, she doesn’t care, she just beats you and asks you if you want it which way. Even if you pick it she’ll say, “Give me the back” (his emphasis). If you are a lady – under the foot, and she’ll say you must not go like you have been beaten, you must go the way that you are going [meaning that you must walk normally without indicating that you have been beaten].

Jon:

Are you beaten much here [at Yengeni High]?

Students:

(together) Not at all!

Luleka:

It’s a free world! (others laugh)

Jon:

It’s a free world?

Nolisapho: Ja, it’s a free world – you must control yourself. No-one’s going to look after you, you must look after yourself . . . In the absence of the stick, it has become “a free world” as Luleka puts it. The students are now expected to take more responsibility for their own actions, “you must control yourself” as Nolisapho explains it. However, as students’ and (most of) their teachers’ experiences of schooling are of a system in which discipline was harsh and at times arbitrarily applied for even the smallest misdemeanour, it is not surprising that both parties struggle to define a new set of “rules of engagement”.29 As Nomzamo, who was herself never a great believer (or user) of corporal punishment once described it: . . . each kind of punishment has its own advantages and disadvantages. Like the stick was a quick way of getting rid of the . . . what can I say?, like you give them two lashes and it’s over and the lesson continues, it’s quick and all the like. Two seconds maybe three, it’s going to be over and you continue with the lesson. But now if you decide to, what is the word? – to detain, if you decide to detain them it means staying with them after school. I can’t stay after school, I’ve got to rush for my transport. When the bell rings I’ve got to pack and go, or I won’t have transport to get home. So detention is out for me. Indeed, the struggle which Nomzamo and her colleagues have in implementing an alternative system of punishment which is not based on beating is an example of the functional problems that a township school struggles to resolve30; other such problems will emerge in the pages to come as we go about locating Nomzamo within the broader school community of Yengeni High. But before doing this, we need to turn our attention to the curriculum programme that Nomzamo would spend the next few months implementing in her classroom. 26

SETTING THE SCENE

2.7. THE SCIENCE THROUGH APPLICATIONS PROJECT (STAP)

The Science Through Applications Project (STAP) was a school science curriculum research and development project located in the Education Faculty at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town. Established in 1995, the work drew teachers together from a cross-section of local schools, in a project intended to increase our understanding of some of the problems and processes associated with developing learning programmes and curriculum materials, and with implementing change at the classroom level. The project deliberately set out to bring teachers together from across the apartheid divide with two main agendas in mind. Firstly, to begin the process of bringing previously separated colleagues together for professional purposes and to develop some fundamental professional skills in the process, and secondly, to develop a package of innovative curriculum materials (for students and teachers) that would be contextually sensitive, realistic and flexible enough to be appropriate across the spectrum of schooling contexts found in South Africa.31 STAP was a proponent of an STS-type (Science-Technology-Society) science curriculum.32 While wearing this label is not without its problems,33 from an STS perspective there seems to be general agreement that a clear purpose of any integrated science programme should be, as far as possible, to balance the needs of the “majority” (those who will not carry on with science) against the “minority” (who will). Accepting then that science and technology are minority activities, a legitimate goal of any general science curriculum should be “knowing about them” as Macaskill and Ogborn (1996, p. 56) put it, rather than a pretence of inducting everyone into a smorgasbord of their concepts and methods. To this end, the STAP programme was built around a core body of useful everyday knowledge and the conceptual territory in which it resides. A further organising principle of the project’s work was a belief that many science concepts can emerge out of an exploration of applications which can be found in the everyday life experiences of students; in turn, these experiences can be used as a vehicle for developing broader science process and life skills. Structured in this way, the project’s vision was that the STAP programme represented an attempt (with limited objectives) to give meaning and substance to what a future South African “Science for All” curriculum could look like.34 Out of a development process which stretched over a number of years, emerged a set of learning resources which support a more innovative approach to teaching a single topic – Electricity, at the Grade 8 and 9 levels. For each Grade, a student booklet called “Electricity in our Daily Lives” was produced, and accompanied by a separate Teacher’s Guide. An important feature of the STAP material is that it is intentionally structured to facilitate active learning in collaborative settings. To support this approach, the material includes a range of different kinds of activities, from “minds-on during hands-on” practical work; pencil and paper exercises; group and class discussions; and role-play to investigative projects and surveys. In line with its applicationsled approach, all units and investigations start off by making connections to things 27

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that are either part of the students’ everyday experiences or to which they can easily relate. This focus is deliberately developed further in the extension materials – the “Exploring Further”, “Did You Know” and “Home Projects”, all of which form an integral part of every unit in the STAP programme. When it comes to issues of cognition, the STAP material seeks to support the development of students’ deeper understanding by making conceptual connections to real-life situations and then providing opportunities for the students to apply their newly acquired knowledge and understanding to new (problem solving or other) situations. As noted earlier, one of the challenges that faced STAP was to produce materials flexible enough to be used across the range of teaching contexts found in South Africa. In this regard, a particular concern has been with the needs of the majority of students for whom English is (at least) their second language (hereafter referred to as L2). Here the project had to grapple with the dilemma facing all materials developers in South Africa – how to produce a readable text which is also able to actively support the ongoing development of L2 students’ communicative competencies in English.35 A desire to promote the integration of “language in science” teaching is another strong feature of the STAP programme and to this end there are a number of activities which are not normally associated with conventional science texts. One of the major strengths of the project lay in the deep well of pragmatism which informed virtually all aspects of its work. As the project believed that suitable text materials are a major agent of change, STAP’s pragmatic approach is evident in the importance it attached to classroom-based trialling. This aspect of the project’s work cannot be over-emphasized, and attempting to answer the question, “How it will work in practice?” was a preoccupation since the days when the first draft of the Grade 8 programme was completed. Indeed, a number of research papers36 are specifically devoted to expounding on the pivotal role which trialling has played in the ongoing process of developing the STAP material. It is worth noting the reasons why STAP adopted this approach to curriculum and materials development, and as a backdrop to Nomzamo’s experiences at Yengeni High, dwell on (albeit briefly) some of the findings reported on the literature. A major function of trialling is to obtain feedback on the structure and nature of the materials.37 Yet making decisions about the effectiveness or suitability of the materials is not a simple matter at all. This is because the success (or otherwise) of the interaction between the students and the material is directly related to the ways in which the teacher constructs her classroom learning experiences. This implies that quite careful judgements need to be made about whether the “problem” lies with the materials, or with the manner in which they are being used. All of which underscores the vital role which classroom-based observations can play in untangling and making sense of some of the complex interactions at play as teachers and students make use of the STAP material. Here a key underpinning insight is an acknowledgement of the crucial role that students (as all-important “end-users”) can play in supplying critical feedback on 28

SETTING THE SCENE

the STAP materials; to such an extent that monitoring of the “students’ voice” became an important part of many of the trialling exercises. Students provide assistance in identifying problems not only with the language of the text – such as difficulties with terminology, ambiguous or unclear statements, questions or instructions and so on – but also with issues relating to conceptualisation, particularly those aspects that research has related to visual literacy, such as the layout of the text, use of diagrams, pictures, etc. Beyond the text, students can also provide insights into more complex pedagogical issues which may necessitate a more in-depth rethink about the structure of the materials and the teaching strategies that underpin them. In addition, students’ insights and perspectives on classroom practice can also provide their science teacher with invaluable feedback into her own pedagogic practice.38 Trialling in township schools has also brought into stark focus many of the problems which L2 students experience as they struggle to learn science through the medium of English. Consistent with findings reported before,39 many L2 students, because of their weak reading skills, remain “locked out” of text even when it is written in quite simplified English.40 The problem extends beyond reading. In general, the majority of L2 students involved in the trialling exercises also displayed poorly developed English writing and talking skills – problems which, as we shall come to consider at some length in Chapter 4, are deeply entrenched within the broader practices of schooling in this country and which reflect the widespread failure of the system of (nominally) English medium instruction to develop communicative competencies amongst many students. Yet whatever these difficulties, the student interviews consistently affirmed the positive impact that the STAP approach had on many students’ attitudes to science. The practical activities (not surprisingly) proved particularly popular, as did the opportunities to work together in groups. With STAP’s emphasis on student-centred activities and collaborative group work, the pedagogy inherent in the STAP approach also requires a significant shift in teaching style on the part of the teacher, not only in terms of instructional practices but also in how she perceives her broader role in the classroom. Many of the activities in the programme have been structured in such a way that they encourage a teacher to occupy a less dominant position, functioning more as a facilitator or mediator of students’ learning; something that stands in marked contrast to the pedagogical practices of most South African science teachers. Indeed, STAP conceptualised its material as providing a kind of “cognitive jolt” which challenges a teacher to rethink, often in quite uncompromising ways, the nature of her everyday practice. Because of the access the project enjoyed to “teachers at work”, STAP was well placed to document how ordinary teachers actually cope with using innovative curriculum materials in their classroom. And although the project was initiated before the proposals for Curriculum 2005 became known, there is considerable congruency between the “STAP approach” and the aims of the new curriculum.41

29

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Jonathan and Nomzamo had been involved in the work of the project since its early days, so the collaborative work between them at Yengeni High was informed by previous trialling exercises. For instance, while teachers had (like their students) been unanimous in pronouncing the “STAP approach” and the materials “stimulating and useful”, the trialling had shown in quite sobering terms the extent of the difficulties which teachers face when they seek to change their classroom practice. Here it is important to note the context within which the vast majority of South African students experience general science – taught as it is by teachers, the majority of whom are not “subject specialists” at this level. For such teachers, a topic like Electricity (which is a conceptual minefield at the best of times42 ) is fraught with difficulties and is a very risky business, even when there is a more accessible and suitable text available, with a carefully thought-through Teacher Guide for backup support. Furthermore, the STAP material not only presents teachers with the challenge of shifting the emphasis of their pedagogy away from “chalk and talk”, but the programme also requires a measurably higher level of teacher and student engagement than conventional science lessons. These are complex issues and a comment from a teacher working in a school similar to Yengeni High is illuminating: STAP materials are structured in such a way as to afford the students the opportunity to take an active part in, and responsibility for, their own learning . . . I am not used to teaching in this manner and the students are not used to being taught in this way! This puts a lot of pressure on me as a teacher and the students to adopt styles of teaching and learning which we are not used to. (Cited in Clark, 1998, p. 119, emphasis in the original) Time and again, the STAP staff had listened to teachers articulate similar problems, as they struggled to develop teaching strategies which would allow them to make fuller use of a more flexible teaching resource such as STAP. Clearly, changing practice (as the large volume of research literature tells us, and this book further testifies) is in any context an extremely complicated affair. Yet for all that, one of the most important findings to emerge consistently from each of the STAP trialling exercises was that all teachers involved had indicated that using the STAP material had promoted a reassessment (to some degree or other) of their current teaching practice.43 Thus, one of the key findings from the project’s work was a growing realisation that a “tight”, carefully thought-through package of curriculum materials, whose development is critically grounded in the classroom practices of teachers, is a powerful tool which can be used in a catalytic way to assist teachers in rethinking and then critically reworking their practice. The trialling exercise at Yengeni High, involving as it would both a teacher and a researcher intimately familiar with the Programme and its materials, held great promise then of yielding substantial insights into the dynamics of change. And it is to this that we will now turn . . . 30

SETTING THE SCENE NOTES 1 The early use of legal mechanisms to control the movement of Africans was given impetus in the 1950s by the Nationalist government policy of apartheid. A set of restrictive laws (which became known as the “pass laws”) was the key to the influx control regulations that made criminals out of ordinary Africans who sought jobs in the cities. The enforcement of these regulations hinged upon the requirement to produce a “reference book” or “pass” which would indicate the legal status of the holder. This applied to all Africans over the age of sixteen, who were required to carry a “pass” at all times and to show it to any law enforcement officer on demand. 2 The impact of migration and urban growth is reflected in the rapid growth of African schools in the period after 1986. This is well illustrated by the situation in metropolitan Cape Town where secondary school enrolment increased almost four times in the seven-year period (1987–1994):

1987 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Primary

Secondary

Total

38,568 56,905 63,671 67,097 73,368 86,283

10,202 21,344 26,704 30,427 33,318 38,241

48,770 78,249 90,375 97,524 106,686 124,524

Source: Kallaway, P., Kruss, G., Fataar, A. and Donn, G. (1997). Education after apartheid: South African education in transition. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, p. 93. 3 As reflected in a recently published article (Kynoch, 2003), it is a popular perception in the townships that violent crime is on the increase in many areas. [Kynoch, K. (2003). Apartheid nostalgia: Personal security concerns in South African townships. SA Crime Quarterly, 5, September 2003.] 4 Some of the prefabricated buildings are too small to accommodate the 60–70 students who occupy the junior (Grade 8 and 9) classes at the school. 5 The allocation of a second deputy principal is a fairly recent development in township schools. 6 Target student to teacher ratios of 40:1 in all primary schools and 35:1 in all secondary schools were set in 1996 by the national Department of Education. 7 According to Nomzamo, only about half of the Grade 9’s she was teaching had natural science textbooks. 8 This was something of a self-inflicted injury (so to speak) – during an outdoor presentation by the SABC (the national television broadcaster), a group of students clambered up onto the roof of the school building to get a better view of proceedings. The roof collapsed under their weight and it was extremely fortunate that no students were seriously injured. The cost of replacing the roof was eventually shared between the SABC and the education department. 9 Classroom locks and doors are items for which there is a ready market in Kubukene – for use in the building of backyard shacks or dwellings in the informal settlements surrounding the township. 10 As noted before, the education system in this country spans a range of contexts, from well resourced urban to under-resourced rural settings. A significant number of schools in rural areas (particularly in the ex-Bantustans) are in a state of disrepair, and many remain without a supply of electricity or running water. 11 In Chapter 5 we will hear Nomzamo speak longingly of her days as a novice teacher, when she had been able to run a science club which allowed her to engage her students in a variety of extramural activities. 12 One of the enduring legacies of apartheid is the distrust and deep-rooted suspicion with which many black South Africans still view the police force. While in the past black officers were often seen as “sell-outs” and were ostracised as such in their communities, the crisis of legitimacy which they now face seems to have more to do with public perceptions of ineffectiveness and corruption in the face of a growing crime wave.

31

CHAPTER 2 13 A point made by Fraser et al., (1996). 14 The label of “informal settlement” is applied fairly broadly these days to areas which are usually

inhabited by more recent arrivals to the city and describe dwellings which are constructed mainly out of corrugated iron and wood. With the improvement in delivery of basic services, many “shacks” (as they are referred to) are now supplied with both running water and electricity. If there is no outside toilet, then a “night soil” system is usually in operation. 15 Since the dismantling of apartheid, those parents who can afford it have taken to sending their children to schools outside of the townships. Teachers are a case in point, as Nomzamo once remarked (and she is no exception), virtually all her colleagues at Yengeni High send their children to previously white or coloured schools. The student body at Yengeni High is drawn almost exclusively from working-class township families. 16 This is not to say that these children are orphans or were abandoned by their natural parent(s). Some families may have been forced by circumstances (economic or otherwise) to live apart. It is also not uncommon for parents who live in rural areas where there may be limited access to schooling, to send their children to board with family in the urban townships. 17 With Grade 9 being the ninth year of schooling, and children in South Africa in this cohort starting school when they are six years old, one might expect the average age of Nomzamo’s students to be around 14. That it is slightly higher (15 1/2) can be attributed to a number of factors – chief among them being the fact that some students (such as the ten in this class) have by Grade 9 already had to repeat at least one year of schooling. It is also not uncommon for children from poorer families to miss out on one or more years at school (particularly at the junior primary level). 18 The following figure records the attendance of the 9C’s in a number of periods at various times during the trialling exercise: 9C ATTENDANCE – CLASS ROLL: 71 STUDENTS Date Number present % Attendance

25/3 56 79

16/4 41 58

20/4 69 97

21/4 55 77

4/5 61 86

13/5 62 87

19/5 51 72

27/5 54 76

28/5 53 75

15/6 57 80

Average attendance: 79% i.e. 56 out of 71 students present. What is more interesting is the range in attendance – from 41 out of 71 (58%) to 69 out of 71 (97%). 19 The impact of this behaviour on teachers is reflected upon in the next chapter. 20 When she experienced problems, it was usually linked to episodes when students had been left teacherless for one or more periods, or when the school itself had sunk into a chaotic state. Section 3.8 in the next chapter is devoted to this issue of teacher attendance. 21 This pattern of attendance was repeated on three other occasions. 22 On three days in the nine-day school timetable, Nomzamo teaches five classes. This means that on these days she could be faced with up to nearly 300 students. 23 We will argue in Chapter 4 that these conditions play a major role in defining the nature of student-teacher interactions in Nomzamo’s classroom. 24 The range in test scores in two of Nomzamo’s general science classes (maximum mark: 50) are tabulated below: Score Students 9E Students 9C

0–10

11–15

16–24

25–39

40–50

5 30

11 11

11 16

12 8

1 0

Note that 27 of the 40 students in 9E and 57 of 65, almost 90% of the students in 9C, got less than 50% for the test. In 9C, almost half of the 65 students scored 10 or less, and ten students scored less than 5 – a disconcertingly poor performance from a significant number of students in the class. With scores

32

SETTING THE SCENE between 5 and 43 (in 9E) and between 2 and 38 (in 9C), one can also begin to appreciate the difficulties a teacher faces when attempting to set up tests which are suitable for such a range of student abilities. 25 The corporal punishment clause was eradicated from education legislation in 1995 and outlawed by The South African Schools Act promulgated in 1998. 26 See, for example, Fraser et al., (1996). 27 Chisholm (1986). Jonathan’s experience of teaching in a similar context to that at Yengeni High is filled with memories of excessive corporal punishment. The practices at rural schools were often far worse than those in the townships, where the systematic beating of large numbers of students (usually girls) was a commonplace occurrence. Transgressions ranged from uniform offences and late coming, to the quality and enthusiasm of their singing at assembly. However unbelievable (and/or exaggerated) it sounds, on occasions the punishment reached such brutal extremes that a student would end up in the local clinic for treatment. 28 However bizarre this sounds, what Luleka is trying to explain is that the teacher expected his students to copy down his notes in the same cursive style with which he had written them up on the chalkboard. If they failed to do this, then they were punished. 29 Furthermore, it does seem somewhat ironic that whereas in the past the abuse of corporal punishment by teachers was seen by many students as one of the main reasons for the high matriculation failure rates (Simon and Beard, 1985), today the lack of discipline is viewed by some teachers as the reason why students continue to perform poorly. [Simon, A. and Beard, P. (1985). Perceived reasons for high failure rates of a sample of black matriculation pupils. South African Journal of Education, 5(2), 80–82.] 30 Christie (1998) cites the abolition of corporal punishment as a prime example of unhelpful policy action by the new Education Department. As she points out, while it is in line with principles of human rights, it was introduced in a top-down manner, with no support to already collapsing schools and with no alternatives being suggested. Her finding that this policy had caused a lot of anger in (township) schools, because principals and teachers felt their position had been weakened by the policy and the way it was introduced, no doubt echoes the sentiments of many of Nomzamo’s colleagues at Yengeni High. 31 For more on the “people development” side of the project’s work, see Gray (1997b, 1999b) and Gray and Ramahlape (1997); and on the overall work of the project, Gray (1999a). (All references to the work of STAP appear for convenience in the main bibliography.) 32 The National Science Teachers’ Association (NSTA) in the United States has defined STS as the teaching and learning of science in the context of human experience (Yager, 1992). For useful overviews of STS, see: – Yager, R.E. (Ed.) (1992). 1992 ICASE Yearbook: The status of science-technology-society reform efforts around the world. Virginia: National Science Teachers Association; – Solomon, J. and Aikenhead, G. (Eds.) (1994). STS education: international perspectives on reform. New York: Teachers College Press. 33 As Layton (1986) points out, STS is typified by a wide range of programmes which encompass a diversity of objectives. [Layton, D. (1986). Science, technology and society courses: Problems of implementation in school systems. In D. Layton (Ed.), Innovations in science and technology education (Vol. 5). Paris: UNESCO, pp. 143–154.] 34 In suggesting this, we are however mindful of the debates which rage in the literature about the issues of “Science for All” and “scientific literacy”, particularly as they relate to a developing world context such as we have here in South Africa. A useful overview of the literature on scientific literacy is provided by Laugksch (1996). [Laugksch, R.C. (1996). Development of a test for scientific literacy and its application in assessing the scientific literacy of matriculants entering universities and technikons in the Western Cape, South Africa. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cape Town, Cape Town.] 35 A perusal of the STAP booklet will reveal that an attempt has been made to write the text in a style and structure more commonly associated with narrative text, than the stiff and formal prose so common in expository science textbooks. 36 See Gray (1997a), Clark (1997a, 1997b, 1998). 37 In this respect, five main questions are being asked: (1) How accessible is the material? A specific research focus is on issues relating to the language and layout of the text, in particular as it relates to the

33

CHAPTER 2 needs of L2 students (see Clark, 1997). (2) What about flexibility? Are the materials flexible enough to be used across educational contexts? (3) Is the STAP approach successful in raising the interest and motivation of students? (and, of course, teachers?). (4) Is it coherent? I.e., does the programme as a whole provide a clear, logical and sensible treatment of the topic Electricity? (5) Is the programme viable in terms of teaching time? This is tied to the broader issue of what may be called “usability” (Clark, 1998, pp. 114–115). 38 A recent paper by Hoban (1997 describes ways in which the regular input of student data about teaching is used as an integral part of a professional development programme for Australian teachers. [Hoban, G. (1997). Sustaining teachers’ professional development through enhanced action learning. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Science Teachers’ Association [ASTA], University of Melbourne, Australia.] See also: Walsh, M. (1990). What’s your science teacher like? Using students to appraise teaching and teachers. Research in Science Education, 20, 282–291. 39 See, for instance, Clark (1993). 40 For examples of students’ comments, the reader is referred to Gray (1997a) and Clark (1997a, 1998). 41 Both seek a shift from teacher-centred to student-centred approaches, which will foster critical thinking and the development of appropriate skills, by drawing on work which is relevant to students’ lives. Both also emphasize the role which teachers can play in the development of curriculum and materials. 42 See, for example, Heller, P.M. and Finley, F.N. (1992). Variable uses of alternative conceptions: a case study in current electricity. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29(3), 259–275. 43 The reasons for this reassessment include the following: (1) Trialling the STAP material in schools with larger subject departments creates the conditions for teachers to work more closely together, even if it is only for a month or two. The value of creating a more collaborative context cannot be underestimated, particularly as the majority of teachers are so used to working alone. (2) The STAP material can be conceptualised as an “active resource” with a potentially high “useability factor”; which clearly presents a challenge to a teacher’s existing practice. (3) That the students found it a motivating and stimulating experience learning about electricity in this way is bound to rub off on all but the most cynical and jaded teacher. Not only that, but teachers indicated that they had come to realise the extent to which they generally underestimated students at this level (i.e. Grades 8 and 9). (4) Small-group collaborative work can be done. With the right materials and a rethink of one’s own practice it is possible to manage and run successful group work (even when faced with large classes). A sense of starting to get this right can be a really liberating experience for teachers (Clark, 1997b).

34

CHAPTER 3

SCHOOL AND STAFF

Those unfamiliar with the past are condemned to repeat it. Santayana

3.1. INTRODUCTION

As with any teacher, Nomzamo’s classroom practice is mediated and influenced by a complex set of situational variables.1 It is in our walk through the passageways, playground and staff room of Yengeni High that we will find convincing evidence that confirms the extent to which the organisational culture of the school plays a key constraining role in Nomzamo’s teaching. It is equally important that we locate Nomzamo within the broader community of teachers at Yengeni High. As Hargreaves (1994) reminds us: If we want to understand what the teacher does and why the teacher does it, we must therefore also understand the teaching community, the work culture of which the teacher is a part. Cultures of teaching help give meaning, support and identity to teachers and their work. Physically, teachers are often alone in their classrooms, with no other adults for company. Psychologically, they never are. What they do there in terms of classroom styles and strategies is powerfully affected by the outlooks and orientations of the colleagues with whom they work now and have worked in the past. In this respect, teachers’ cultures, the relationships between teachers and their colleagues, are among the most educationally significant aspect of teachers’ lives and work. (p. 165) Concern with the role that the occupational culture of teachers plays in either aiding or abetting innovation or change has been the focus of much educational research, particularly in First World countries. In the context of the United Kingdom at least, the argument has been put forward that the culture of teaching may seriously inhibit practical curriculum change at the school and classroom level.2 In developing countries, the range of economic and cultural constraints on schooling further complicates these issues. Our stance in this book acknowledges that a teacher’s practice is heavily influenced by the instructional practices and working relationships of the community of teachers which make up a school. As we look at the actions of Nomzamo’s fellow teachers, we will come across what seem to be deeply ingrained patterns of practice which are (perhaps quite unintentionally) anything but supportive of

35

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a teacher like Nomzamo’s efforts to bring innovation into her classroom. Taken together with organisational concerns, it seems inevitable then that we will paint a fairly bleak picture of life at the school. However, in order to pre-empt what could so easily become a deficit model approach to the school, we need to bear in mind two things. Firstly, that teachers’ existing practices reflect their past experiences, and secondly, that as a township school, Yengeni High’s institutional identity has been forged in the cauldron that was the struggle against apartheid education. It is a school that has endured nearly twenty years of institutionalised conflict, and it bears to this day the scars of our apartheid past. Any analysis, then, of the ways in which the school and its teachers function today must surely be carefully grounded in an understanding of this past. With these thoughts in mind, it is with some trepidation that we approach an analysis of Yengeni High. Drawing on the experiences of one of the authors, who taught for a number of years in a similar context,3 we are keenly aware of the complexities of the issues involved. This is not to suggest that, given the nature of the world we live in, schooling in many different countries has not suffered from even more profound disturbances and dislocations. But what seems to make the South African experience so different is that here we have an educational system that is such an amalgam of different contexts – reflecting as it does not only a society with extremes of wealth and poverty, but also one in which schools have had such diametrically opposing experiences of apartheid education. As we shall see, townships were for extended periods of time sites of intense political contestation. In contrast, white schools were almost entirely free of any kind of open political conflict and the normal processes of schooling (while heavily influenced by the ideological trappings of apartheid) continued uninterrupted year in and year out. We would like to suggest, then, that South African township schools are unusual within the African (i.e., Third World) context. A school like Yengeni High may be judged to be relatively well resourced in both human and material terms and as such may seem to bear little resemblance to an impoverished community school in a remote rural village. Yet, clearly it also differs in equally profound ways from the affluent, middle- class schools which, although they lie but a few kilometres away, might as well be on another continent. It is almost as if Yengeni High is like a staging post, straddling the First and Third Worlds. How ever one attempts to conceptualise the school’s position, the disjuncture between the two extremes of urban schooling did not escape Nomzamo, who had this to say on the drive back to the townships after a visit to OakRidge High, a previously all-white school:4 Being in such a school makes you realise just how much we are living in two different worlds. Come to one area it’s completely out of this world for you as a teacher. You come to the other place . . . I’d just say that they are lucky to be in such a place. How we all would have loved to be teaching in such a nice environment. Even the staff room, my goodness – Peter [a teacher who had joined us in our visit] kept saying to me, ‘Look at the staff room! Yho!’ And 36

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when the bell rang, somebody said, ‘The bell has rung, so let’s go to class’, and everybody stood up and left the staff room! Two schools, no more than ten kilometres from each other, a mere fifteen minutes’ drive, but in terms of educational experience – quite simply worlds apart . . . While one is faced, then, with an almost impossible task of trying to do justice to the complexity of the educational struggle in a few short pages, it is a necessary starting point for those readers unfamiliar with the South African situation.

3.2. YENGENI HIGH – THE SCHOOL AS A SITE OF STRUGGLE, A (BRIEF) HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

In the two decades preceding the first democratic elections in May 1994, township secondary schools bore the brunt of the political struggle against apartheid education.5 In many ways Yengeni High can be considered an almost archetypal “struggle school” – it is mentioned by name in local accounts of the countrywide protests against Bantu Education6 which were sparked by events in Soweto in June 1976,7 and students from the school have featured prominently in the ranks of student resistance movements ever since.8 While the 1976–77 revolt was by no means the first act of resistance against apartheid education,9 it was the start of what was to become an ongoing crisis in black schooling. It was followed by a second wave of student unrest in 1980, which, having started in the Western Cape rapidly spread to other parts of the country. This in turn was followed by a third wave of unrest which resulted in the protracted crisis of 1984–86. The struggle against the apartheid regime reached a crescendo in this period, and youth struggles went far beyond protest against Bantu Education as such. School boycotts, now entrenched as a principle rather than a tactic,10 were joined by generalised stay-aways; strikes, consumer, rent and services boycotts. It was a heady time; student activists, thinking that their actions would make imminent the collapse of the apartheid regime, called for, “Liberation now, education later”. Militant barricading of schools reinforced school boycotts and regular clashes occurred between students and the police and army. Township schools became the melting pot of politicised student movements and the tsotsi cultures (which brought with them the anarchy, self-assertion and spirit of defiance of the streets).11 The school yard had become a terrain of perpetual struggle.12 Political conflict spiralled and state repression increased, and the militant youth’s challenge to all forms of control and authority led to an increasingly chaotic situation in many township schools. In summing up these times, Truscott (1993) has this to say: The period 1984–86 effectively saw the disintegration of the black schooling system. It was in this period that many black youngsters stopped attending school regularly, boycotted classes and examinations, or started to go to school for only two or three hours a day. The education system appeared almost irrelevant as it could offer neither reasonable prospects of getting certificates or 37

CHAPTER 3

skills which could lead to employment, nor indeed any real knowledge that was useful to the situation most youth found themselves in. (p. 14) In an attempt to salvage something positive from this growing crisis, the formation of the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) in 1986 sought to encourage engagement around the nature of the education system rather than withdrawal from it.13 At the same time, strongly influenced by Freire’s “pedagogy of liberation”, the concept of “People’s Education” challenged the fundamental basis of apartheid education and the values upon which it was based.14 However, as Wedekind et al. (1996) point out, irrespective of the extent to which the concept of “People’s Education” was popularised, it was more of a mobilizing rallying cry than an articulated view of educational practice. Alternative education programmes proved extremely difficult (if not nigh on impossible) to implement given the intensity of state repression and the perhaps over-ambitious expectations of those who propounded such a markedly different pedagogy. The release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the liberation movements in 1990, heralded the beginning of protracted negotiations which culminated in the country’s first democratic elections in May, 1994. Yet the final leg of South Africa’s “long walk to freedom”15 was welcomed in with the worst Matriculation pass rates in the history of black education: a mere 36.4% passed the examinations at the end of 1990, and the crisis in education continued unabated. At the time it became increasingly popular, as a descriptor of the state of black schooling, to talk of the collapse in the “culture of learning and teaching”. And there was a growing realisation that one of the main challenges that the new democratic government would have to deal with when it eventually came to power would be the cumulative effect of the decades-long struggle against apartheid education. A report from the Education Management Development Task Team acknowledges that this “fallout” from the years of disruptions, stay-aways and class boycotts continues to bedevil many township schools: In many schools, decades of resistance to apartheid education discredited many conventional education practices such as punctuality, preparation for lessons, innovation, individual attention and peer group learning . . . (Department of Education, 1996, p. 18) Clearly, the ongoing conflict in schooling seriously damaged the morale, professional status and authority of black teachers. As Hartshorne (1990) puts it: The generally negative image of the teacher, held even among teachers themselves, contributes to the breakdown in the learning environment. Under pressure and criticised from all sides for inadequacies for which they are often not to blame, and treated by departments not as professionals but as instruments of policy, it is not surprising that the morale, confidence and self-image of many is at a low ebb. (p. 173) The extent to which there was a virtual breakdown of a learning environment in black education in many areas, was revealed in a wide-ranging study on the 38

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“culture of learning and teaching” commissioned by the Gauteng Provincial Education Department in 1995. In the published report of this study (see Chisholm and Vally, 1996) a range of factors was identified as contributing to the collapse of schooling. In addition to resource constraints (such as poor school facilities), other factors included: fractured and adversarial relationships between principals, teachers, students and parents; a lack of coherence in school leadership; and the disadvantaged socio-economic context and location of schools. While the study focused on schools in the Gauteng Province, there is little doubt that it reflected the situation in many other township schools in different parts of the country.

3.3. YENGENI HIGH AS A DYSFUNCTIONAL SCHOOL

Paterson and Fataar’s (1998) characterisation of a “dysfunctional school” bears at times an almost uncanny resemblance to the situation at Yengeni High – as we shall see, the disorderly and sometimes chaotic environment results in intermittent interruptions in the school’s daily programme and school days themselves are frequently shortened (often without warning). The impact of a breakdown in the authority structures within the school contributes significantly to the problems it faces. What can be regarded as a “crisis of authority” manifests itself in the responses of both teachers (who absent themselves from the classroom) and students (whose school attendance is erratic and variable – often from class to class during the school day). In the previous chapter we raised the issue of corporal punishment and concluded there that its (official) abolition has also in some ways contributed to the breakdown of order and discipline in the school. In the absence of a consistent and stable routine, teachers are prevented from establishing anything other than a semblance of learning continuity (and hence a healthy learning culture). And the broader socio-economic context of life in a typical black township (with high unemployment and grinding poverty), continually threatens to undermine the value of schooling, as do the youth and gang subcultures which distract attention from the school’s primary function as a learning institution. Yet, we would contend that talking about the breakdown in “the culture of learning and teaching” at a school is not without its problems. This is mainly because there is a danger that one makes all sorts of assumptions about the nature of “normal” schooling before the tides of unrest swept through the townships. To accept an analysis that concludes, as in the Department of Education report cited above, that “conventional education practices” (such as innovation, punctuality, etc.) were “lost” in the struggle against apartheid education, seems to imply that such practices were commonplace at some stage in the past. Truscott (1993) for one, questions whether or not a “culture of learning” (and we would add “teaching”) has ever really existed in our racially divided education system; Christie (1998) makes a similar point: It is also necessary to recognise that learning and teaching were of doubtful quality, particularly in black schools, under apartheid, well before the notion of breakdown emerged. (pp. 258–259) 39

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Indeed, with such a paucity of classroom-based research in South Africa, on what basis can we make claims about the actual practices within black schooling, either before or after 1976? This said, what is not in doubt is that many township schools experienced periods of intense, ongoing political crisis and conflict. But what is seldom acknowledged is that irrespective of the promise of “Peoples’ Education”, they were rarely (if ever) sites of pedagogic contest or educational progressivism. Whereas the mostly theoretical focus of “alternative” educational research of the past told us much about, for example, the relationship between apartheid schooling, the state and capitalism in South Africa; it unfortunately contributed little to our understanding of what was actually taking place in township classrooms at the time. In retrospect, the optimistic accounts of the emancipatory potential and theoretical promise of resistance may have inadvertently further obscured, or even abstracted into the realm of political rhetoric, the situation on the ground. For example, consider the following comment made by Bundy (1986) at the height of the third wave of unrest: The student movements have been fiercely democratic: mass meetings, leaders mandated by their constituencies, and building majority decisions were characteristic procedures. (p. 54) While this clearly paints a picture of student solidarity and cohesion which conveniently fits in with the progressive educational rhetoric of the day, it is unfortunately a picture that seems far removed from the reality as experienced by those of us familiar with the situation on the ground.16 The point we are trying to make is that in the absence of classroom-based research, it now seems that the heady political rhetoric of the “struggle” threw a cloak (however unintentionally) over much of what was happening in township schools. One consequence is that, besides a fair amount of anecdotal evidence,17 we lack critical understandings of the ways in which the relationships between student and teachers, between students and learning and between teachers and teaching were severely disrupted and distorted by their experiences of these times. Without this understanding, it is even harder to adopt the position that acknowledges that teachers’ present practices reflect their past experiences. Also, what remained essentially undocumented and uncelebrated at the time were accounts which attested to the power of human agency (so important in our understanding of Nomzamo’s actions), which acknowledged that even in the most troubled school settings, some number of students and teachers would continue to attend classes if and when circumstances allowed. And where they would seek to create (if only for a short while) a semblance of normality – the officially sanctioned syllabus would be dusted off, and taught from whatever textbooks were at hand, in whatever time was available.18 3.4. SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

For all that, it would be easy enough to stop here and blame the ills of schooling on apartheid. Yet if one lifts one’s gaze above and beyond the impact of these 40

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times, it is perhaps possible to develop a more complete understanding of the present-day organisational culture of a school like Yengeni High. As a starting point, we need to consider Yengeni High as being first and foremost an African school, in many respects no different from countless others found in cities throughout the continent. So in order to further our understanding of the ways in which the school functions, we need to turn to the experiences of schooling in other parts of the developing world – for surely we have more to learn from the workings of a high school in the sprawling suburbs of Lagos than we do from a secondary modern in Liverpool, or a junior high in midtown New York City. Some recent work in the literature concerned with school management and development, offers a theoretical perspective which can be usefully employed to make sense of the organisational and occupational culture at the school, and student-teacher interactions in Nomzamo’s classroom as well. School Ineffectiveness Harber and Davies (1997) challenge the conventional literature on school effectiveness when they argue that to attempt any improvement in the management and functioning of schools in developing countries we need a proper sociopolitical understanding of school ineffectiveness. Drawing on their own extensive experience (particularly in Africa) and a comprehensive review of the available literature, they provide a great deal of evidence in support of their hypothesis that if schools in developing countries are ineffective, it is because they display problems and dysfunctions very different from their counterparts in First World settings. Their point of departure from conventional analysis lies in the suggestion that the reasons why they appear ineffective have a different base – schools are not ineffective just because they “lack” something (such as resources, management training, etc.) as is conventionally acknowledged, but rather they are ineffective because the logic of schools in “fragile states” (Fuller, 1991) is a different logic. Ineffective schools are usually effective for someone or for some interest. Extending Lynn Davies’ (1992) earlier work, Harber and Davies propose that one of the fatal flaws in school effectiveness and improvement programmes is the assumption that everyone in a school would like total school effectiveness, but that they are merely prevented from achieving this through lack of resources or know-how. As she noted, the reality in schools is often quite different and there may be vested interests in maintaining school ineffectiveness. A notion of “methodological individualism” – whereby teachers seek to maximise the benefits to themselves of opportunities and changes in the organisational context in which they work, seems a particularly useful way of making sense of some of the actions of teachers at Yengeni High, and indeed of Nomzamo herself. The Fragile State The fragile state mentioned above is a concept developed by Fuller (1991), to characterise the situation in many developing countries, whereby governments, 41

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lacking deeply rooted legitimacy, are under enormous pressure to look “modern”. One important way of doing this is to persistently signal to the population the existence and constant extension of meritocracy and mass opportunity. Schools, as government institutions, play an important role in signalling and symbolising modernity and must therefore be organised in a “modern” way. Central to Fuller’s argument is a contention that while forceful ideological and economic imperatives push the fragile state to expand mass schooling, the actual growth in modern wage-sector employment in fragile states is often very slow. In such contexts even progressive growth in schooling becomes symptomatic of a steady erosion of educational quality. Schools as Bureaucratic Façades Drawing on Fuller’s work, Harber and Davies (1997) argue that the organisational concern with modern form and appearance that characterises schooling has unfortunate outcomes for education in developing countries. For instance, not only have hierarchical and authoritarian power relationships of the bureaucratic model shaped the nature of classrooms; but also in some cases they coexist easily with authoritarian features of traditional cultures. Harber and Davies typify the messy and incoherent authoritarianism that results in a “bureaucratic façade”, and go on to describe the considerable impact which an authoritarian classroom environment has on frustrating policies theoretically aimed at greater participation and student involvement. Schools as Organisations in a Prismatic Society It might seem ironic that with all the talk earlier of the “culture of learning and teaching”, a link has yet to be made to the broader cultural context of schooling. In this regard, Riggs’ (1964) theory of “prismatic society”, although developed over forty years ago, also provides a useful explanatory tool for understanding how schools operate as organisations within developing societies. Riggs suggests that developing societies are prismatic in that they contain both elements of the traditional, fused type of social organisation and elements of the structurally differentiated or “modern” societies. In other words, organisations such as schools are a synthesis of long-lasting indigenous values and practices, and relatively new imported ones. Fuller’s (1991) work on the nature of schooling in the Third World is inspired by his experiences in Malawi, whilst Harber and Davies’ (1997) accounts of schooling draws heavily on extensive research in a range of southern African states (such as Botswana and Zimbabwe). As Harber worked for a number of years at a prominent South African university, it may come as a surprise that there is little direct reference in their book to schooling in this country.19 Is this a warning that such an analysis is of little use, particularly in township schools far removed from the impoverished rural settings at which much of their analysis seems directed? On first appearances, it might seem inappropriate to apply notions of “fragile state”; “prismatic society” and “bureaucratic façade” 42

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to our South African context. Since the education struggle was fuelled by both a keen awareness of the profound inequalities entrenched in apartheid schooling, and demands for equality (in terms of access and opportunity), it hardly seems possible that the primary role of a township school is to signal and symbolise development and “modernity” by simply mimicking Western schools which may lie, as in the case of Yengeni High, a mere 10 kilometers away. Yet we would argue that if the political crisis and conflict around Bantu Education can be put in the background for a moment, then the situation in education from the 1970s onwards bears in some respects a striking resemblance to the situation in schooling in other, more impoverished countries in the Third World. The fact is that the past twenty years have seen a major expansion in mass education in South Africa, particularly in the secondary school sector.20 Hyslop (1988) notes that while the number of black youth in secondary schools almost quadrupled in the decade after 1976, at the same time there was a stagnating labour market which offered few opportunities for them. The rapid growth of student numbers, in the context of a limited resource base (which characterised state funding of Bantu Education) led to a very ineffective education system. This in turn served to generate new grievances (which fuelled the ongoing conflict) and the system was plagued with high dropout rates, which meant that few students had a chance of obtaining marketable qualifications.21 If we can accept that years of conflict left some township secondary schooling in a state of virtual collapse, it is not that far-fetched to suggest that as a consequence these schools are left functioning, in organisational terms, on levels remarkably similar to the bureaucratic façades described by Harber and Davies (1997). Having paused at the school gate (so to speak), we can now enter Yengeni High once again and consider some of the ways in which the day-to-day functioning of the school impacts on Nomzamo’s teaching.

3.5. AVAILABILITY OF TEACHING TIME

A somewhat unexpected finding that emerged from the trialling exercise is the extent to which there has been an overall decrease in recent years in the amount of time students are scheduled to spend in class. This can be illustrated by comparing the situation with that of, say 1992, when Yengeni High ran a weekly timetable structured around a daily programme of eleven 32-minute periods. Allowing for the fact that back then, the last two periods on Wednesday were set aside for “extra-mural” activities and an hour on Friday for classroom cleaning, the students were scheduled to have in total just over 27 hours of instructional time per week. In 1998, with a nine-day cycle,22 this figure was down to 23 12 hours per week – a drop of just under 15% relative to six years previously.23 Timetables almost seem to epitomise “the school as bureaucracy” and prior to the introduction of a timetable computer software package in 1993, it was not uncommon for township schools to struggle for weeks on end at the beginning 43

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of each academic year to produce a workable timetable.24 The introduction of computer-generated timetables was eagerly embraced by many schools at the time, and provided a much-needed stabilising influence in what is clearly a key area of school functioning. However, we would like to suggest that this shift towards seven or nine-day timetable cycles also impacted on the academic programme of the school in other, less obvious, ways. For a start, restructuring the timetable around a reduced number of longer periods obviously means that there are fewer periods available – Yengeni High had nearly halved its daily programme from eleven (32-minute) to six (50-minute) periods. This in turn appears to have created conditions which justified “paring down” the timetable. Consequently, at the time of the trialling exercise, the school offered no “non-exam” subjects – such as music, religious education, and guidance in its curriculum; and the allowance for extramural activities has been shifted (and de-emphasized) to after school on Wednesday. And with no specialist physical education teachers at the school, only a few students participate in sports. Interestingly enough, this “paring down” of the timetable seems to have offset (and effectively masked from closer examination?) the shortening of the school day which accompanied this shift to a new programme. So that, ironically, it resulted in there being more teaching time being allocated to certain subject areas. Consequently, compared with 1992, Nomzamo had nearly 20% more time available for the physics and chemistry components of the Grade 9 syllabus. It would seem that in subjects like science, with their high demands for contact teaching time, the nine-day cycle timetable has actually had a positive influence on easing the pressure on teaching in the face of the ongoing minimising tendencies of disrupted schooling. In a similar way, it may well be that simplifying the timetable has also helped to shore up the crumbling bureaucratic façade of the school, at a time when the ongoing political conflict in the townships was threatening to sweep away whatever organisational structures existed at the school. In common with science teachers elsewhere,25 Nomzamo’s overriding concern is to cover the officially sanctioned syllabus in the time available. Yet this is an area of her teaching that Nomzamo readily admits that she has always struggled with – she is quite candid about the fact that she always seem to struggle to finish the syllabus by the end of the school year. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the most visible indication of the ongoing disrupted nature of schooling lies in the fact that during the course of the STAP trialling exercise, instructional time remained in short supply. As we shall now see, there were a number of reasons for the loss of teaching time – some externally warranted, but others inextricably bound up in the way the school, and, in particular, many of Nomzamo’s colleagues, function.

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3.6. LOSING OUT

Detailed records of various kinds were kept during the 14 weeks of the STAP trial and the data on available teaching time, illustrates in graphic terms the different ways in which teaching time is “lost” at Yengeni High. Over the 61 school days of the trialling exercise,26 disruptions of one kind or another that resulted in a loss of teaching time occurred on 18 days. On four of these days, outside “political” issues closed the school early – mainly caused by the dispute at the time over teacher rationalisation and the status of temporary teachers.27 While the staff officially maintained a commitment to teaching until either 10 a.m. or break time (11 a.m.), this was more a pretense than anything else. Many teachers failed to attend to their classes and student attendance was significantly lower than normal. Over this time, 22 out of 133 science periods (16 1/2%) were lost.28 This was spread fairly randomly across the four classes, although the 9E’s came off best. That the 9E’s only came to lose three periods is mainly because Jonathan was able to teach them on the three occasions when Nomzamo was sick. The 9F’s came off worst: altogether, they lost out on eight periods during the 14-week trialling exercise. On four Wednesdays, periods after break were lost when teachers left the school to attend memorial services. Paying respects to a bereaved family is a duty of considerable cultural significance in African society, and we would argue that this well illustrates how traditional values are able to override the more “modern” (i.e. Western) values governing the way a school should function. On the occasions when Nomzamo was absent from school, her classes were not taught. In general, no arrangements are made to organise “relief teaching” to cover for absent teachers (certainly, no funds are available to cover for this eventuality), and classes are then usually left to their own devices. As the timetable is “pared down” to accommodate only subject teaching, alternate programmes (like the cultural day on April 30) and normal school functions (like Assembly and “staff briefings”, i.e. meetings) were always held during school time. For instance, on three of the seven occasions when Nomzamo was scheduled to have Grade 9 classes in period 1 on Mondays, the period was lost (and on June 1, half the period was lost). Even with or without assembly, a “slow start” becomes a euphemism that takes on specific meanings in a school like Yengeni High as the following two accounts, written almost three months apart, well illustrate: Monday, 9 March: The beginning of another week and a cool, cloudy start to a day that promises rain. The staff room is crowded with teachers, laughing and talking together in animated groups. Nomzamo sits quietly by herself, engrossed in putting the finishing touches to a test, to be written by her Grade 12’s later in the day.

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The shrill ringing of the bell signals the start of the school day. At first, there is no movement in the staff room. After about ten minutes, teachers began to drift out; many make a turn past the notice board that carries a copy of the timetable. Nomzamo heads off to call the 9C’s to the laboratory. It has been without electricity since the roof of the home economics centre collapsed last week and is a dark, dusty, gloomy place in the pale morning light. Within a few minutes the students begin to arrive and rapidly fill the place to overflowing – the laboratory was not meant to accommodate 60+ students! At 8.50 a.m., twenty minutes into the scheduled start of the period, Nomzamo has finally settled the class down and teaching can begin . . . Monday, 1 June: It is announced that the day will start with an Assembly, to be followed by a short teachers’ briefing. Assembly duly gets underway at 8.40 a.m. with the customary singing of a hymn. Children continue to stream in through the gate, to join the growing gathering of students clustered in the open courtyard around the principal and the few teachers who have not remained behind in the staff room. After a brief address and a couple of announcements, the students are dismissed at 8.47 a.m. Nomzamo decides to skip the teachers’ briefing and makes her way to the laboratory to await the arrival of the 9D’s. After a couple of minutes there is still no sign of them, so she heads off to their classroom. A minute or so later she reappears around the corner of the administration block with a straggling bunch of 9D’s in tow. By 8.54 a.m., with almost half the period gone, Nomzamo can eventually greet an almost-settled-down class of 40 out of 66 students, and the lesson finally began. Beyond these figures, a more tangible sense of some of the ways in which teaching time is “lost” at Yengeni High can be illustrated through the experiences of one of her classes – the 9D’s, towards the end of the trialling exercise.

3.7. “SLIP, SLIDING AWAY” WITH THE 9D’S

As the second term progressed the 9D’s were seen to be falling further and further behind the other three classes. In one of the interviews, Nomzamo and Jonathan got around to talking about the matter and spent some time discussing why they thought things were getting “bogged down”. They both agreed that the impact was being felt, not only in terms of their progress through the STAP programme, but also in terms of their general classroom behaviour. What was going wrong? For a start, a closer look at their timetable confirms the extent to which the dice, at least in terms of period allocation, is indeed loaded against the 9D’s – twice in each cycle they have science immediately after break, as well as once in the first period of the school day. So more than half of the five science periods in each nine-day cycle fall in what can be thought of as being the “danger zone” 46

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of periods 1 and 4, where there is an added risk of little effective teaching and learning taking place. As noted in the classroom accounts quoted above, teaching rarely gets under way before 8.45 a.m., even when the first period is scheduled to start at 8.30 a.m. It is interesting to note that the way late coming is controlled at Yengeni High is by locking the gate at 8.40 a.m. Students stuck outside after this time (on some days a crowd of more than 100 have gathered) have to wait around until 9.20 a.m. to be allowed into the school. With no record being kept of latecomers, the discomfort of having to hang around outside the gates is the only punishment meted out. On days when the weather is bad, some students cut their losses and drift off home . . . A similar problem is experienced at the end of break: period 4 also gets off to a slow start because students take their time coming back from lunch. The impact on teaching is not felt just in terms of lost time, but the way the students straggle into class in “dribs and drabs” makes it difficult for a teacher to structure a coherent lesson. The following account records just how bad this could be: The siren rings at 12 noon to announce the end of break and the start of the 4th period. The students trickle into the laboratory. After the register, Nomzamo picks up where she has left off yesterday – question 3 of the investigation: “Designing kettles”. As she begins teaching I decide, out of curiosity, to keep a careful note of the arrival times of the absent students. It makes interesting reading: When Nomzamo starts teaching at 12.08 there are 37 students present. At 12.10, seven more arrive; around 12.12, another ten turn up (in two’s and three’s); followed by one student at 12.14. At that point, one of the girls at the front group gets up and tries to wedge closed the broken laboratory door (there is a cold draught from outside). At 12.16, sixteen minutes into the period, one final student pushes open the door and enters the class. With a slightly guilty look, but without any obvious apology to Nomzamo (who in any event ignores her), the girl makes her way to her place at one of the tables. There are now 56 students in class and with all the windows tightly shut to keep out the cold air the laboratory grows snug and warm . . . When it rained, attendance tended to drop off even further, and teaching became an increasingly “wet” affair in, for example, the 9F class which, as we saw in the previous chapter, is housed in one of the dilapidated prefab buildings. On more than one occasion a particularly heavy downpour brought the school to a virtual halt: The siren rings to announce the end of lunch, and it is still pelting down outside. The school looks half empty, and only a handful of students can be seen dodging puddles in their dash through the open school gates. From the wet and bedraggled look of many of the students before break,

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few of them have raincoats or umbrellas. So it’s a good bet that many of the students who have gone home at lunchtime won’t reappear for the afternoon’s classes – why bother getting soaked again? A girl comes to the admin block to complain that one of the Grade 8 classrooms has flooded. The prefabs too are in a mess; one of them is in even a worst state than the 9F’s. Although things there are bad enough - another piece of the floor has collapsed; soon a significant number of children will be struggling to find a place to put their chairs. The leaking roof has drenched some of the tables and there are puddles of water all over the floor. Nomzamo takes one look at the classroom and goes off to find a spare room to move the 9F’s into. Halfway into the period, with half the class in tow she heads off to the empty 7B’s classroom (who are in the science laboratory having a mathematics lesson) to salvage what she can of the lesson . . .

Another concern is the discontinuity between science periods. Perhaps a less obvious, but nonetheless significant consequence of shifting towards a longer nine-day cycle, is that it results in less frequent periods – there is a three day gap (Days 7–9) in each cycle where the 9D’s do not have science at all. If Day 6 falls on a Friday (as it did on 21/5), the students have to wait until the following Thursday (Day 1 in the next cycle) before they have science again – a break of almost a week! In order to depict these concerns more graphically, the account shown in Figure 1 summarizes the actual teaching attendance for the 9D’s during a two-week period. If one works out the actual instructional time spent on science, the impact of post-break and first period disruptions becomes evident. Out of three hours and forty minutes scheduled for science, the 9D’s (those who were present that is) were taught for just two hours and forty minutes. The “lost hour” represents delays caused by the late arrival of students after break, and the impact of the shortened first period on Monday 1/6 when the weekly assembly was held. Of note too is the fact that class attendance in 9D was also highly variable – ranging from 40/64 to a maximum of 58/64 students. For the four periods where records were kept, on average three-quarters (48) of the students were present. No wonder then that Nomzamo struggled to maintain any kind of coherence in this class from one period to the next. Perhaps the most telling thing to keep in mind when viewing this data is that it was gathered over a two-week period when schooling at Yengeni High was essentially free of any external disruptions (although there were two days when periods were shortened, on Thursday 28/5 and Wednesday 3/6). This illustrates the extent to which teaching time is lost even during passages of uninterrupted schooling. And of course the data also reveal the extent to which teacher attendance in this class varied from day to day, with nearly a quarter of teaching time being lost because of teacher absence (14 periods in the two week period). It was particularly bad towards the end of the first week, with only 2 of 6 periods being taught on Friday the 29th of May – rather obviously the last day of the month. 48

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Figure 1. “Slip sliding away” with the 9D’s.

This seems a useful point at which to turn our attention to certain aspects of the occupational culture of teaching at Yengeni High. But before we start, a caveat is once again required. While the remainder of this chapter will strive to illuminate some of the key issues relating to the “culture of teaching” at the school, it must be remembered that the focus of our investigations was firmly on Nomzamo’s classroom. So while we found ourselves drawn, time and again, to consider the actions of her fellow teachers, at no stage did we seek out opportunities to engage with any of them in discussion either about their own practice or the functioning of the school as a whole. Yet for all that, we hope that the illustrative accounts which follow will give the reader a further “taste” (as it were) of life at the school, and a greater appreciation of some of the ways in which the actions of the rest of the staff impact heavily on Nomzamo’s practice.

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Figure 2. (a) Grade 9D: Record of teacher attendance; (b) Grade 9E: Record of teacher attendance. Please note: An incomplete register was recorded in both classes on 11/5 – when the school only “ran” for the first three periods, and on 13/5 when school closed at 11 a.m. On 21/5 it was an official school holiday.

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3.8. TEACHERS’ ABSENTEEISM

I asked the students why they thought their teachers stayed in the staff room. After thinking for a moment, Moses somewhat ruefully replied, ‘Because they want to drink tea . . . ’ The extent to which instructional time is lost because of teachers absenting themselves from their classroom duties can be quantified with a fair degree of certainty by analysis of the class period registers.29 By way of example, the data for two of Nomzamo’s classes (9D and 9E) during the later part of the second term was collated and is reproduced in Figure 2. An analysis of these data reveals the following: In the 9E class, over the five weeks between 5/5–5/6, a teacher was recorded as being absent from the scheduled lesson during 34/126 (27%) of the periods. By comparison, a teacher was absent in 24/108 (22%) of the periods in the 9D class. And perhaps the most telling observation of all is that on only one occasion in the 9E class and on four occasions in the 9D class were students taught for all six periods in a day. These figures in no way reflect the impact of the shortened periods which occurred on 18 days during the 14-week trial nor, of course, do they comment on what actually transpired when teachers were present in class; nor do they distinguish between occasions when a teacher might have been in the staff room from those when a teacher was absent from school/class for a “legitimate” reason – such as illness, or attending to some officially sanctioned business or event. It is important to appreciate, that with no non-teaching staff available, it is inevitable that teachers get drawn into organising things during class time, not just in their “free periods”; but also during their scheduled lessons. This feature of schooling bears closer examination – because it points towards instances where teachers can, if they so wish, seek official sanction from the principal for their absence from class. “When the Teacher Doesn’t Come . . . ” Besides the actual tally of missed periods reported above, it is interesting to note the pattern of teacher absenteeism across the school days given:

Figure 3. Teacher absenteeism per period.

The one-hour lunch time (Mondays to Thursdays) falls between periods 3 and 4. According to the register, a teacher was absent from period 4 on nine occasions in 9E. On such days the after-break “slow start” discussed earlier becomes, in terms of teaching at least, something of a “no start”. 51

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A somewhat puzzling finding is that although the 9E class has considerable status amongst teachers as being the “top class” in the Grade, the 9E’s suffered more from teacher absenteeism than did the larger, more unpopular 9D class. Reading the 9E’s class register – together with a copy of their subject timetable sheds some light on this matter because it serves as a record of individual teacher’s class attendance. Here the 9E’s had the misfortune to be assigned three teachers who, based on the data gathered over this five-week period, displayed a remarkably consistent high level of absenteeism: between them, these three teachers were responsible for 26 out of the 34 missed periods. From this one can but assume that teaching is by and large devalued by at least some of the staff responsible for classes in the lower grades of the school. Another puzzling feature of student behaviour appeared on a number of occasions in each of the four classes – where for no obvious reason a class would be uncharacteristically unsettled and difficult to teach. Naturally any number (or combination) of factors could contribute to the students entering the science lesson in an unsettled frame of mind. For instance, the class might have had an altercation with a teacher; indeed there might even have been a fight amongst some of the students. Perhaps they came from a particularly stupefying lesson, or had just written a test and now needed some time to unwind. Monday first period meant catching up with weekend news (that could be noisy), and of course period 4 was straight after lunch break. Clearly, in any context, the ebb and flow of a teacher’s interactions with a class follow a similar pattern. Yet in the context of Nomzamo’s classes, such restless and inattentive behaviour was quite out of character. Indeed, much will be made in the next chapter of the fact that students at Yengeni High seem mostly to engage in passive rather than the openly disruptive behaviour that was observed here. What was going on? The clue once again lies in the period register. Here is an account of the 9E class: The class is rowdy and restless, and Nomzamo is really struggling to get them to settle down. At first it isn’t at all obvious what is the problem. But a perusal of the period register reveals some interesting information: with only one lesson remaining, they have so far missed 6 out of 23 of their classes this week. And today, they have been left unattended for the previous two periods in a row! Left to their own devices, with no adult supervision at all, it is pretty clear then why they are now proving a bit difficult to control . . . The disruptive impact which the seemingly arbitrary shifting patterns of teacher classroom attendance has on another colleague’s attempt to actually teach a class, was exacerbated on those occasions when “non-teaching” stretched for two periods in a row. It is worth noting that in the incident described above, the 9E’s had last been taught one and a half hours earlier, and this at a time late on a Friday, when the weekend was only one and a half hours away. In such circumstances 52

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who can blame the students for being restless and uninterested in being taught science, or anything else for that matter? Referring again to the data on teacher attendance, such two-period breaks occurred on a number of occasions. On both the 20/5 and 29/5 teachers were absent from the 9E class for two consecutive periods, and the situation was even worse on the 3/6 when the class lost three periods in a row (fortunately on that day Nomzamo was not scheduled to teach science). In the 9D class there were three occasions when two consecutive periods were lost. For example, on 12/5 (a normal school day), the 9D’s missed out on their first two periods, which meant that for them, school effectively began not at the scheduled start of 8.30 a.m., but at 10.10 a.m. – a mere 50 minutes before the lunch break. The Students’ Response Given the impact that such behaviour has on teaching, it is worth digressing to consider what the students’ have to say about the whole issue of being left “teacher less” for one or more periods at a time. Their comments reveal much about what is one of the most interesting (and ultimately more tragic) consequences of teacher absenteeism at Yengeni High. During one of the interviews, they were asked to comment on how they felt about being left to their own devices for periods on end. As we hope the reader will agree, their comments make intriguing reading: Jon: Luleka: Jon: Luleka:

How do you feel when you miss periods? Oh, I’m happy! Why? Like, especially when it was after lunch after a whole day of studying. I don’t bunk [i.e. skip classes], I don’t miss periods at school. It is the teacher who don’t come in the classroom, so I’m free [comfortable] about that. Asanda: Today like I enjoyed the thing that those periods didn’t get in. Because my eyes at the back like have an ache or something. So, I didn’t quite concentrate. Because every time that I look up and didn’t move my head, they ache. So I had quite a problem and I needed just to rest. Nolisapho: I was happy today because I wasn’t in the form [mood] to study. Moses: I was happy that the teachers don’t get in because always, they get in always, all the time and I just get . . . (other students laugh) Phelo: I wasn’t then happy. Because when I came from home back to school after lunch I wanted the teachers to come in to show my homework and everything . . . Jon: Okay, so did you lose your two periods after lunch? Luleka: You say we must be honest! Jon: Yes, absolutely, that’s fine. But I’m interested in how you feel. (Changing tack) What if you were Matric students, would you be happy? 53

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Luleka:

Asanda:

No, no! Because now you are going to be . . . miss lesson. So you have to be concerned and have to study hard at home. In Grade 10, the teacher teach you and give you notes . . . In Grade 10, it is different because you have to be concerned about your work. If you miss a period, that’s your problem because at [of] your marks for the term. It will be hard if you fail . . .

(A bit later in the discussion . . . ) Nolisapho: But when there is a maths period, and maths is my favourite subject and I am the class rep[resentative] in the class. So, if I want to learn maths I go to the staff room and fetch the teacher. But if I don’t want, I just stay there [in the classroom]. Jon: So, have you done that? Luleka: Several times. Nolisapho: Ja . . . several times. Asanda: And sometimes when she does it, the other students, like, want to kill her! (Others laugh again) Jon: Nolisapho: Jon: Asanda:

A teacher comes, though, if you go and call them? And come with her. But what happens after break? Because your stomach is full and you don’t want to listen. Because you concentrated too much on the food. [9E]

Should we be surprised at the sentiments expressed by this group of students? We would suggest not. To start with, we would do well to remember that they are just a group of 15-year-old children, and who can blame them for taking advantage of the opportunity to avoid doing schoolwork? In any event, as Luleka so astutely points out, “. . . I don’t bunk, I don’t miss periods at school. It is the teacher who don’t come in the classroom . . . ” The interesting thing here is that Luleka voices this sentiment without any obvious bitterness or rancour; she is simply stating the obvious – that she, as a student, cannot be held accountable for her teacher’s actions. But at the same time these students, amongst the academically more able in their class, are not unaware of the effect this state of affairs has on their schoolwork. Phelo articulates her desire for her teacher’s presence in terms of wanting feedback on her homework. Asanda (perhaps because he feels guilty about sharing Luleka’s sentiments?) uses his eyesight as an excuse for wanting a break from learning. And Nolisapho proudly relates how she will, when the mood takes her, go off and call her errant maths teacher to class – if nothing else, a remarkably mature response under the circumstances (and in the face of the possible disapproval of her peers!). But more than this, we believe that Nolisapho’s desire for maths instruction illustrates an interesting side to the complex relationship which develops between the students and at least some of their teachers. That a student in the junior classes can go and quite openly “summon” a teacher from the staff room 54

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would seem in many educational settings to be a most unheard-of proposition. In the context of a township school it suggests, at the very least, that the dynamics of power between students and their teachers are complex and not as asymmetrical as they might first appear. Needless to say, however little the students can be expected to take responsibility for their teachers’ actions, the tragedy is that at a school like Yengeni High, somewhere down the academic line it is they who will ultimately pay for their teachers’ “intransigence” in this aspect of their jobs. At this stage it seems opportune to refer to an ethnographic study of Yengeni High undertaken in 1992 and reported on in Walters (1996). His account illustrates the extent to which some teachers’ present day behaviour is rooted in the past. Consider the following two extracts from his narrative of events at the school: [7/2 – Friday] It was 11h55 as the siren wailed to indicate the end of the interval. Half the staff was present in the staff room while the other half (mostly males) spent interval off the premises. It was very hot and the teachers did not seem to be making any effort to go to their various classes. Even Ms. Mfabe [the HOD] did not look as if she was going to her class. At 12h15 teachers were still returning from interval, while out of a possible student body of 1 500, only approximately 100 were present at that time. The playground was deserted as I made my way to Grade 9D – Zola’s class. He was not here, but at about 12h30 he arrived and the students who were in the vicinity of the classroom took their places inside. Our numbers seemed to have dwindled with approximately 50% of the class present. Zola ignored this fact, not bothering to enquire as to the whereabouts of the other half of the class. (p. 105) [2/3] After the interval I decided to try to observe either Ms. Mfabe’s or Winston’s class but I could not find either of them. The teachers did not seem to be moving to their classes and twenty minutes later the majority of them were still relaxing in the sanctuary of the staffroom. Anton could read the mood, “. . . just watch these teachers, they don’t go to their classes”. After about half an hour Ms. Mbeki (the deputy) came inside, looked around and shook her head. Outside the students were still basically having an interval. Ms. Mbeki seemed a bit angry as she started to shout out the names of those teachers who were scheduled to be in their classes during this period. One by one the teachers got up and left, reluctantly making their way out to the classes. (pp. 134–135) Walters’ dissertation is filled with descriptive accounts of conditions at the school which bear at times an uncanny resemblance to those which were experienced by Jonathan. This is not to suggest that circumstances have remained unchanged – clearly the level of contestation (for instance between the SRC and the staff/principal) within the school is considerably less today, and the efforts made to reassert authority over the students in 1992 have to some extent resulted in a more orderly school setting. Yet it could be argued that, in some quite critical ways, the locus of attention has (or should) focus on the actions of teachers – particularly when it comes to their classroom attendance. 55

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Interestingly enough, teacher absenteeism and late coming is no longer an issue at Yengeni High (as it was in 1992). Today, the problem is not one of getting teachers through the school gates; rather it is one of getting them through the classroom door (and then getting them to stay there and teach), particularly after break when, just as Walters reported, many of them seem more than a little reluctant to leave the staff room. If today, levels of teacher classroom absenteeism are running typically at between 20–30% (as in these two Grade 9 classes), then we have in Walters’ accounts a stark reminder of the extent to which township schools like Yengeni High were close to outright collapse in the early 1990s. Besides unsettling the students, in what other ways does the behaviour of her fellow teachers affect Nomzamo’s teaching? She revealed her feelings in the following comments: Nomzamo: After lunch, people don’t stand up immediately when the bell rings to go to class, they’ll take something like . . . ten minutes. Now, if you are there [in the classroom] after five minutes you won’t hear what’s happening, particularly this side [Grade 8 and 9 blocks]. It must be better on that [i.e. the other] side of the school. Particularly with the Grade 10 classes they are really more hard working, they are pressed for time, so they really don’t have to be pushed. [Later] . . . you actually teach effectively [the Grade 9’s] for about 15 minutes. So it is quite a problem. Jon: How does it make you feel? Nomzamo: It’s a problem, we should be taking responsibility. We wouldn’t like it to [happen to] our own children. So it is a bad thing . . . Jon: But it’s one issue which no one really seems to be able to . . . Nomzamo: You should see it in September or August . . . it’s even worse. In so much that you see people trying to rush to finish the syllabus, even the junior classes, as early as August! So that by the time [of the year] when things get chaotic you are just revising, you don’t have any [new] topics to cover . . . (Later, after discussing how extensive a problem it is amongst the staff) Nomzamo: Some people are not strong enough to stand up for what they believe in . . . if you go to class and others don’t . . .

3.9. “TWO SCHOOLS IN ONE”

This extract alludes to what Nomzamo came to talk of as being Yengeni High’s “two schools in one” – for interestingly enough, on a number of occasions when the rest of the school had sunk into a chaotic state, the block of Grade 12 classes seemed like an oasis of calm. Nomzamo: I would say that if you notice, it has always been the case anyway; the Grade 12 block is always the most orderly block in the school. 56

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Always attended [to] and all that stuff, so this block is where most of the work goes on. Then the other blocks . . . there again, you find that you are expected to perform a miracle in seven months of the work, of a backlog and all the mess, maybe I shouldn’t say mess because I’m actually involved in the junior classes! (laughs). But of all those topics which are not covered [in the junior classes] and, I don’t know, there is a whole lot of chaos going on in the junior classes (laughs again), and you are expected to perform miracles in seven months in Grade 12 which is then too late. But even the Grade 11 block is quite . . . orderly, relatively orderly . . . Jon: Yes, it does seem as if the school is split into two parts . . . Nomzamo: All it needs is that everyone needs to be as . . . hardworking as the Grade 12 people, so that we can get better results really. Otherwise the hard work is in Grade 12. No doubt it is the end-of-year external exams that provide a powerful incentive for both students and teachers to attend to their lessons. Yet it also seems to point towards what might be regarded as one of the key “limits of control” at Yengeni High – it is only really here at the top end of the school that the principal is able to exercise his authority over teachers. Nomzamo recounted an incident where the principal called the staff responsible for the Matric classes into his office to complain about the students’ poor performance: Nomzamo: . . . everything comes back to you as the teacher – that you were not doing your work, you know. Again, I understand in the sense that all principals want good results but, if they could look at the reality of their schools, then they would stop blaming teachers. We are blamed for the poor Matric results of June. We had a meeting at lunchtime yesterday, the Matric teachers were called to the office and the principal gave us the best of his mind. The fact that we are not doing enough, that we are late to classes, we just drag our feet to class. We take 15 minutes to get there; you know all those kinds of remarks. Jon: What do people say back to him? Nomzamo: Kids don’t want to learn . . . He said it’s because of us, if we get there late what do we think kids feel? Anyway it’s nice to shift the blame on other people. Otherwise, he doesn’t see his school as being collapsing, the bottom line is that the school is collapsing, the school is collapsing . . . The school is definitely falling apart. You cannot build what goes on in the classroom when everything around you is crumbling so you try your best. But if it is only one or two people, when the results come out, it is not only science which will make a difference, it has to be a team effort for the results to improve . . . As a Matric teacher Nomzamo is placed under considerable pressure to ensure that her students perform as well as possible in the Matric exams (although no57

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one expects too much of them given the school’s past record).30 Nomzamo also needs no reminding of the extent to which teaching in the junior classes, at least in terms of classroom attendance, suffers in quite profound ways from a general lack of coherence and consistency – as she put it, “the school is definitely falling apart”. And as reflected in her earlier comments, she is painfully aware of the cumulative impact this disintegration of teaching has, three or four years down the line, on student performance in Matric. Such are the tensions which Nomzamo experiences at Yengeni High. But for all that, we believe that the principal’s outburst against the Matric teachers is also quite understandable, for he too is trapped in a situation where he is still able to exercise only limited control over the staff’s actions. To make sense of why this is so, we need to return again for a moment to the events of the past.

3.10. THE PRINCIPAL AS “GATE KEEPER”

One consequence of the “crisis of authority” which swept through black schooling in the mid to late 1980s, was that it gave rise to a situation in many township schools whereby the principal became trapped in a kind of no man’s land between the state and the oppositional forces in the community. On the one hand, principals had to answer as employees to a discredited (and increasingly ineffectual) education department; and on the other, they had to deal not only with students who were hell-bent on challenging all forms of authority and control,31 but also an increasingly militant staff room.32 Battered, as it were, from all sides and shorn of moral authority to make demands on their staff, many principals were left little more than mere functionaries in their offices, and at a disturbingly large number of schools, principals were actually chased from their posts.33 Given the extent of the breakdown in authority structures in schooling, it is not surprising then that principals are still struggling to reassert their authority. In this respect, the situation at Yengeni High is in many ways a fascinating example of how this struggle unfolds in practice. Recalling again Walters’ (1996) accounts of events at the school back in 1992 – it was then that a significant breakthrough was made when the principal, with the backing of the staff, initiated a system of controlling access to the school by locking the school gate both in the morning and after lunchtime. In this way the principal, acting as a kind of “gate keeper” was able to reassert his authority over a critical area of school management and in so doing was able to break the cycle of extremely erratic student attendance and ensure too that teachers also came to school on time. While late coming and class attendance amongst students is clearly still an issue of concern at the school, it is by no means as endemic a problem as it was in the past. With the students and teachers in school, the focus shifts to getting them into classrooms and to commit themselves to teaching and learning. This seems to have been successful in Matric, and has to some extent percolated down at least to the next level where the Grade 11 classes are also relatively orderly. To an outsider, the dilemma facing the school seems to be how to extend this “control” 58

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down into the junior classes where, based on the evidence gathered and reported on here, things are still chaotic and teaching suffers by degrees. Paterson and Fataar (1998) suggest that, within the dysfunctional school, an institutional response to circumstances derives from what they call “moral diffusion”. This occurs where the management of the dysfunctional school cannot muster the moral authority to make demands on the staff. During one of the interviews, Nomzamo was asked to comment on whether that situation seems to have arisen at Yengeni High, where the principal was still quite powerless to openly confront teachers who chose not to attend to their classes. Nomzamo: But he does, he actually does. Yes, he does confront people and he would actually sit there, take a chair and sit next to the timetable and look at the people sitting down and check who should be where. And people would start slowly [her emphasis] getting up and moving to class. When he sees them sitting there, sometimes he would even call them by name, that Mr. so-and-so, you are not supposed to be here. Jon: But it’s not a point of conflict is it? You don’t have a lot of tension like today, where there’s clearly half the teachers not in class. Like Ms. A- - - there [one of the HODs], she’s not going to really push it on a Friday, am I right? (Nomzamo then explained that in her opinion both the principal and his first deputy were mostly tied up with dealing with administrative matters, which meant that they had little time to spare.) Nomzamo: Mam [deputy principal] is very busy with the administrative work; she’s very drowned in that. The principal has got phases, sometimes he is very busy with this, because he’s always looking at the registration [for the Matric exams] and so it comes and goes. But then the other deputy really the one who should . . . (she shrugs her shoulders and laughs). Jon: Why do you think that is? Why do you think he doesn’t confront teachers sitting in the staff room? Nomzamo: Maybe because he’s got a wife here? Who also tends not to attend periods! So he cannot confront people because when he says, they say, “What about your wife?” He cannot really push people because . . . and people know that the wife is not . . . not, that’s why she was very keen to give us the rest of the period in 9D. That’s the danger of working with your spouse . . . Nomzamo’s willingness to defend the principal is understandable; whatever her disappointment over his handling of the issue of teaching in Matric, she clearly accepts his authority as the head of the school. Other teachers are more reluctant: “. . . and people would start slowly getting up and moving to class”. That the second deputy is unable or unwilling to approach teachers (including his own wife) in a similar way surely reflects just how tenuous authority structures remain at the school. 59

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Of course, one is left wondering why it is that teachers have to be “chased” into class in the first place; and why it is that of the eight teachers responsible for the Grade 9E’s, three seem to spend more time out of the classroom rather than within. In avoiding their classroom responsibilities, such teachers are acting in what can only be described as an opportunistic manner, exploiting for their own ends the limited management coherence and moral authority in the school. Coupled with the lack of community leverage to influence their work, such teachers have essentially abdicated moral responsibility for their actions (we will develop this further later) That their actions result in a vicious cycle in which their lack of commitment exacerbates the already low levels of educational quality is probably of little direct concern to them. Consider too that the period registers are collected by the first deputy principal at the end of each week and kept on file as a record of student attendance. Yet while, as we have seen, they serve as an invaluable record of teacher attendance, one may wonder why they are not accessed for information about errant teachers’ patterns of non-attendance. That the principal and his senior staff are unwilling (or unable?) to do this seems to further illustrate just how diffuse authority is at the school. While we would argue that there is sufficient moral authority available at Yengeni High to concentrate on the top end of the school, tragically it dissipates when it comes to influencing the actions of teachers in the junior classes. Before proceeding further, we would like to suggest that the whole question of why a significant number of teachers miss classes defies simple analysis. While not wishing to defend what is beyond doubt unacceptable behaviour, one needs to avoid falling into the trap of pathologising teachers and their actions – as in: “some teachers are “lazy”, others are “incompetent” and so on. Such an approach risks excluding from one’s analysis any consideration of how teachers themselves view their actions, particularly in relation to the environment in which they work and of course, their experiences of the past.

3.11. TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF NON-TEACHING – THE CONCEPT OF MORAL MINIMISING

Paterson and Fataar (1998) develop the concept of “moral minimising” to complement, at an individual level, the notion of “moral diffusion” outlined above. Taken together they offer a useful framework with which one can begin to make sense of the actions of teachers in dysfunctional schools. In short, the argument is that in such settings (some) teachers develop an identity which is rooted in the helplessness they feel about being unable to change the schooling context in which they work. In response, they end up acting in ways that diffuses moral responsibility, and they use the constrained circumstances in which they work to justify their minimum participation in schooling processes. In other words, “moral minimising” represents the coping responses (or defence mechanisms?) which teachers’ adopt to deal with the difficult environments in which they work. Paterson and Fataar (1998) add:

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This does not necessarily mean that teachers take conscious or deliberate decisions about radically reducing their workout. But decreased commitment is based on their own self-definition as ‘victims’ which in turn justifies low levels of participation and soft commitment almost as a moral right. Thus, personal moral responsibility has been handed over to the state and is conditional on the state’s capacity to deliver. (p. 11) Yet if one maintains a position which acknowledges that teachers’ present day responses are grounded in their experiences of the past, it is reasonable to assume then that the “struggle years” had an increasingly negative impact on how many teachers came to conceptualise their jobs. For as noted earlier in this chapter, the ongoing conflict in township schooling seriously damaged the morale, professional status, and authority of black teachers. Furthermore, if one accepts that the essential character of the relationship between students and teachers is one of control, it is precisely this element which was most consistently and completely overturned during periods of unrest. The following comment of Molteno (1983) refers to the wave of boycott action that swept through township schools in 1980, but could just as easily be applied to numerous periods of unrest at any time over the next decade: . . . the authority of principals and teachers were [sic] removed overnight as students began to boycott. The institutional hierarchies were swept aside . . . (p. 291) It is not surprising then that by the early 1990s, Murphy (1992) concludes that in some schools, the role of both principals and teachers had been reduced to little more than that of “spectators”. The personal experiences of one of the authors of teaching during these troubled times are of a similar deep-rooted sense of helplessness, of powerlessness in the face of student action. We have no doubt that these feelings are shared by many other teachers who have worked in township schools. To give a more tangible sense of what it was like, here is an extract from an article written at the time: . . . when the students are called out of class to attend a mass meeting, there would be a knock on the door and two or three SRC representatives would politely ‘request permission’ to address the class. After being informed of the meeting the students would more often than not simply close their books and leave the classroom. Besides the odd wry smile in passing, no-one would ask me for my permission to leave, it was taken for granted that I would not interfere (perhaps I was even respected for that?). I would be left, chalk poised in midair (so to speak), facing an empty class . . . (Clark, 1988, pp. 8–9) The point is this: for years now student-teacher relationships in schools like Yengeni High have been obscured by considerable ambiguity. The conventional power relationships between teachers and students have been distorted and at times overturned, as both parties have had to respond to a veritable Pandora’s box of events and changing circumstances. 61

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Reflecting on how conditions in a township school can lead to a teacher becoming demotivated, Nomzamo related the story of a fellow teacher at her school: We were talking amongst ourselves, with Nozuko [a friend at another school], that what is happening is that you get a teacher who is dedicated coming into a school which is chaotic and a whole lot going on. And after a year, that person actually loses momentum, because there’s so much going on – from not attending classes, going late to classes. And then I was thinking of a teacher here, a teacher who was so energetic when she came. Her classroom had posters and drawings, she was a perfect example. The principal would always quote her in the staff room. Now she would ask, ‘Do you want my period in Grade 9?’ You know, that kind of thing . . . We could see that she was actually . . . demotivated. What happened is that one time in her classroom with all her nice posters, the people who broke into the class tore off her posters and they were writing things on them . . . you know!? So, she became so demotivated and she stopped doing it. And she was actually asking [before this incident] why are the classrooms so bare, why aren’t you putting up things? They [the fellow teachers] were saying to her, ‘If you are put up things, you are giving them a place to start swearing at each other [writing graffiti] on those posters that you put up on the wall’. And then after some time she really became so demotivated. So really, it’s true that the environment has great [her emphasis] impact on the way someone functions . . . Clearly, teaching in such circumstances can be a profoundly debilitating experience and it is hardly surprising then that some teachers are overwhelmed by conditions over which they believe they have no control. In the light of this, what becomes even more remarkable is the stand of a teacher like Nomzamo who continually seeks out opportunities like those presented to her by the STAP programme (something we shall reflect on at length in Chapter 6). And her ability to act seems to embody the very notion of individual “agency” in ways that at times seem to be the very antithesis of the approach adopted by many of her fellow teachers. It may well be that in recent years teachers have also learnt how to use their capacity to withdraw from the classroom, not only as a tactic in their own struggles against the apartheid state (as in union-led industrial action), but also almost as a weapon in response to students’ action. Whatever else, there seems little doubt that students and teachers are often trapped in adversarial relationships in which each party blames the other for a lack of commitment – as we can see in the following conversation in 1992 between Walters and some students at Yengeni High: . . . at the end of the talk and after I had fielded most of their questions I asked, “Why is that the students tend to come so late to school?” “We come late sir, because the teachers are not here when we arrive early”, came the reply. This of course was a two-sided story – teachers said that they came late because there were no students present when they did arrive early – a fact to which I could 62

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testify. When I informed the students of this they just laughed. (Walters, 1996, p. 133) As noted before, while today teachers are at school before the gates are closed, the issue remains one of getting them into class on time, and in this respect little seems to have changed in the past six years. Undoubtedly through their actions, students and teachers must share some of the blame for perpetuating the conditions which lead to an unstable learning environment in the school. Whereas the large-scale episodes of student unrest described earlier are thankfully a thing of the past, outside disruptions were always capable of precipitating a more complete breakdown in teaching and learning at Yengeni High. Such was the case during the COSAS “week of action” (17/3– 20/3), called by the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), ostensibly in support of growing national protests against the impending retrenchment of teachers.

3.12. THE IMPACT OF THE COSAS “WEEK OF ACTION”

The following accounts recall events on two days – Tuesday 17/3 (the first day of the scheduled COSAS programme) and Thursday 19/3: Tuesday, 17/3: Arriving at the school towards the end of break, and there’s an eerie silence about the place. The classrooms, normally filled with students keeping out of the rain, appear almost empty. By contrast, the staff room is crowded, cosy and warm with the press of bodies; the staff are listening to one of the HODs reporting back on a meeting with the SRC. Nomzamo explains that they are not expecting any more classes today – there is after all going to be some kind of COSAS programme of action. At this stage the details are sketchy, but apparently the decision to go ahead with the programme has not been endorsed by the school’s SRC, who have subsequently informed the school’s Management that classes can continue till the scheduled close of day. The only hitch is that virtually the whole school has already left for home! So there’s virtually no chance of anyone returning for classes (and it is raining outside) – another couple of hours of tuition lost, and things likely to continue this way for the rest of the week. The pattern of the past repeated once again? Thursday, 19/3: The whole week is disintegrating in front of us – due to the COSAS “week of action” the school knocks off at 11 a.m. each day. The principal has shuffled the timetable around, but it still means that Nomzamo will lose out on six out of ten of her periods with the Grade 9 classes. In theory, the agreement is that teachers will continue with their classes until lunchtime, and then spend the periods after break working on their mark schedules (due in tomorrow).

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The reality is somewhat different – most of the staff seem to spend all of their time firmly ensconced in the staff room engaged in what appears to be a frantic last minute rush to complete their marking of assignments and tests. Seeing as their teachers are not going to class, those students who have bothered to come to school hang around for a while and then quietly drift off home. According to Nomzamo, this happened yesterday as well. Not surprisingly, there are fewer students today, and by tomorrow, well there’s a good chance that the school will be empty. At 10.30 a.m., there is a commotion outside – a group of students from neighbouring school(s) have arrived, apparently to ensure that the Yengeni students are out of class and participating in the COSAS programme. Student democracy in action (South African-style!). The toyi-toying group of students, chant their way into the quadrangle and around the school buildings, and that really is the end of what is left of a non-school day . . . While there are many aspects of this incident worthy of closer examination, we wish to focus briefly here on just one of them – namely, how the teachers responded to the disruption. For a start, the decision to continue with normal tuition until lunchtime certainly appears to be a constructive attempt by the SRC to assert their right to learn (irrespective of what neighbouring schools decided). Agreeing to this arrangement would in turn seem to indicate that teachers are themselves willing to acknowledge the students’ right to be taught. Thus it would seem to be a positive step by both parties towards normalising teaching and learning at the school. Yet hardly had the last word been spoken on the matter, when teachers reneged on the agreement and instead of teaching for the agreed 2 12 hours, appropriated the morning to catch up on their administrative work (i.e., to complete their marking of tests and assignments). As Nomzamo put it: And really what is happening, as I see it now, is that people decided okay, because we know we have got this disruption, rather let’s use the time for the doing of reports. [19/3] Is this a highly cynical move on the part of teachers or perhaps an astute reading of the unfolding situation? For the arrival of the group of toyi-toying students to enforce the suspension of classes not only effectively sealed the fate of tuition for the rest of the week, but also seemed to confirm, in a bizarre way, that the staff was right to go ahead and rather use the time more “effectively” in compiling term marks! That no one tried to intervene and stop the toyi-toying group of students from entering the school premises might also seem an abdication of responsibility on the part of the teachers. This would certainly be an unfair judgement, for it remains a harsh reality of township schooling that the principal and his staff are essentially powerless to intervene in the face of student political action. It can be argued that the fact of the matter is that whether it is 1998 or 1978, the “rules of the game” have remained essentially unchanged and faced with toyi-toying students it is no exaggeration to say that the staffroom is the safest place to be . . . 64

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Without wishing to labour the point, events during the COSAS “week of action” illustrate how markedly different the dynamics of student-teacher interactions are in a township context like Yengeni High. A week such as this is undoubtedly a replay of countless similar incidents in the past, and if nothing else the ease with which the school can “fall apart” reveals just how brittle schooling remains at Yengeni High. If we return for a moment to events of this week – the COSAS programme drew to a close on the Friday and normal classes were due to resume on the following Monday. This unfortunately was the last week of term and although many students dutifully returned to school, most teachers were fully preoccupied with completing report cards. The environment in the school now became increasingly unsupportive of those few teachers like Nomzamo who wanted to carry on with their teaching schedules. The following account is based on her experiences on one day during the last week of the first term. It illustrates in striking terms just how much her commitment to teaching draws her, like King Canute, into a lone stand against the tide of non-teaching which has (once again) swept over the school: Period 2 and its off to the 9E’s. Nomzamo is the only teacher in sight, and she cuts a lonely figure crossing the courtyard from the admin block. Scores of children are milling around shouting and laughing together, the noise they make mingles with the din coming from the classrooms. Nomzamo enters the 9E homeroom to find most of the students sitting around engaged in animated conversations, and it takes her some time (and no little shouting) to get them settled down. Outside, the clamour of sound continues unabated and, if anything, seems to grow as the period progresses. The only respite in the bedlam is after a quarter of an hour when one of the deputy principals walks around chasing children back into the classrooms. The number of boys seeking refuge in and around the toilets has however grown, and through a broken windowpane the pungent odour of cigarette smoke mingles with the sweet smell of dagga. Needless to say, once the deputy principal has disappeared kids re-emerge from their classrooms into the sunlight and the noise levels rise once more. Nomzamo is stuck trying to teach in the rowdiest part of the school and she tries in vain to shut herself and the students off from the cacophony of noise which envelops the classrooms around her. Yet things are so disruptive that there is again, like yesterday, a strong undercurrent of restlessness in the normally industrious 9E class; many students are distracted and struggle to pay attention. Teaching in these circumstances is an exhausting experience for Nomzamo, and by the end of the lesson she looks tired and drained from the effort. Walking back to the laboratory, Nomzamo laughs wryly and explains that most teachers are in the staff room, still putting the final touches to the end-of-term report cards. Well, they certainly aren’t in class – walking between the blocks, 12 out of 14 classrooms appear teacherless. 65

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Not that they are all caught up with this work, as Nomzamo explains, “You will find that not everyone is busy with reports, some have finished their reports, but then because they have seen some people not going [to class] then they decided to stay [in the staff room]”. Once again this an example of where teachers can appeal to official sanction for their absence from class (the need to complete report cards), and it also defines another limitation in the authority structures at the school. In the interview which followed the events described above, Nomzamo was asked to explain why the teachers were not being encouraged to go to class: Jon:

But why doesn’t the control staff intervene? The deputy will walk around and put the kids into class, but why won’t she try and put the teachers into class? Nomzamo: I think she knows what kind of response that she’ll get, “that if you tell us to go to class today then don’t expect us to submit the reports tomorrow [the last day of term]”. They could do them in class perhaps, and in that way there would be order around the school . . . Jon: But people would never think to take reports home would they? They always do them during school time . . . Nomzamo: I don’t know very well, the last time I was a class teacher I used to do them even at home.34 Yes, I’m seeing that people are just leaving things to be done them at school time. This also points towards another aspect of what is clearly a different conception of what one’s job as a teacher entails – it seems that for many of her colleagues, teaching is a “9 to 5” job (or more accurately, an “8.30 a.m. to 2.30 a.m.” job) and the thought of taking work home is not something they will consider doing. When it comes to matters pertaining to teacher professionalism, we would argue that things are clouded by (what must surely be) the mistaken assumption that there is a single all-encompassing concept of “the professional teacher” which can be applied in all educational contexts in South Africa. In this regard, Davies (1993) suggests that we would do well to develop local concepts of “professionalism”, which could assist us in developing our understanding of how the occupational culture(s) of teachers may aid or hinder innovation and change. In a related way, Hargreaves (1994) calls for multiple and flexible concepts of teaching excellence which are able to acknowledge the provisional and context-dependant character of the knowledge base of teaching. Finally, perhaps we need to remember that the crisis in black education has been played out in a system that has experienced both rapid and sustained growth. Given the demand for teachers, an increasing number of young people have been drawn into teaching who may themselves have experienced either disrupted secondary schooling or college training. It might well be that one of the most damaging consequences of the decades-long education struggle is that it has created a generation of teachers whose notions of schooling, and in particular their own 66

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roles as teachers, has in no small way been distorted by their own experiences of being militant students of those times. We also need to remember that, in common with the situation in many other developing countries on the continent, teaching was, until fairly recently, one of the few “professions” open to black people. In this respect the situation is markedly different from that in the First World – while teachers in any context may publicly justify their choice of career in terms of “teaching as a calling”, there is no doubt that for black South Africans it was for many more a choice “borne out by a compromise with reality’s demands” (to appropriate Lortie’s, 1975 expression). Amuzu (1992) makes the point that quite a fair number of teachers are not genuinely interested in teaching as a profession. And today, the limited employment options open to students with general arts degrees ensures that significant numbers of black graduates gravitate to post-graduate teaching diplomas and from there into schools.35 Even in Nomzamo’s case, we shall see in Chapter 5 how she somewhat reluctantly “fell into teaching” and it was fortuitous that she found in her college experiences the motivation and spark which helps sustain her commitment to this day. But what of her fellow teachers at Yengeni High? Jon: Of your friends do they want to leave teaching? Nomzamo: Some people are keen to get out of the profession. Others are there just because there is nothing else they can do, they are just qualified to teach. Jon: Do you think a lot of people feel trapped? Nomzamo: Yeah . . . most people feel trapped because of the way that they have been trained. Then you have those who are trying to get opportunities elsewhere – who are applying, sending CVs [curriculum vitaes] all over, trying to get jobs elsewhere. It would seem reasonable to assume that many of Nomzamo’s colleagues have become ensnared in jobs which, while offering relatively good material benefits and social mobility, are anything but their first choice careers. In proposing this we are not suggesting that this is a situation unique either to South Africa, or to other developing countries; Fullan (1991) cites national polls in the USA which indicate that teaching was not the first choice for as much as one-third of the teaching force (more so at the secondary school level) – as he reminds us, there is a complicated set of variables operating. Yet unlike the USA where research indicates that between one-third and onehalf of new teachers leave the profession by the time they reach their seventh year of teaching; we believe that in South Africa (among African teachers at least) it is more often a case of “once trapped, can’t leave”. It may be significant that in 1998, when all teachers were afforded the opportunity to apply for voluntary retrenchment packages, only one teacher at Yengeni High had, to the best of Nomzamo’s knowledge, submitted such a request.

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Whilst it remains pure conjecture on our part, we would suggest that this feeling of entrapment contributes significantly to the low level of motivation amongst many teachers and contributes significantly to the underlying malaise at Yengeni High. On bad days, when her spirits are low, Nomzamo echoes the feelings of what are surely a great number of her colleagues (both here and elsewhere in the world): Ja . . . [Sometimes I feel] trapped in the sense that . . . I cannot just make a quick decision in terms of leaving the teaching profession. Partly because of the . . . house [she has a mortgage to pay]. But at the same time when I think of what else can I do besides teaching? I end up saying; it looks like there isn’t much else I can do!

3.13. NOMZAMO WORKING AS A CONSTRAINED INDIVIDUAL

Reflecting on Nomzamo’s position at Yengeni High, it seems as if she functions in a state of what Hargreaves (1994) describes as “constrained individualism” – she has to teach, plan and generally work alone because of situational constraints which present significant barriers or discouragements to her doing otherwise. Although at times one of Hargreaves’ other two determinants to individualism also seems to be evident in Nomzamo’s actions. What he terms “strategic individualism” seems aptly to describe the way she actively constructs and creates individualistic patterns of working as a coping strategy to deal with or “block out” the impact of “non-teaching” around her. For example, on a number of occasions Nomzamo seemed to quite intentionally absent herself from a staff meeting, in order to attend to her class. Also, out of choice she carried on teaching on the 26/3 when virtually all of her colleagues were holed up in the staff room working on their report cards. Hargreaves’ third determinant, “elective individualism” (which is an expression of a preferred form of professional action for all or part of one’s work) does not seem to readily apply to Nonzamo who, as we shall see in Chapter 5, so actively seeks collaborative involvement outside her own school. Whatever else, there is clearly a distinct lack of any real collaborative culture at Yengeni High – by and large, Nomzamo is left to work on her own with little support from any of her fellow science teachers. As she put it during one of the interviews: Nomzamo: I don’t think that we are very much . . . working together so to say. I think, yes we do consult, like I asked Peter how he has worked out his Grade 9 mark whether, did he allocate a certain percentage for year mark, like continuous evaluation I meant to say, and a certain percentage for the tests that he has done . . . Jon: But it’s not something you had talked about in advance? Nomzamo: No it’s not, it’s not something we talked . . . but then I felt a need to just check what he has done, so that we are in the same . . . seeing as he had already submitted his marks anyway. 68

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Jon:

But in the normal course of teaching, do you ever really get the chance to talk to other colleagues about what they are doing? Nomzamo: It’s not an organised thing, like if I . . . for an example, the test which I had set for the Grade 9’s, I set the test and I gave it to Ms. Soqele [head of science] to have a look at and comment, if she had any comment. Then I gave it to Peter as well. Jon: Now did Ms. Soqele comment, did she suggest any changes? Nomzamo: Oh, all she said was that she felt it was a right move [it was okay], but that’s what she always says! (laughs) (Later) Jon: Nomzamo:

Jon: Nomzamo: Jon: Nomzamo:

Jon:

Nomzamo:

Would you say that it [Yengeni High] is a more supportive school, than your other schools? More supportive here than in other schools? . . . No, I don’t know whether . . . (pauses to think). Okay, what is happening here at Yengeni is that I’ve got a lot of . . . how do you say it? . . . free-way [leeway] or whatever . . . , I do most of the stuff here without having someone watching [over] me when I’m doing that kind of a thing. So that I’ve got a lot of . . . Space . . . Ja, and as a result . . . I just do things my way, and I just give an account later on. Do you feel good about that? Ja, I need that space. But in terms of the support, of other people in the things that I’m trying to do, I’m not getting as much in terms of the help from other people. But in terms of having to ask for permission for this and that. That’s why, when it comes to science, it’s easy for me to make decisions without having had to consult. And later on just bring the thing to the school and the school just agrees . . . When it comes to Ms. Soqele, it doesn’t strike me that she is somebody who is that organised in terms of her own [teaching], it looks to me that she doesn’t really offer you much . . . It’s just that the whole approach here doesn’t seem to be around working in a team. And my own experience of a township school is that there is no team! No, there’s no team . . .

As in other areas of school organisation, the structure is in place – there is a Head of Department whose responsibilities include overseeing the work of the science teachers, but in practice Ms. Soqele offers Nomzamo little more than (mostly procedural) guidance and support. Here, too, one of the ironies of the situation is revealed – in many ways the school was extremely supportive of Nomzamo’s initiatives to bring innovation into her science classroom. The principal and his senior teachers (in particular Ms. Soqele) openly welcomed STAP’s presence and involvement at the school, and on a number of occasions the principal was heard to praise Nomzamo’s efforts. On an affective (i.e., emotional) level this support may have been of some value to her in motivating and encouraging her to continue 69

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with the programme, but in practical terms, the problem is it represented little more than that. As we reflect on these matters, we are mindful of the fact that both individualism and collegiality are complex social and cultural phenomena. For a start, there is of course no doubt that in schools across the world most teachers work alone, behind closed doors in the insulated and secluded environment of their own classroom - teaching is, as Sarason et al. (1966) characterise it, a “lonely profession”. In any context, teaching is an activity marked by isolation from other practitioners and supervisors (Lortie, 1975) and for many teachers this is the very base of their occupational culture (Hargreaves, 1994). While Hargreaves (1992) suggests that the culture of individualism is still the most pervasive of all forms of teacher culture, and is in most respects a “seedbed of pedagogical conservatism” (p. 232); elsewhere he draws a useful distinction between individuality and individualism (Hargreaves, 1993). Both here and in later work Hargreaves attempts a reinterpretation and reconstruction of the concept of teacher individualism and its implications for educational change in ways which are less negative. In taking a position against what he calls the “heresy of individualism”,36 Hargreaves (1993) notes that dispositions towards individuality and preferences for solitude among teachers may be of considerable value in many instances. Individualistic behaviour understood in these terms may be less a source of weakness and diffidence than an expression of creative originality and principled disagreement.37 Therefore to eliminate the culture of individualism in its less restrictive forms may also unwittingly entail suppressing individuality of choice. As we reflect on these matters, we would do well to remember Fullan’s (1991, p. 136) succinct comment that: one person’s isolation is another person’s autonomy; one person’s collaboration is another person’s conspiracy . . . What does this comment mean in the context of Nomzamo’s work at Yengeni High? As we have tried to show through the above accounts, she faces change on her own, implying that on one level at least she has considerable “freedom to act” (as in her decision to try out the STAP material), and as such, conditions in a township school actually favour an individual teacher’s efforts to bring innovation and change into her classroom. However, we would argue that it is in many ways a kind of “false freedom” – for as we have seen, the commitment and motivation of an individual teacher is placed under enormous strain by the actions of her fellow teachers. This “false freedom” then points towards what seems to be almost a paradox of teaching in a school like Yengeni High – while there is no doubt that conditions favour what can only be described as (rampant) individualism, this would seldom manifest any meaningful support for the individuality of a teacher like Nomzamo. It is as if Nomzamo is free to do what she wants as long as it is “kept in her classroom” and does not threaten the carefully negotiated status quo of teaching at the school. 70

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In addition to the culture of individualism, Hargreaves (1997) talks about a second culture of teaching – which he calls a balkanised culture, “made up of separate and sometimes competing groups, jockeying for position and supremacy like loosely connected, independent city states” (Fullan and Hargreaves, 1992, p. 71).38 In the context of “first-world” schooling systems, where virtually all of the research originates, this is a familiar feature at the secondary level, mainly because of the strong subject department structures on which the schools are based.39 If it is accepted that a school’s teachers are its own best resources for change, then such departmental structures tend to deplete these resources by insulating and isolating teachers. Also, with teachers working in separate and sometimes competing territorial groups, the definition and pursuit of common goals across the whole school community is very difficult, if not impossible. Spoken of in such terms, Yengeni High can be characterised as an extreme example of a balkanised culture. In which, given the low level of organisational coherence and fragile authority structures, the teacher groupings do not even adhere to subject boundaries but are based on the “shifting sands” of inter-personal relationships in the staff room. Hargreaves’ (1994, p. 226) comment that in a balkanised culture – “the organisational whole is less than the sum of its parts”, certainly seems to apply to Yengeni High. In closing, we believe that the powerful influence that these two cultures of teaching (individualism and balkanisation) have on Nomzamo’s practice cannot be underestimated. For not only do they fragment relationships, making it almost impossible (or so it seems) for teachers to work together; but they stifle the moral support necessary for risk-taking and experimentation. In the light of this, it is no wonder that (as we shall see in Chapter 5) Nomzamo is forced to seek support and encouragement outside the school.

3.14. SOME THOUGHTS IN CLOSING

What can we learn from our snapshots of life in the crowded walkways, playground and staff room at Yengeni High? For a start, we can begin to appreciate just how much a range of contextual factors, grounded in the overall functioning of the school and in particular the actions of her fellow teachers, influence (often in quite profound ways) Nomzamo’s attempts to bring about change in her classroom. In this regard, Fuller and Snyder’s (1992, p. 234) comment seems particularly apt – “the more we learn about what teachers should be doing, the more we realise how constrained their social roles and behavioural scripts actually are within schools”. Yet, when considering events at Yengeni High, we would do well to remind ourselves that it is a school whose institutional identity is steeped in the political crisis and conflict which has marred township schooling over the last twenty years. Not only that, but the effects of this troubled past are deeply etched on the present day landscape of the school. Based on the evidence presented here, we have seen how this is manifest in different ways – from the high level of disorganisation which still seems to characterise the day-to-day functioning of 71

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the school; to the lack of moral authority invested in the principal; and in the behaviour of teachers whose commitment to the classroom seems at times to be so sadly lacking. Acknowledging that the school resembles, at times, little more than a bureaucratic façade seems a useful way of making sense of how Yengeni High (dys)functions and stutters from one day to the next. In this regard, perhaps another useful image is to suggest that there remains an essential brittleness about the school – this is most dramatically revealed during politically motivated disruptions (such as in the COSAS “week of action” and its aftermath) and by the continual “time leakage” (to coin a phrase) which cuts into the amount of instructional time available for teaching. Here the facts speak for themselves: time (or more precisely the lack thereof) was a commodity always in short supply – in a 14-week period, teaching on a third of the school days was disrupted in one way or another, and 16 12 % of Nomzamo’s science periods were lost. Besides the direct loss of teaching time – say when a period is sacrificed to a staff-briefing or assembly, the impact of “time leakage” was felt in more insidious ways – as in the first and fourth period “slow starts” and when Nomzamo tried to continue teaching when many of her fellow teachers were not attending to their classes. On such occasions closing the classroom door was of little help. In particular, the documented loss of teaching time due to teachers’ non-attendance in class (around one quarter of all lessons in two of the classes), points towards how the “patterns of practice” of some of Nomzamo’s colleagues are anything but supportive of her efforts to bring innovation into her science classroom. It would seem (at the risk of understatement) that a teacher’s efforts to implement an innovation such as STAP in such circumstances is at times a profoundly debilitating experience. Amongst other things, it throws up the contradictions inherent in a schooling context where one works in isolation (in a state of constrained individualism) without the benefit of a collaborative, supportive group of fellow teachers. Yet we have also had the opportunity to probe (albeit briefly) some of the causes of this malaise – that many teachers are dispirited and display a fairly onedimensional work ethic can be explained in part by their past experiences and present constrained circumstances. Perhaps we can start to appreciate just how much teachers, even more than their students, are the product of the curriculum content and processes of South African schooling (Walker, 1988). Taken together the concepts of moral minimising and moral diffusion were shown to offer a useful way of interpreting the actions of both the principal and his staff at a dysfunctional school like Yengeni High. While it was inevitable that a focus on various aspects of what is clearly school ineffectiveness, painted a somewhat bleak picture of daily life at the school, it is important to acknowledge ways in which the school strives to function more effectively – the principal’s “gate-keeping” role; the instigation of the class register; the image of “two schools in one”; and, of course, the school’s support for Nomzamo and the STAP project. Perhaps the extent to which these efforts are only partially successful does no more than highlight the complexity of the issues involved, as the dust slowly

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settles on apartheid education in this country, and the real struggle for a more equitable education system has only just begun. NOTES 1 Lederman, N.G. (1992). Students’ and teachers’ conceptions of the nature of science: A review of the research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29, 331–359. 2 Hargreaves, A. (1989). Curriculum policy and the culture of teaching. In G. Milburn, I.F. Goodson, and R.J. Clark (Eds.), Re-interpreting curriculum research: images and arguments. London: Falmer Press. 3 Jonathan has extensive experience of working in this context, namely in two different rural schools (1984–1986) and then in a township secondary school (1987–1991). 4 The school Nomzamo is referring to was, until 1994, a typical white high school, with well-built and well-resourced buildings set in pleasant school grounds. OakRidge High drew its students from what was, at the time, a lower-middle class community. However since 1994 the demographics of the student body has changed dramatically and in the past few years it has undergone a transition from being an almost exclusively white middle-class school, to now having a predominantly coloured student body – there are few white students, and certainly even fewer African kids enrolled at the school. Whilst the staff is no longer exclusively white, coloured teachers are still very much in the minority and there are no African teachers at all. In contrast, township schools like Yengeni High remain, in terms of the student body, as mono-racial as ever (there are three coloured teachers on the staff). 5 Unrest in schooling was in many ways an urban phenomenon and it was township secondary schools in particular which bore the brunt of struggle. Schooling in many rural areas, particularly in the parts of the country designated as “independent” homelands, continued without major disruptions until at least the late 1980s. At the time, the majority of African students attended rural schools – in 1991, of the 10.1 million school children in South Africa, 5.8 million (i.e. around 57%) were attending schools in non-urban areas. (Edusource, 1994. Data News, 6, June 1994). 6 Under apartheid, the white government sought to relieve itself of the responsibility of the citizenship of black South Africans. To this end it set about separating people on ethnic lines and by creating homelands and the Bantu Education system (the Bantu Education Act was passed in 1953). Until 1994, African, Indian, coloured and white students attended racially segregated schools administered by eventually 14 different Ministries of Education and co-ordinated by one Department of National Education. 7 On 16 June, 20,000 students marched through the streets of Soweto in protest against the government’s decision that half of the subjects in Grade 7 and 8 must be taught through the medium of Afrikaans. The police opened fire on the students, and the Soweto uprising had begun. The students responded with violence. They attacked government offices; burnt liquor stores, post offices, buses and taxis. Within a day, unrest spread throughout Soweto. And in the following weeks it spread to townships throughout the country. For an incisive account of the 1976–77 Soweto uprising, see Hirschon, B. (1979). Year of fire, year of ash. London: Zed Press; and also Hartshorne, K. (1992). Crisis and challenge: Black education 1910–1990. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Written with an audience of school children in mind, a useful overview of the education struggle in South Africa is provided by Christie, P. (1985). The right to learn. Johannesburg: The Sached Trust. 8 A slightly ironic twist to events during the COSAS “week of action” (described in Section 3.12) was that the deal struck between the school’s Student Representative Council and the staff, whereby lessons would continue till 11 a.m., was largely in response to the growing resentment amongst many Yengeni High students that they should always be seen as taking the lead in student activities like this. 9 See

– Cameron, M. (1986). The introduction of Bantu education and the question of resistance: Cooperation, non-collaboration or defiance? Unpublished M.Phil., University of Cape Town, Cape Town. – Hyslop, J. (1987). Food, authority and politics: student riots in South African schools, 1945–1976. African Perspective, 1(3/4), 3–42.

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CHAPTER 3 – Lodge, T. (1984). The parents’ school boycott: Eastern Cape and East rand townships. In P. Kallaway (Ed.), Apartheid and education: The education of black South Africans. Johannesburg: Raven Press, pp. 265–295. 10 See Kruss G. (1988). People’s education: An examination of the concept. Bellville, Cape: Centre for Continuing Education [CACE], University of the Western Cape. 11 Cross, M. (1992). Resistance and transformation: Education, culture and reconstruction in South Africa. Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers. 12 Mokwena, S. (1992). Living on the wrong side of the law. In D. Everatt and E. Sisulu (Eds.), Black youth in crisis: Facing the future. Braamfontein: Sigma Press, pp. 30–51. 13 Gultig, J. and Hart, M. (1990). ‘The world is full of blood’: Youth, schooling and conflict in Pietermaritzburg, 1987–1989. Perspectives in Education, 11(2), 1–19. 14 In the heightened political rhetoric of the day, the aim of People’s Education was to build a “democratic, transformative people’s education as part of the ongoing struggle for people’s power”. For more, see:

– Muller, J. (1987). People’s education and the national education crisis committee. South African Review IV, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, pp. 18–32. – Sisulu, Z. (1986). People’s education for people’s power. Transformation, 1, 96–117. 15 This expression is taken from the title of Nelson Mandela’s now famous autobiography of the same name. 16 For a “taste” of the complexity of events at that time, the Appendix documents events over a six month period at a township school Jonathan was teaching at. It is taken from Clark, J. (1988). Massdemocracy or “strong-arm” democracy? Some aspects of inter-student conflict in a DET High school in the Western Cape. Unpublished B.Ed. research paper, University of Cape Town, Cape Town. 17 An insightful account of life in a township school is provided by De Villiers, E. (1990). Walking the tightrope: Recollections of a school teacher in Soweto. Parklands: Jonathan Ball. 18 Jonathan can personally recall one year in which he had just over six weeks’ “uninterrupted” instructional time available to teach the six months’ work of the Grade 12 chemistry syllabus. 19 Or, it could just as easily be taken as confirmation of a view expressed earlier in which it was suggested that there was a paucity of classroom-based research specifically relating to the situation in South Africa. 20 For instance, the number of school-going students increased from 3.5 million in 1976 to close on 12 million in 1996. Other indicators of the rapid expansion of the education system are:

– the number of schools increased from 18,000 in 1976 to over 27,000 in 1996 – the number of teachers grew from 145,000 to 375,000 in this period. Of the four-fold growth in African students between 1976 and 1996, the growth has been most marked in the secondary school population. In 1970 there were 106,945 students in secondary schools; this number increased to 318,568 in 1976; and had reached over 2.8 million by 1996 (Taylor and Vinjevold, 1999). 21 Hyslop (1988) also makes the point that although awareness of profound inequality in education was undoubtedly an important factor in student movements’ motivation, it does not explain their existence. For 20 years before 1976 there were no significant student rebellions against Bantu Education, he argues that this can be in part explained by the fact that the growing job market of the 1960s and early 1970s was less conducive to student frustration than the narrowing of opportunities of the subsequent period. He suggests that post-1976 saw a gradual restructuring of the job market in favour of skilled and semi-skilled labour – since 1976 the overall number of jobs available to African people more or less became stagnant. Hyslop uses this to argue that the crisis in the job market took place at exactly the period in which a major shift was taking place in the social position of black youth – the enormous expansion in the numbers of youth in the school system meant that more and more people were being educationally “prepared” for a job market which afforded fewer and fewer opportunities. As he points out, the tensions and pressure within the school system thus generated were part of the explanation of 1976, as he puts it: “. . . by squeezing larger numbers of older pupils in an under-resourced school system, the state itself generated the culture in which rebellion grew” (1988, p. 64).

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SCHOOL AND STAFF 22 In common with many other township secondary schools in the area, Yengeni High operates a timetable which runs on a nine-day cycle. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays there are six 50minute periods split into two sessions separated by a one-hour lunch-break. School on these days starts at 8.30 a.m. and ends at 2.30 p.m. On Wednesdays, periods after break are only 30 minutes long, so school closes at 1.30 p.m. and on Fridays periods are shortened to 45 minutes each. With no lunchbreak on Fridays, the school week ends at 1.00 p.m. No allocation is made on the timetable for administrative/procedural functions such as a school Assembly or a class teacher period. 23 By 2004, weekly instructional time (or “time in class”) had crept back up to just under 26 hours. 24 It was not unheard of to find schools running “temporary timetables” well into the second term. A lack of expertise amongst the staff coupled with a host of contextual constraints – in particular, the considerable pressure from the community to offer the widest possible range of subject groupings with what was always a limited number of staff, presented schools with immense logistic difficulties. 25 In South Africa, the situation is no different from that in other parts of the world where the textbook is the curriculum in most classrooms (Brickhouse and Bodner, 1992). A similar point is made by Talbert and McLaughlin (1993), who conclude that many teachers envisage their work to be fundamentally a matter of implementing texts. As they put it, the text has become, to a significant degree, the locus of control over the content of subject matter and pedagogy (p. 182). 26 For the purposes of this analysis, we have excluded from consideration the last day of the first term (Friday, 27/3), which is traditionally a shortened school day with no formal teaching scheduled to take place. 27 From the brief historical overview presented in Section 3.2, the reader can hopefully appreciate that the “education struggle” in South Africa has been (and continues to be) an extremely complicated affair. A specific area which defies simple analysis (particularly as it is played out on the ground) is the interplay between the different (and often competing) student organisations. In addition to the union-led (i.e. SADTU) teacher protests (9/6–15/6), students from two different organisations ran their own separate protest “actions”. COSAS, the ANC-aligned student movement which claims majority support among township students, organised one between 17/3–20/3. And PASO, the smaller, PACaligned student movement, organised their own protest on 7/5. While it was never really made clear what the specific focus of either protest was, both were called (as have been so many in the past) to draw attention to conditions in township schools, and in support of their teachers’ demands. Also, as in the past, irrespective of how many students chose to participate, schooling for everyone nonetheless ground to a halt. 28 These figures have been arrived at after a degree of subjective interpretation of the data. Take for instance the “cultural day” (held on 30/4). While this resulted in the loss of all formal tuition, seeing as Day 2 of the timetable was simply shifted to the following Monday, it is difficult to place a “value” on the specific number of science periods that were lost. Also, Thursday 21/5 (a Christian religious holiday marking Ascension day) was really no more than an “unofficial” school holiday. On three days when Nomzamo was sick (15/5, 26/5 and 27/5), Jonathan managed to pick up five of her periods. On a number of other occasions Nomzamo shifted periods around – for example, having lost out on period 1 with the 9E’s on 11/5, she organised with another teacher to take them in period 1 on Thursday (14/5) so that they could join her other three classes in writing the scheduled science test. During the SADTU “go slow” (9/6–12/6), periods were “saved” in 9D and 9F, the last one by intentionally forfeiting a period with the 9E’s – who by that stage were close to finishing the STAP programme. On the 15/6, Nomzamo gained two 30-minute periods with the 9F’s by taking them in periods 5 and 6 (in which she was now free because her Grade 10’s were writing June exams). Indeed, these (and other) examples serve to illustrate how a teacher like Nomzamo seeks, in response to the conditions under which she operates, to “juggle burning swords” (to use, not for the last time, Louden’s 1991, p. 168 expression), in her attempts to maximise the amount of instructional time she has available. 29 Following discussions amongst the staff (and with the backing of the SRC), the period register system was instigated in the first week of May. It was the duty of the SRC class representative to keep the weekly copy of the register and to ensure that the subject teacher filled it in before leaving class. From what was observed, in all four Grade 9 classes, the students were generally quite diligent in reminding Nomzamo to fill in the register and never shy to shout out who was absent from class. However, when the class representative was absent, the records tended to “go astray”! Here is how Nomzamo explained its purpose:

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CHAPTER 3 It’s the first time that it’s being used [at Yengeni High]. The aim of it is to have [some record]. You see, when kids fail at the end of the quarter, the parents would ask, ‘Why, or how, or what happened?’ So the school wants to have proof that the kids were bunking some of the lessons. Sometimes they are at school and they disappear somewhere along the line. So that they can produce that to the parents and show that, look your child may not be attending the subject, that’s why he/she is performing badly. That it could be used as a way of checking up on teachers’ attendance was according to Nomzamo, not considered. 30 Jansen (2004) refers to this as an example of a process of succumbing to external pressures in the name of accountability as “the politics of performance”. Jansen, J. (2004). Autonomy and accountability in the regulation of the teaching profession: A South African case study. Research Papers in Education, 19(1), 51–66. 31 The reader is referred to the account of events at Luhlaza High school in the Appendix. 32 As noted by Chisholm (1999), it was only towards the end of the 1980s that the actions of black teachers became militant on a large and collectively organised scale. For an account of teachers’ resistance during this time (and the rise of teacher unions), the reader is referred to: Chisholm, L. (1999). The democratization of schools and the politics of teachers’ work in South Africa. Compare, 29(2), 111–126. 33 While always reported upon in the popular press at the time, it does not seem as if any academic research has focused specifically on this aspect of school unrest. However, based once again on Jonathan’s own experiences of teaching in a school which lost its principal in this way, we would argue that in any school in which it occurred, it was a traumatic event which had a profound impact on school functioning. Not only at the time, but for months afterwards. At Jonathan’s school it was almost three years before a permanent replacement principal was appointed. It is worth noting that according to an official report (DET, 1991 cited in Chisholm, 1999), by the end of 1990, 1,991 principals and others in authority were “driven” away from their posts. 34 Because Nomzamo was responsible for organising and managing the science laboratory, she was not expected to also take on the administrative duties of a class teacher (such as report writing, register keeping, etc.). 35 This is well illustrated by the 2005 enrolment of graduate education students at the University of Cape Town. Of the 93 enrolled for the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), only two students are physical science majors (i.e. will qualify to teach science to the Matric level). 36 As Hargreaves (1993) points out, terms like collegiality and individualism are actually quite vague and imprecise and open to a range of meanings and interpretations. As he puts it: Such terms are in many respects used and understood less as accurate descriptions of types of practice, or policy, or even aspiration. Rather, the terms are mostly symbolic; motivating rhetorics in a mythical discourse of change and improvement. Here collaboration and collegiality have become powerful images of preferred aspiration; isolation and individualism equally powerful images of aversion. Individualism, isolation and privatism have therefore become preoccupations of and key targets for the educational reform movement. Their eradication, like the eradication of all heresy, has become a high priority. (p. 229) 37 Indeed, the power to make independent judgements, to exercise personal discretion, initiative and creativity through one’s work, lies at the heart of what Schön (1983) calls “professional action”, and as such individuality is closely linked for most teachers to a sense of competence (Hargreaves, 1994). 38 For a more extensive discussion on balkanisation, see chapter 10 in Hargreaves (1994); and Hargreaves, A. and Macmillan, R. (1995). The balkanization of teaching. In J.W. Little and L.S. Siskin (Eds.), Subjects in question. New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 125–140. 39 The curriculum is seen as being at the centre of balkanisation, because the division of learning into subjects creates categories of knowledge and different communities of teachers who teach them, identify with them and invest their careers in them too – see Goodson, I. (1983). Subjects for study: aspects of a social history of curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 15(4), 391–408.

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CHAPTER 4

THE ROLE OF STUDENTS AT A TIME OF INNOVATION AND CHANGE

Nomzamo: What’s inside a kettle? Students: (Calling out together) Water . . . 4.1. INTRODUCTION

Students provide the most salient and powerful context of teaching, for it is students’ needs as perceived by teachers, and the constraints and opportunities students present for instructional choices which shape teachers’ goals, conceptions of practice, and roles in a myriad of ways.1 Taking this into account, one might expect that the influence that students bring to bear would be a major focus of research, particularly at times of innovation and change. With some exceptions2 the opposite is true; leaving us in a position in which, as Michael Fullan (1991, p. 182) put it: “We hardly know anything about what students think about educational change because no-one ever asks them”. One cannot help but wonder why this is the case. Perhaps part of the problem is that there is an almost unspoken assumption in curriculum development throughout the world that students will automatically be the willing recipients of change.3 So while much has been written about the kind of roles and procedures in which students should engage to facilitate meaningful learning in science, what has not been explored is the impact, from the students’ perspective, of their changing role.4 As Fullan points out, this is potentially a problem, because by definition all innovations involve something new for students, and any innovation that requires new activities on the part of students will succeed or fail according to whether students actively participate in these activities. He goes on to note that: Critical to understanding educational change is the recognition that these changes in student and teachers must go together – that is, students themselves are also being asked to change their thinking and behaviour in the classroom. (Fullan, 1991, p. 189, our emphasis) Such were the experiences in Nomzamo’s classroom during the trialling exercise, where the STAP programme not only challenged Nomzamo to rethink the nature of her everyday classroom practice, but also called upon the students to cope with dramatically different ways of learning.

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Yet in the context of the developing world at least, it is not that surprising that we understand so little of the role which students play in the process of educational change. As noted in the introductory comments to Chapter 1, there remains a dearth of reported research on what actually goes on in and around classrooms; particularly of research which focuses on observing the realities of schooling at the chalkface. Even where studies have been undertaken, there has been a tendency to approach problems of change from a more technicist perspective which ignores the broader social context and its impact on schooling. Fortunately things are starting to change. It may well be that the growing interest in perspectives such as (social) constructivism and situated cognition will encourage an increasing number of science educators in developing countries to turn their attention to the ways in which cultural/traditional factors impact on teaching and learning in the science classroom. Also, it is becoming more readily accepted that functional-logistic factors (such as lack of resources, poorly trained teachers, etc.) alone cannot explain the continual failure of curriculum innovations in developing countries. Instead, it is now understood that innovations interact in complex ways with aspects of the social context in which they are applied. As Tabulawa (1997) puts it: . . . when teachers and students fail to adopt certain innovations we should not just concentrate on technical issues associated with the innovation delivery system. We must also analyse the proposed innovation in relation to the values and past experiences of those who we expect to adopt and/or implement the innovation. Where the values embedded in an innovation are incongruent with the values and past experiences of teachers and students . . . rejection might be inevitable. (p. 203) It is with such concerns in mind that this chapter is devoted to the reaction and behaviour of Yengeni High’s Grade 9 students, and a consideration of some of the ways in which they mediate Nomzamo’s introduction of the STAP programme into her classroom. Indeed, as the trialling exercise progressed and Nomzamo’s classroom and her students swam into sharper focus, one came to appreciate just how difficult a task this was for them, given that they too were being asked to change their practice and adapt to new ways of learning. Add into the mix the fact that her classes were filled with such large numbers of students who varied by degrees in both ability and motivation, and a complex picture begins to emerge. To illustrate this, we will now turn our attention to a number of inter-related aspects of student behaviour. For a start, while many students were seen to respond positively to the opportunities provided by the programme to engage in student-based group activities, throughout the trialling exercise Nomzamo struggled to get them to “speak out” in class. Even when they were encouraged to talk in their “primary language”,5 her attempts to get the students to participate more openly in activities like whole-class discussions were often unsuccessful. To make sense of this situation we believe that it is necessary to adopt a position which recognises that there is a deeply significant socio-cultural context 78

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to teaching and learning in township classrooms.6 While this manifests itself in many different ways, what we are particularly interested in trying to make sense of here is how students struggle to break free from entrenched “patterns of practice” – such as those which sees them accepting for themselves an essentially uncritical and unquestioning role as little more than passive “receivers” of knowledge. In exploring this and other issues, it is inevitable that we will come to consider the students’ schooling experiences, both past and present, outside of the science classroom – and in so doing touch upon issues which relate to the broader dynamics of student-teacher interactions. Here we will have to rely on the students’ own accounts of their experiences with other teachers. While mindful of the anecdotal nature of this data, it does seem to offer fairly convincing evidence that the students at Yengeni High are responding in ways which are similar to those observed in classrooms elsewhere on the continent. Secondly, and in an entirely related way, the fact that students have to learn through the medium of a second language (L2) will emerge as a factor that exerts a major (if not overriding) influence on many aspects of student-teacher interaction. Here we will consider examples of where the students’ inadequate L2 communicative competencies proved time and again to be a stumbling block in Nomzamo’s efforts to shift the focus in her classroom to allow for more active student engagement.7 Once again, we will argue strongly that an analysis of students’ L2 difficulties needs to be carefully grounded in a clear understanding of the role of context – specifically, students’ prior schooling experiences and the impact of existing language policies with respect to English-medium instruction. Before proceeding further, it is important to acknowledge that teaching and learning in science, specifically where instruction is through the medium of a second language, is an extremely complicated affair. And that in particular, language (be it medium of instruction or the students’ primary language) cannot be seen in isolation, it must be considered in relation to the culture in which it is located. This implies that an analysis of the language difficulties which L2 students experience when learning school science must be undertaken within a framework which acknowledges the complex web of linguistic and socio-linguistic factors at play. Furthermore on a broader level, we accept that language, culture and cognition are inextricably interwoven into complex dependency relationships that are interactive and interdependent in terms of mental function.8

4.2. ON LARGE CLASSES AND “THE DILEMMA OF NOT KNOWING”

It is worth recalling again just how many students Nomzamo has to teach – it is a sobering thought that with nearly 350 children in her six science classes she will often see more than 200 students on days when school attendance is high.9 Large, overcrowded classes are simply a fact of life at a township school like Yengeni High and, as suggested in Chapter 2, the constraints on practice imposed by these conditions have a major impact on student-teacher interactions in Nomzamo’s classroom. 79

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Perhaps one of the less obvious consequences of having to teach so many students is that it presents the teacher with the almost impossible task of trying to get to know her students by name: Jon: How long does it take you to get to know the Grade 9’s do you think? Nomzamo: Yho! [exclamation], it’s taking the whole year! Sometimes . . . I would know the faces – he should be in that class – but I won’t know the names. When you have to teach four Grade 9’s and a full Grade 11 class with about 50 something, and the Grade 12 class. I know the Grade 12’s. So . . . it’s almost impossible, maybe I’m stupid when it comes to names, but it’s quite difficult . . . This is a problem which is exacerbated in the junior classes, where a teacher will be meeting a large number of new students for the first time. How did Nomzamo see it influencing her relationship with her students? Jon: How does not knowing their names make you feel about the kids? Nomzamo: It gives me a sense of . . . distance from the kids . . . except for the few that you choose for various reasons, like with the projects. Like now, I had to pick a child for a Telkom project and now I know that child much better than the others. Jon: So, with the Grade 9’s it’s all just too much? Nomzamo: It’s just too much Jon. Also, unless you are a class teacher, then you know because you are going there [to the class’ home room] time and again. Jon: How do you think it affects your relationship with them? Nomzamo: If you know the kids better, it makes them . . . like if you know them by name they wouldn’t take chances like fooling around in class because they know that you would call them by name straight. So, it’s an advantage. Nomzamo’s immediate reaction to the question about the impact which naming (or as in her case, the lack thereof) has on her relationship with the students was in terms of its use in controlling classroom behaviour. In this respect she is no different from other teachers: naming (or “nominalisation” as it is sometimes referred to in the literature) is a typical feature of teacher-talk which is used in any classroom as a tool for behavioural control.10 Besides this, on a more constructive level a teacher’s use of naming can fulfil many other functions – it can certainly be used to facilitate student interaction and to draw students in as participants in classroom talk.11 Also, naming helps direct questions to specific students and insists upon a minimum level of participation in the class. A consequence of not knowing students’ names is that it also may lead towards more undirected questions being asked of the whole class, which may in turn result in and even reinforce choral chanting and one-word answers.12 Faced then with so many students, Nomzamo finds herself excluded from many of these uses of naming strategies. The impact is felt on an affective level as well – not knowing her students by name also limits her efforts to “reach out” to 80

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them and this is articulated in her comment about feeling a “sense of distance from the kids”. Taken at face value, this seems to indicate where Nomzamo experiences a sense of failure at being unable to adequately fulfil the pastoral duties which form part of her notion of professional self. Added to the accountability demands that she faces, in particular the pressure of producing good Matric results, not knowing her students by name may well contribute to a sense of guilt13 which Nomzamo experiences in her job: And in some cases you would hear from another teacher, someone who is teaching Biology, they would ask you, “How is this child doing in science?” and you don’t even know the child. And it’s only then that you go back to your list and you see how the child is doing, then you start making a “follow-up”. But if no one else bothered to ask you about him or her, then you don’t know him or her. Clearly, what can be thought of as her “dilemma14 of not-knowing” played a key role in shaping the nature of both the public and private interactions between Nomzamo and her students. And while some of them, by dint of fame or infamy, become known to their teachers and surfaced as such as individuals in their classes, it would seem that an enduring feature of student life at a school like Yengeni High is that many children, unmarked by their ability to perform academically with either distinction or disaster, remain to all intents and purposes anonymous members of their class. As Nomzamo put it: Ja . . . either they are known for being brilliant or active in class, or for being naughty – causing problems in class. And those who are quiet, they could be quiet and yet brilliant but you wouldn’t notice them. Until they write a test, and you start seeing . . . 89% and you start thinking, “Who is this?” You go back to class, you want to know, “Who is this?” (A bit later) You know the names from the class list, but you cannot put the face with the name. But when they are in class, you know the faces that come there with the 9C class. And you know the names on the paper, matching the names with the faces is something else! In such circumstances, one is faced at the most basic level with a profound disjuncture between the high rhetoric of student-centred learning (which is premised in no small part on a teacher being able to respond on an individual level to a learner’s needs) and the reality of a township classroom where many students are little more to their teacher than a name called out during the marking of the period register, a name against which a test mark is recorded, and a face swimming in and out of focus amidst the press of students who occupy each class.

4.3. THE ART OF HIDING AND “CURTAIN WALLS OF SILENCE”

How did the students respond to circumstances wherein they are but one amongst so many? The following accounts capture Jonathan’s emerging thoughts on the ways in which some students respond to Nomzamo’s teaching:

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[9C] As I listened to the flow of her talking, I was watching the class – virtually everyone was silent, sometimes looking down at their books, then glancing up at the board as Nomzamo wrote up and explained the calculation. Some students stared quietly into space – lost somewhere in their own thoughts. Nomzamo afterwards remarked how she had noticed that one kid was fast asleep - and this at 9.00 a.m. in the morning. I felt again a real sense just how much the students maintain the “silences” between themselves and the teacher. Reflecting on a class like this, it seems that many of the students, hovering as they do on the periphery of academic achievement, hardly bother to resort to even the most minor disruptive tactics to make their presence felt. If they wish to disengage, they do it by keeping quiet – “like snails withdrawing into their shells” is the image which springs to mind. Perhaps this explains why there is little overt resistance or open conflict between students and a teacher like Nomzamo. [9F] Nomzamo then went through the demonstration using the large galvanometer . . . As I watched the class I saw that quite a few students weren’t interested in looking at the demonstration, simply sat quietly wrapped up in their own thoughts, or worked silently at their English assignment or gazed somewhat vacantly at their books. I couldn’t help thinking that it was this whole thing again of not contesting the teacher’s authority when wishing to disengage – if you don’t draw attention to yourself by making a noise or being too conspicuous (i.e. try not to fall asleep!), the teacher will invariably leave you alone. [9D] Today I found myself watching the students in the 9D class. Once again I was struck by how many of them, particularly the boys at the back of the classroom, seemed to go to great lengths to avoid drawing attention to themselves. For instance, when Nomzamo was talking they were careful to avoid eye contact (although they may stare blankly at her); they generally kept fairly quiet with only the occasional aside or comment to a friend. Most of them seemed to be keeping their heads down (both literally and figuratively!) – they might stare emptily into space, but rarely out of the window because that might draw Nomzamo’s attention to them. I couldn’t help wondering how many of them were really listening to her. When they were asked to do something, either with a partner or in their group, most of them really struggled to get and stay “on task”. Yet even when they were “messing around” they seemed to do it in ways which wouldn’t invite their teacher’s attention (they rarely bothered students in other groups or became too noisy). On the one hand, I’m intrigued by their behaviour - which seemed to me to be a quite effective form of “passive resistance” – and on the other, I was fascinated once again by the lengths to which everybody (both teacher and students) seemed to go to avoid open conflict.

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Based on observations such as these, it appears as if many students became quite adept at wearing a “cloak of anonymity” and employing it to their own advantage – not only does it allow them to “hide” amongst their peers, thereby easing the pressure to perform or meet task goals such as homework and classwork exercises; but it can even be used to mask their absence from class (although in theory the period register puts a stop to this). Indeed, it would seem that what can be thought of as the “art of hiding” – an anonymous face amongst one’s fellow classmates – is a skill long-practiced and carefully nurtured by no small number of students in Nomzamo’s classes. At a time when a teacher is trying to encourage students to become more actively involved in classroom activities, and to shift the focus away from the chalkboard towards more self-directed learning, such behaviour clearly acts as a fundamental barrier which is difficult to break down. That the students were able to wear a “cloak of anonymity” in this way is undoubtedly made easier in large classes like those at Yengeni High where, with often more than 60 children crammed into a small classroom, a student finds it easy enough to hide. Yet on another level, one can argue that such behaviour also reflects the broader “rules of engagement” which govern student-teacher interactions in Nomzamo’s classroom. For instance, the fact (remarked on in the above accounts) that there appeared to be so little open conflict in her classroom, does not suggest that the students were always well behaved. The reader will recall incidents described in the last chapter where classes were difficult to control – though such behaviour was usually trigged by conditions in the school when teaching had all but ground to a halt, or in response to the class being left teacherless for one or more periods at a time. On the rare occasions when clashes between Nomzamo and her students were observed, they tended to be brief affairs and were concerned with procedural issues such as homework or classwork tasks (which students more often than not had failed to complete). During the trialling exercise there was no recorded incident in which a student was openly confrontational with her. Interestingly enough, if a small group of students was being rowdy, it was often their fellow classmates who called them to order.15 Behaviour like this could be construed as evidence that the students were exceptionally compliant and accepting of Nomzamo’s authority. While it certainly seems that Nomzamo had the “right” to demand their silence, whether or not this translated into their attention or commitment to work or greater involvement in classroom activities, was another matter altogether. Rather, it seems as if there was a tacit agreement between Nomzamo and her students which actually allowed them to disengage as long as this did not result in disruptive or unruly behaviour. At times this extended to students carrying on quietly with other work even as she was teaching. After the 9F lesson referred to in the above account, Nomzamo had the following to say about this issue: Jon: Do you notice it [the students doing their English work]? Nomzamo: I could have not seen some, but I remember the girls that side. Ja . . . I was telling them to stop it, but you know that kids can sometimes . . . so you don’t see it. 83

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Jon:

But was it a case of . . . as we say in English: you just letting “sleeping dogs lie” . . . ? Nomzamo: I felt I just had to continue, because I wanted to finish what I wanted to finish. And then if they decide to do . . . you know, sometimes you end up ignoring them really. Because you realise that if you follow it up, it will end up taking your time and your aim of going there is then . . . [Later] You don’t always pick up really. Because the moment you say, “Stop doing that!” . . . and then, they would pretend as if . . . and now you are busy again and maybe looking at this and that, they will just continue and write their things. Clearly such “trade offs” are part and parcel of the daily routine in any classroom and reflect in part the pragmatic response that a teacher brings to the dilemmas of practice. Nomzamo was clearly aware that some students were not paying attention. Yet in pursuit of her own instrumental goals for the lesson (by this stage of the term she was under increasing pressure to finish the STAP programme), she decided to “cut her losses” and continue teaching, choosing to focus on those in the class who were paying attention. It seems that those who were not listening understood that as long as they did not make a noise, Nomzamo would leave them alone to continue either working at their homework task, or sitting quietly by themselves. Such is the negotiated order in Nomzamo’s classroom.16 Nomzamo’s classroom can be conceptualised then as being like a stage hung with curtain walls of silence behind which the students can conveniently withdraw. Thought of as such, one can appreciate just how difficult it was to persuade students to abandon these silences, to come out of the shadows (so to speak) and to become more directly involved in classroom activities. As we shall see, while this is closely tied to issues of language (i.e., the students’ discomfort in communicating in English), even when Nomzamo actively encouraged them to talk in their primary language some students clung stubbornly to their roles as anonymous, non-participatory members of their class and resisted Nomzamo’s attempts to get them involved. The notion of “script”17 offers a useful tool for making sense of certain aspects of some students’ response to the STAP programme. Yengeni High is a school marked by low expectations and an acceptance of minimal achievements by students. Through years of failure, low-achieving students in such contexts are conditioned to “discourses of legitimation”, or justificatory scripts – that say they are lazy, never listen in class, hopeless at schoolwork, and so on. If a teacher attempts to replace these scripts with ones for, say, “higher achievement” she is likely to evoke derision rather than mutuality.18 To say that after all they [the students] have it in them to achieve, is to upset all those carefully natured rhetorics. It also acts to deny and show up as senseless all their previous years of failure. Even in the face of the encouraging teacher, it is easier to maintain the script for incompetence or hostility than it is to rewrite the biography. (Davies, 1984, p. 123) 84

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Unlike the British working class girls with whom Lynn Davies worked, it is highly unlikely that Nomzamo’s students would ever dream of responding so openly. Yet instead of derision, perhaps it is silence that is their shield. But at a more fundamental level perhaps their situation is the same – that of students bound by scripts of non-participation and failure. Given the students’ previous and ongoing experiences of schooling, it is hard to be judgemental in this regard. Clearly one of the greatest challenges facing an instructional programme in science (or any other subject for that matter) is to find ways of convincing students that they do not have to be bound by these justificatory scripts. If nothing else, the concern raised at the beginning of the chapter (about students being the willing recipients of change) reminds one of the complexity of the issues involved, not least of which is a concern for the nature of that which is being taught. When all is said and done, one cannot make the assumption that students will necessarily find STAP’s material either that interesting or stimulating. This is an issue that will be raised later in this chapter, when we look more closely at those rare occasions when a topic in the STAP programme was actually able to spark discussion and more lively debate.

4.4. ON PASSIVE STUDENTS AND NOT SPEAKING OUT IN CLASS

A measure of the struggle which students seemed to have with adapting to the more “open” environment Nomzamo was trying to create in her classroom during the STAP trial, lies in the fact that during the course of the more than 70 lessons that were observed, it was only on rare occasions that students asked unsolicited questions in class.19 When student-initiated questions were forthcoming, they tended to be procedural in nature – such as requests for clarification of instructions during group exercises, homework or other classwork activities. Quite tellingly, students would often beckon Nomzamo over to them rather than ask a question in front of the whole class. Nomzamo made sense of this lack of student questioning in the following way: Nomzamo: I think it is pure peer pressure . . . there is a thing of their not wanting to talk because they don’t want to appear stupid. Ummm . . . sometimes, maybe at this time of the year they are a little bit [shy] of one another and as the . . . (indistinct – year goes on?) and they will gain confidence in you as a teacher, and they are sure that you can answer their mistakes. Jon: I’m interested by the extent to which, in this context [at Yengeni High] this thing of students not answering is because of peer pressure or whether . . . or whether it’s become the accepted way of explaining it and kids use it as a smoke screen in a way. I mean . . . at OakRidge High, there the problem is how do you get the kids to stop calling out and talking out aloud. Why is it that those kids talk aloud and talk out, and why is it that kids here don’t? 85

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Nomzamo: I think also it’s the way they have been taught from primary [school], they are told to maintain order and silence, discipline is associated with silence, the quieter the classroom . . . Jon: You are not encouraged to talk? Nomzamo: Exactly. When it comes to a lesson where they are expected to talk they are surprised at this freedom. And so much that in some cases they will definitely overdo it because they are not used to the freedom. Or sometimes they will not change over at all to the new situation that they are put into; they will stick to the old [way]. In turn the students had this to say regarding their shyness about asking questions in class: Asanda:

Jon: Asanda: Moses:

Jon: Students:

Because other students, when you stand up and make a mistake when you are talking, they are going to laugh at you. And you feel embarrassed . . . Has that always been the case? Is that your experience from when you were at primary school? Yes. I think the students are not used to speak English. They are afraid to speak English to the others; they think that they will make mistakes and being laughed by the other students. But even if you are asked [in Xhosa], and you are told that you can answer in Xhosa, you still don’t . . . Mmmm . . . yes, we still don’t . . .

(Later – turning to Luleka) Jon: Luleka:

Asanda:

Jon: Asanda:

So you don’t think you are shy to ask questions? Sometimes I have questions, but I’m thinking first: is the question that I’m going to ask – are they going to . . . maybe the others, the rest of the class, they understand and when you raise that question they say, “Yho! . . . we know that question, haven’t you listened? Then I ask myself, “What will they say? They will say keep quiet! And I’ll say, okay I’ll ask from my friend”. I do the same thing as Luleka, but my problem is . . . I dunno why, but I am afraid of asking questions to a teacher. Even if, like I . . . know her [the teacher that is], I’m afraid. I dunno why . . . Why do you think that is? What happened in primary school? Do have a memory of a teacher who encouraged you to ask questions? (Emphatically) No. If they talked, you must have listened, or you won’t get another chance to ask.

During the interviews, both Asanda and Luleka came across as articulate students who participated willingly when given the opportunity to engage in an informal discussion. Luleka in particular emerged as having a strong, outgoing personality. Significantly enough, both students’ command of English was (relative to many of their classmates) remarkably good and as the above extract from the interview 86

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reveals, they were perfectly able to express their thoughts and opinions with confidence. Contrast this though with their behaviour back in the classroom, where, in common with many of their fellow students, both displayed an extreme reluctance to speak out. Both students justify their unwillingness, or what can be thought of as almost an inability to speak out in front of the whole class, in terms of a fear of being embarrassed in front of their peers. Nomzamo places the same interpretation on their silence. And while Moses’ earlier comment about the constraints imposed by having to talk out in English is to some extent valid, the students did agree that even when encouraged to speak in their primary language, they still tend to remain silent. Asanda’s reply to the question concerning what happened when he was at primary school seems to suggest that students’ present-day behaviour of not asking questions is firmly rooted in the way they had been taught in earlier years. As he put it, “No. If they talked, you must have listened, or you won’t get another chance to ask.” Nomzamo offered a similar explanation: “. . . from primary [school] they are told to maintain order and silence”. It seems reasonable to argue then, that it was at primary school that students were socialised into accepting that it was not their place to ask questions in class but to listen attentively, without interruption, to the teacher. Unfortunately, it appears that this behaviour continues to be reinforced by their experiences to this day. Here, Phelo and Luleka recount what happens when they approach teachers for help: Phelo:

Luleka:

And another teacher, even if you don’t understand something and you go to her and you tell her that you don’t understand. She’s arguing with me, she doesn’t want to explain to you. She says that she has already explained it, and she says, “I’ve already told you that . . . ”. And this other one, especially if you don’t understand the first time, and when you asked again, she’ll say, “Why weren’t you listening before?”

One of the student teachers, reflecting on his experiences of having observed student-teacher interactions in a number of different classrooms, had this to say: Nceba:

Another thing, what I’ve like [seen] . . . with Yengeni High, what I’ve experienced that, even these students, like the teachers they don’t encourage that the students should ask questions. Like in class, I went there just to teach one class of - - - - -, the teacher was not around so they said to me I should go there and give them this work. Afterwards, after the class they came to me, please you should come more often, we understand you, you know you are the kind of a person is easier to . . . to communicate with them with than their teacher.

This lack of communication between students and a teacher seems to reach quite extreme proportions, as in the following description of one of the 9E teachers: Jon:

How do the rest of you feel about - - - - -? 87

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Students: Jon: Asanda:

I hate it. It’s boring. Why is it boring? Because of the notes, the teacher that teaches - - - - -. You see, if he writes the notes and he comes tomorrow, he’ll write the notes [again] and then only on Friday he’ll explain a little of all the notes that he wrote and that is . . . not good! See, we are gonna hate the subject because of the teacher, who doesn’t quite explain the notes.

As Asanda describes it, here is a teacher who does little more than come to class and spend the lesson writing up chalkboard summaries which the students are then expected to copy into their classwork books. He repeats this practice each day until the last lesson of the week, at which point it seems that the teacher actually bothers to talk through the chalkboard notes that the students have so diligently copied down. Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration on Asanda’s part (although none of the other students contradicted him), here we have students who somewhat ironically enough, having long grown accustomed to “chalk and talk”, are now having to cope with what appears to be a fairly extreme case of “chalk and no-talk”. Furthermore, the lack of individual attention which is an inevitable consequence of large-class teaching, is exacerbated by the tendency of teachers to direct questions at the whole class rather than at individual students. Here again the students are quite emphatic in summing up their experience of the situation: Jon: All: Jon: Luleka: Jon: Asanda: Jon: Asanda: Jon: Asanda:

Am I right in saying that it isn’t often that a teacher asks a student a question; often the teacher asks the question to the class. Am I right? Yes. Hold on, are you sure? Isn’t there a teacher who says, “Luleka, what’s the answer to this [question]?” No. (Turning to Asanda) Has anybody ever asked you a question this year? No. The whole year? The whole year. In any subject? If I answer a question, then that time I raise my own hand [i.e. he had initiated the question in the first place].

Although it would be unwise to generalise from what amounts to anecdotal evidence of classroom practice, what it does seem to indicate is the extent to which the instructional relationships between students and some of their teachers at Yengeni High are defined in quite restricted terms. Based on these accounts, some teachers clearly fail to create a classroom environment in which students are encouraged to speak out, to either query or question what they are being taught. Indeed, at its worst, this would seem to amount to conventional transmission teaching of the narrowest possible kind – wherein the teacher is willing to do little more than engage in a single “transmission” of the content of the lesson. 88

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Coupled to this, one other significant feature of student talk worth recounting is the way students reply to the question, “Do you understand?” with their (often chanted) reply, “Yes teacher, we understand!”: Jon:

Ja, you ask them if they understand and they say, “Yes, miss!” Why are they saying that? Nomzamo: So that you don’t . . . you don’t. Because [if] they say, “No”, and you start asking, “What is it that you don’t understand?” – you are actually forcing them to speak. So [they do it] in order to just shut you off, [they say] “Yes, we understand”, and they know you will move on. In fact that’s not the best question to ask (laughs) . . . rather test their understanding by asking them a different question. But you find that you’ve already said it and they say yes anyway and yet they don’t understand . . . Nomzamo is perfectly aware that the students are using this tactic as a “blocking strategy” to avoid her probing their level of understanding any further. That they choose to respond in this way even when they clearly do not understand is, we believe, a “learned response” from their earlier experiences (particularly in primary school) where they learnt from bitter experience to use it as a defence mechanism to avoid incurring the wrath of a teacher who might become angry and then punish them for their apparent lack of comprehension. Here we would like to strongly argue that some students’ experiences at primary school, where they were exposed to excessive levels of corporal punishment, have had a profound impact on shaping the way they relate to teachers to this day.20 Asanda may well be a case in point – as he recalls some of his more unpleasant memories of primary schooling it is no surprise that he is so quiet in class today: I must try a way to do all my stuff and be quiet, like I’m in jail. Otherwise . . . I’m going to get a hiding. In considering these issues – student passivity, lack of questioning, fear of talking out in class etc. – one is left wondering at the extent to which this behaviour is underpinned by a socio-cultural dimension. At this stage it would be instructive then to turn to the research literature both local and international (in particular from elsewhere on the continent).

4.5. ON PASSIVE BEHAVIOUR AND STUDENT QUESTIONING (OR A LACK THEREOF . . . )

In reporting on the findings of the Threshold Project21 in South Africa, Macdonald (1990b) notes that the unsolicited contribution of the child, which is one of the characteristic patterns of interaction in the Western primary classroom, is conspicuous by its absence from all the classrooms they observed in black schools. Similar passive behaviour amongst black children has been noted by other researchers.22 In particular, the observation that students do not readily ask questions crops up time and again in reports on classroom-based research. Indeed, 89

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a lack of questions was the most conspicuous feature of student-talk reported by Diamondidis (1996) during her research into language use in science and mathematics classes in urban and rural senior primary schools – in only one out of the 57 classes observed did a student ask a question. A similar pattern is reported from an analysis of questioning patterns in science lessons in Kenyan primary classrooms. Cleghorn (1992) recounts how teachers’ calls to the whole class to pose questions were met with silence on all observed occasions, and that it was extremely rare for students to ever ask their teacher for clarification. Ogunniyi’s (1983) study of laboratory activities in Nigeria revealed a similar pattern to that which Jonathan observed in Nomzamo’s classroom – that student questions were rarely concerned with anything other than procedural matters. Closer to home, this lack of student-initiated clarification was noted in Botswanian classrooms by Rowell and Prophet (1990). Why are students in these contexts so reluctant to speak out in class? In a recent case study undertaken by Akatugba and Wallace (1999), Nigerian students explained that their discomfort at asking questions in class was in part due to their not wishing to appear disrespectful of their teachers. In addition to admitting extreme shyness, students also claimed that their upbringing did not encourage them to be inquisitive; when one of their classmates asked questions and engaged his teachers in dialogue, he was subjected to their ridicule and was scorned as being an abnormal student. Interestingly enough, they were capable of recognising the value of his behaviour – “I can see that Ben is better, something like that, ja, he is better because he is free” as one student put it, but this was explained away by the fact that he had been born and raised in a Western country where children are encouraged to ask questions and communicate freely with others.23 While such behaviour was not observed at any stage during the fieldwork amongst Nomzamo’s students, this does not mean that it was not happening at Yengeni High. As the student teachers put it: Nceba:

Jon: Nceba: Frank: Nceba:

And another thing, the students in class, when someone is asking a question, they say, “Hayi, hayi, hayi [No, no, no] . . . it’s you always, always . . . ” Why do you think they do that? Maybe it’s because of [students’ thinking], “Why does he want to be seen [i.e. stand out] that he is always in class?” Someone will be saying, maybe he’s looking for attention. Ja, ja . . .

Here the children are deriding one of their classmates whose tendency to ask questions marks him as a “somebody” (to use the local colloquial expression) who wants “to be seen” – who is “looking for attention” as Frank puts it. We would argue, that as with the Nigerian students, such behaviour is taken then to be in conflict with the cultural expectations of what students ought to be doing in their role as learners in the classroom, in particular, that it is not appropriate for an individual to “stand out” in class. Here we would seem to have an example of where there is a difference between the highly individualistic behaviour valued 90

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in Western society, and the more collective concept of self which is favoured in Africa.24 Methodologies which seek to encourage students’ active verbal participation may cause a severe loss of “face”, particularly when mistakes are made in the presence of one’s peers. As revealed in the extracts from the student interviews, Nomzamo’s students gave the fear of appearing foolish in front of their classmates as a major reason for why they are unwilling to ask questions in class. Research from elsewhere in Africa has also emphasized that children come to school with social norms that encourage silence and deference to the teacher’s authority.25 For example, Shumba (1999) points out that in Shona culture (in Zimbabwe) tradition does not encourage questioning of adults by children, because such behaviour is regarded as disrespectful, and children who are inquisitive are often chided for being too clever. Based on his experiences in Botswana, Alverson (1978) believes that the values instilled in the home are often in fundamental disagreement with the spirit of inquiry and critical questioning valued by school science.26 In various non-Western contexts researchers have reached the same conclusion.27 Commenting on the situation in Samoa, Moli (1991) has this to say: The teacher represents the adult and ‘know all’ passing on knowledge to the students, while the students remain passive and very much dependent on the teacher . . . to teach the children to be critical thinkers and to ask questions in an inquiry approach is certainly opposing the conforming aspects of the culture. (Cited in McKinley et al., 1992, pp. 583–584) In his description of authoritarianism as a predictor of socio-cultural influences on the teaching and learning of science in Nigeria, Jegede (1994) suggests that authoritarianism is transferred into the classroom in ways which ensure that the science teacher is seen as an elder who cannot be challenged. This in turn ensures that the locus of control and authoritative knowledge lies with adults.28 Buseri (1987) adopts a similar position and speaks of a “culturally imbibed characteristic” whereby students are too much in awe (as he puts it) to ask questions and teachers fail to encourage them to do so. In the context of Botswana, Tabulawa (1997) argues that the authoritarianism inherent in traditional Tswana society provides a conducive environment in which teacher-centred pedagogies can flourish. Where do the roots of this behaviour lie? Clearly there is no single indigenous form of education in Africa. While societies, differing from each other as they do, have developed different systems of education to convey their own particular knowledge and skills, one can however generalise about the philosophical and sociological foundations of indigenous forms of education. An African world view tends to define people in terms of the social context to which they belong, and although African thought also recognises the uniqueness of the individual, there is a strong tendency to situate a person’s individuality and freedom within the overall social, cultural and historical context of the community or society.29 91

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Indigenous education systems, while varying from one society to another, had strikingly similar goals – with an instrumental goal like competitiveness, being subsumed under the other normative and expressive goals.30 Erny (1981) suggests that traditional education was based on three steps – observation, initiation and explanation. The first two steps were so much insisted upon by traditional African education that a child who asked too many questions was frowned upon. And while adults would willingly give explanations in response to children’s questions, they refrain from giving unsolicited explanations. In a similar vein, in her indigenous theory of childhood Craig (1985) identified “example and demonstration” as the main teaching methods, and “observation and imitation” as the main modes of learning. Macdonald (1990b) argues that these find expression in present day modes of teaching and learning in schools, and makes what we believe is the valid point that example and demonstration (for instance) are not sufficient mediators for Western decontextualised learning. Furthermore, the virtual absence of probing questions by the teacher and of information-seeking questions by children, as reported by Craig, points to the child’s internalisation of a passive mode of problem-solving. In recent research, the persistence of prescriptive teacher-dominated classroom practices in African classrooms has been explained in terms of a cultural “tradition” of authoritarianism.31 A consequence of such practices has been that it allows for little in the way of meaningful teacher-student interaction or collaborative inquiry into things being learnt.32 Snyder et al. (1992) sum up the situation as follows: Instead of order in the classroom, there’s routine; instead of intellectual skill development, there’s memorisation; instead of involvement in learning, there’s teacher dominance. (p. 229) A feature of “teacher talk” which has been widely reported upon is the extent to which teacher-initiated questions are usually kept at a low level of complexity and rarely require students to use higher-order skills.33 As Macdonald (1990b) noted, teachers did not often ask questions that required novel, problem-solving strategies from the children; rather, they were intent on checking that children had attended to what they had been saying. The tendency found in much teaching to reject student answers which, although entirely appropriate, do not correspond to a particular expected “right answer”, also encourages students to internalise their own role as learners as one of uncritical consumption34; not only that, but there is almost no discussion about why, for example, wrong ideas are incorrect.35 While we are by no means suggesting that there is anything peculiarly African about such patterns of routinised teacher-centred instruction,36 Nomzamo’s students’ recollections of their previous (and present) schooling experiences do seem to point towards an entrenched teaching and learning tradition in township schools that seems unsupportive of any significant level of active student participation and inquiry. If this is the case, then we would do well to note carefully King’s (1989) cautionary comment: 92

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. . . it could probably be argued from several different cultural contexts that once a teaching and learning style has become embedded in a society, it has a resilience that is almost independent of changes in government, major curricular reforms or even changes in teacher training. (p. 45) At this point, it is worth reflecting briefly on what might be best conceptualised as a “glue” which binds both teachers and students to teacher-centred rote learning – namely the strongly utilitarian view of schooling which they both hold. In this regard, Tabulawa (1997) found that Botswana students do not perceive learning by rote to be a burden, but rather as an asset because it is directly related to their utilitarian view of schooling. Based on her observations in the same country, Davies (1988) suggests that there is extraordinary congruence in the aims of teachers and students which was almost exclusively centred on performance in exams37 – with a result that classrooms which she visited were quiet, ordered places, with little challenge to the choice of work. As she puts it: Total compliance sounds unnerving, but such lessons are to an observer not fearful nor unhappy; they merely exhibit a strong ‘rule frame’ . . . (p. 300) Rowell (1995) describes how a view of knowledge as a commodity (with learning as a “banking” of that commodity) was so firmly established in the pedagogic tradition of Namibian classrooms that it poses a serious challenge to the implementation of more student-centred pedagogy.38 Millar’s (1984) account of student teachers’ experiences in rural South African schools, illustrates both the potential resilience of such “rule frames” to change and the value which students place on a utilitarian view of schooling. Teachers’ attempts to stimulate and organise more inquiry-oriented student work came up against expectations that judged a teacher’s value primarily by his or her ability to “transmit” the syllabus simply and directly. As Millar rather wryly put it, the school students could be very “active” indeed in defence of their “passivity”. This in turn raises numerous other issues, not least the central role which certification plays in schooling in developing countries.39 If we return now to the situation in Nomzamo’s classroom, how does she make sense of the “cultural” dimension of teaching and learning just outlined? We got to talk about the issue during a discussion in which we were comparing the difference in behaviour between the OakRidge High students and her own: Nomzamo: Yes, it has to do with the cultural . . . and even challenging things – we don’t, we don’t challenge things. You have to take things as . . . you cannot really challenge your parents about something. You just have to take it, and you can’t go beyond and start asking whys and so on, you just take it as it comes. Jon: So, do you think that happens with you as a teacher, the kids might even be sitting there thinking, “Hey, that’s not right, miss has made a mistake . . . ” Nomzamo: But they cannot really . . . it’s only very, very rare that. And that is why in fact when our kids go to multiracial schools; we do have 93

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problems as parents. Particularly when they start at an early age, like as what is happening with Bodule [her son]. In fact, African people end up interpreting it as . . . kids who go to multiracial schools are actually rude. Why are they seen as being rude? Because they challenge things, which is not part of our culture. And it becomes the whole cultural shock thing, and Bodule is very direct with me. At times I ask myself, “My goodness!” Jon: You think that’s coming from school? Nomzamo: Ja, it’s definitely coming from school, it’s definitely coming from school. He’s very direct and he says his mind. No matter how you feel afterwards (she laughs). He doesn’t think as to how will his mother feel when I say this. He just says, he talks his mind and he’s happy afterwards because he’s said what he wanted to say. Which was not the case with us, you wouldn’t just say anything to your mother and people interpret it differently as being rude . . . Nomzamo’s experiences with her own son reveal the nature of the tensions caused by the diverse expectations of home and school. At his multiracial school outside the township, seven-year-old Bodule has been encouraged to speak out, to challenge things. But when he comes home and seeks to interact with his parents in a similar manner, his behaviour is deemed unacceptable within the boundaries of traditional child-adult relationships. In this respect, Nomzamo’s experience is not unique; a Tongan woman teacher in a non-Western context far removed from Yengeni High has a very similar thing to say: My own daughter, who is thirteen, always has something to say about this or that and even talks back to my husband. Of course I know that children are encouraged to speak up at school but sometimes they go too far and practice this type of questioning at home. (Thaman, 1987, p. 277)

4.6. A “DOUBLE BIND”

A useful way to conceptualise the existing patterns of (both teaching and learning) practice at Yengeni High is to see it as a kind of “double bind” which mediates against more open student engagement in the classroom. At the risk of some oversimplification, this concept can be expanded upon as follows: On the one hand, African students come to secondary school with social norms that encourage silence and deference to the “teacher-as-adult”. These social norms have been reinforced and strengthened by the way they were taught at primary school. So much so that they have been effectively socialised into accepting a passive role as receivers of “knowledge”, which is to be handed down without question from the teacher. On the other hand, teachers also struggle to encourage students to play a more active role in class, as in encouraging open-ended questioning and inquiry. This is in part because they, too, have been socialised through both their own experiences of schooling and prevailing social norms, 94

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into accepting an essentially authoritarian role as “providers” of knowledge. The “glue” which binds the two positions is the utilitarian view of schooling shared by both students and teachers alike. And lest it is forgotten, Nomzamo is but one amongst up to six teachers with whom the students interact on a daily basis. Students never get to spend more than one period a day in the science classroom. The rest of their time is spent locked into normal patterns of practice which, based on the students’ accounts referenced earlier, tend to be dominated by standard “chalk and talk” teaching; so any shifts experienced in teaching and learning in science remain unsupported in other classes. In effect, the “double bind” snaps closed as soon as the students put away their STAP books and the next teacher enters their class.40 This lack of consistency is one consequence of, and potential challenge to, an individual teacher’s attempts to bring innovation into her classroom. To reiterate, the argument presented here is that students at Yengeni High have been socialised over their years of schooling into accepting, for themselves, an essentially passive role as learners. Based on the students’ own recollections, it appears as if they have rarely been expected or encouraged to share their own ideas or ask questions of their teachers – and this continues to be their experience to this day. Bound then by scripts of non-participation and failure, students struggle to “talk out” in class, and indeed, many of them employ silence as a shield to avoid becoming more actively involved in classroom interactions. We are keenly aware that adopting a “cultural perspective” is fraught with considerable difficulty. Not only because on a theoretical level it is such a highly contested terrain, but also because as South Africans living in the shadow of our apartheid past, we find issues relating to culture (and ethnicity) difficult to confront and even harder to bring into focus. Because of this, it is important to acknowledge that the analysis presented here is both tentative and incomplete; however, it is offered in an attempt to stimulate more open debate about issues that are clearly important for developing an understanding of the dynamics of classroom interactions in a township context. Before leaving this point, there is one final comment we want to make concerning the way we have portrayed Nomzamo’s students’ response to authority. In the previous chapter it was suggested that conventional student-teacher relations were effectively overturned during the “struggle years” and students (to put it somewhat crudely) became “a law unto themselves”, to such an extent that in some schools they were instrumental in chasing principals from their posts. Yet here, in Chapter 4, a strong claim is made for student passivity as being the “default setting” (as it were) of their behaviour. Is this a contradiction? We think not. For however puzzling it might be, we believe it is precisely this mix of power and powerlessness (which characterises students’ and teachers’ dealings with each other), that epitomises just how complex a set of dynamics is at play in a township classroom. African children may well have been socialised from an early age to be obedient and conform, and this is what they do most of the time. Yet they have also learnt the power of political action and this is something 95

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that lingers in classrooms to this day: Nolisapho will, when the mood takes her, go and call her errant maths teacher, who will, if the mood takes her, come to class. In Nomzamo’s case, it is clear that many of her students like and respect her for being the hard-working and dedicated teacher she is, and this is reflected in their behaviour towards her. However, as in any classroom, there are limits to what both parties can expect from each other, and here the negotiated order between Nomzamo and her students is, as we have seen, anything but straightforward. Yet for all that, even though Nomzamo struggled throughout the trialling exercise to encourage students to share their thoughts and opinions and generally participate more fully in the classroom, on a number of occasions (all too few it seemed at the time) an exercise in the STAP programme triggered a larger number of students to “talk out” and for an all too brief interlude it truly seemed that the students’ voice was being heard in the classroom. Given the strong claims being presented here for student passivity, the fact that some exercises were able to bring about such a marked shift in the dynamics of classroom interaction bears closer examination.

4.7. ON CRACKLES AND SPARKS

Towards the end of the STAP programme students are encouraged to explore the ways modern science and traditional beliefs41 offer different explanatory frameworks for making sense of the phenomenon of lightning. In an exercise called “Lightning – Sangoma’s medicine42 or a part of nature?”, students were asked to go and gather as much information as possible about people in their community’s traditional beliefs concerning lightning. In each class some students volunteered to go and gather information from a neighbourhood sangoma (herbalist). The whole-class discussions in which students reported back on their findings were particularly interesting, and are worth considering from the three different perspectives available to us (Nomzamo, researcher and the students). Starting first with Nomzamo, here are some of the things she had to say about her experiences: Having the discussion on lightning gave students the opportunity to do research, report back to their fellow students and draw their own conclusions. To me this seemed to be in line with what OBE (outcomes-based education) is all about. If students get more opportunities of this kind, they will get used to handling discussions/debates. My students were not used to this, so they all wanted to talk at the same time and did not want to give each other a chance. I understand fully why they are so noisy. Suddenly they had a chance to speak about their own beliefs in a science lesson, and the two are usually viewed as “clashing bodies of knowledge”. Some students had done their research so well that they wanted to be the first to say things. The whole atmosphere in the classroom changed. Even students, who hardly spoke in the class before, now had a lot to say. Some were laughing at each other’s findings. 96

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But the main thing is that students were given an opportunity to be themselves (Africans) – no matter how educated/learned one can be, if one grows up in a home where cultural/traditional beliefs are respected, one will always have those beliefs deep down in one’s heart. Traditional beliefs were given the same status as science, seeing as it was also mentioned in class that even scientists have conflicting ideas as to what causes the build-up in charge in lightning. The same pattern was repeated in each of the four classes - the students were clearly very excited and unusually rowdy; they continuously interrupted each other, and at times even shouted each other down. For a change, Nomzamo found herself in the unusual situation of having to divert a lot of her attention into actually controlling the class. Watching and observing each lively discussion unfold it certainly appeared that for a brief interlude (of one or two lessons) the “curtain walls of silence” were falling, and many of the expectations of the STAP programme were being realised – the students were actively engaging in the lesson and the teacher was able to stand back and play much more of a facilitating role. This sense of optimism is captured in one of Jonathan’s accounts of a lesson: During the course of the lesson, it struck me how some students, who normally have very little (if anything) to say, spoke out and contributed to the discussion. The lesson unfolded in ways which are not common at the school. For a change there weren’t going to be any “right” and “wrong” answers; it certainly wasn’t going to be dominated by the teacher’s ideas, and the most critical thing of all – one sensed that the students were given the chance to talk about something which genuinely interested them! I guess it was because the lesson was about them, about them as people immersed in a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Watching the kids, it really did seem as if many (more) of them were going “minds-on” during the lesson. Even with the buzz of private conversations going on, many seemed to be keeping half an ear on the class discussion. Every now and again, they would break off their own talking to shout out or “heckle” what another student was saying. This was by far the most interesting STAP lesson to date! So, how did the students see this experience? Jon:

When you think back on that lesson about lightning, what do you remember about that lesson? Luleka: No, it wasn’t a silent lesson – everybody was talking. Nolisapho: Because everybody was talking Xhosa. Moses: Everybody was talking about their own cultures. Jon: Did you enjoy it? All: Yes! Jon: Why? Moses: Because in science, it was the first time we see talking about witches and sangomas and that things. Nolisapho: And I learned a lot of things about witches and why there is lightning. 97

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Asanda:

I enjoyed the topic because I also went to the sangoma, and she told me about some cultural things about where the lightning comes from. Nolisapho: I think it was my best lesson in the STAP book, my best lesson! Jon: Do you ever get to talk about stuff like that in other subjects? All: No! Moses: It was the first time . . . Asanda: Ever! Jon: Why do you think it was that students weren’t afraid to say what they thought? You’ve said before that one of the reasons why you keep quiet in class is because you are afraid that your friends will laugh at you if you say the wrong thing. Now people weren’t scared to talk during the lightning discussion, why not? Nolisapho: I think because they were saying in Xhosa (Phelo/Luleka: “Ja!”) and so Mrs. Lekota [Nomzamo] was translating it into the English. That is why they were feeling free. Jon: Okay, but you seem to be contradicting yourself because you did agree last time with me that even when you were allowed to speak in Xhosa – you still don’t feel free to speak out in science. Asanda: Maybe it’s because of the . . . topic. ’Cos it’s kind of like, similar [familiar] to us – witchdoctors and . . . Nolisapho: I think what happened about the lightning lesson, that students in class were taking the lesson as a joke; I think that is why they were feeling free to talk. Phelo: It is just because these things – that we were talking about happened at their [the students] home. As has been noted before, being able to express themselves in mother tongue – “feeling free” as Nolisapho put it, helped ease anxiety and to some extent encouraged them to speak out; however, it goes deeper than this. For a start, there is no doubt (as suggested by both Asanda and Phelo) that students felt freer to venture an opinion about something which is located in their everyday experiences. And holding such a discussion in science also served to value students’ traditional beliefs in a way which was a unique experience for most of them – clearly, these students are speaking for many others when they said it was the first time that they had ever had the opportunity to talk about such things in the school classroom. In this respect, the value of celebrating the students’ traditional culture in this way should not be underestimated. The other activity in the programme that prompted the students to noticeably “open up” in class is also worth briefly commenting on. This was an introductory exercise where Nomzamo led the class in a discussion of the relative merits of the two different ways of paying for electricity which are in operation in South Africa (a “before-use” or pre-payment meter, and an “after-use” monthly account). Here is an account of the lesson in the 9F class:

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After allowing the students some time on their own to read the background information on “How we pay for electricity”, Nomzamo told them to discuss together in their groups the advantages and disadvantages of these two payment methods. For the next few minutes the classroom was filled with a healthy buzz of noise as the students engaged in earnest conversation with each other. Nomzamo called the class to order and started off the class discussion by asking the students what advantages and disadvantages they could think of for being billed on a monthly basis. Starting with advantages, most groups talked in terms of deferred costs, as in “because you have already used it” and “you don’t always have money to buy electricity (for the pre-payment meter)”. Typical disadvantages given were: “if you don’t pay then they will cut off your electricity” and “you end up paying (at the end of the month) big amounts”. It was now time to consider the advantages of the “before-use” payment. After a number of suggestions such as, “you can pay in small amounts” a student called out “it is cheaper”. This led to a really animated discussion, some students started shouting out and the noise level in the classroom grew. Eventually after a couple of minutes, Nomzamo tried to bring things to a close by asking for a show of hands of those who thought that electricity was cheaper if it was prepaid. About half of the students put up their hands, and a few students were heard to say that it made no difference. The lesson was brought to a halt by the arrival of the next teacher, and Nomzamo left the class with the students still arguing over the matter . . . Why had such a seemingly innocuous comment by a student triggered such a lively discussion? Interestingly enough, Nomzamo said a similar thing had happened the previous week when she first taught the same work to the 9E’s. Talking about it afterwards, we came to the conclusion that the reason why the students had “opened up” in this way was because they had been able to draw on their own experiences – virtually all the students came from homes with electricity and, critically, there was a mix of houses fitted with one or other of the two payment systems. We also realised that it was an issue of some local significance, for there was a drive on by ESKOM (the national electricity supply company) to encourage people to opt for the pre-payment system and indeed, the cost per unit of electricity was discounted slightly in its favour. (The student had been right!) Needless to say, the following day the lesson with the 9D’s also developed into a lively whole-class discussion, with students vociferously agreeing or disagreeing with each other; once again mostly over the cost-benefit of the pre-payment system. Two exercises, separated in each class by almost a month’s teaching, had the same impact on the students – for a brief period (of no more than one lesson apiece), they cast aside their habitual reserve and participated more openly in a whole-class discussion. This behaviour seems even all the more remarkable given the customary “curtain walls of silence” which typify Nomzamo’s classroom. Upon reflection, this shift in behaviour can be understood. For a start, the lightning lesson shows the potential of teaching which draws, in a non-judgemental 99

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way, on students’ knowledge in a way they have clearly never experienced before. For the first time, there was something of their own culture being celebrated rather than ignored in the science classroom. And the lesson about different systems of paying for electricity, while having no direct relation to indigenous knowledge at all, nonetheless provided a context for bridging the gap between the formal content of school science and the students’ everyday lives. Perhaps another reason why many more students had something to say is because both exercises were essentially “safe” topics which had very little to do with formal subject knowledge. A student could speak out with little risk of exposing “ignorance” about some aspect or other of science. This means that without fear or threat of sanction or ridicule from either peers or teacher, a student could actively participate in a classroom discussion about something rooted in everyday experience. And finally, based on the students’ reactions, both exercises were fun. Maybe there is a risk of reading too much into Nolisapho’s earlier comment about students “taking the lesson as a joke” (in particular the colloquial use of the word “joke”), but it undoubtedly points towards an important element in unlocking the “students’ voice”. These incidents raise issues which we believe are close to the heart of some of the most important debates currently preoccupying science education, particularly as they relate to the socio-cultural context of teaching and learning in science classrooms. While a comprehensive discussion lies outside the scope of this work, it is possible to link our findings (particularly from the lightning lesson) with the interpretive framework proposed by Aikenhead and Jegede (1999). Their recent work together merges two fields of study – how students move between their everyday life-world and the world of school science – conceptualised by Aikenhead (1996) as a cultural border crossing; and how students deal with the cognitive conflicts between these two worlds, explained by Jegede (1995) in terms of collateral learning. In a seminal paper, Glen Aikenhead (1996) sought to reconceptualise a cultural perspective for science education in which the science classroom is seen as a cross-cultural event for most students. Drawing on the work of Costa (1995) and Hawkins and Pea (1987), he conceptualises the transition between a student’s life-world and school science as a cultural border crossing. This is a crossing which many students, irrespective of context, find exceedingly hard to do. Yet as Prophet (1990) points out, in Western countries there is at least a background of shared experience, language and knowledge. Move into (say) an African context, and there is a more marked discontinuity between students’ life-world (with its different patterns of thinking, speaking and doing) and the sub-culture of school science syllabi. In Aikenhead’s terms, the border crossings are potentially trickier and are fraught with even greater hazards. Seen in such terms, the STAP programme – with its emphasis on “useful knowledge” and an exploration of applications which can be found in the everyday life experiences of students’ seeks to create bridges over which students can pass more easily between these two worlds. As in the design of any programme, there is 100

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no way around the fact that certain assumptions are made about what students will find useful and interesting in science – and these assumptions come, of course, from the perspective of developers who are themselves comfortable residents in the world of science. What emerges from the work of Costa (1995) in particular is an appreciation that most students do not automatically share the interests of either curriculum developers or their science teachers. To extend Aikenhead’s analogy (perhaps further than he originally intended), students may be carried to the boundary and may even be persuaded to cross over the bridge, but they may remain standing there, uninterested on the other side, waiting for the lesson to end. What happened then in the two exercises described above? Our interpretation is that in both cases the discussions remained firmly located within the students’ own life-world and there was very little scientific conceptual content involved at all. Because of this, the students were not being asked to cross boundaries, and, safe in their own world, were able to “open up” and quite freely share their ideas and opinions without fear (as noted earlier) of appearing “ignorant” about some aspect or other of science. The challenge which Nomzamo faces is that having laid the foundation in the students’ life-world knowing, she must now build the bridge into the world of school science and help the students negotiate connections between the two. That this did not happen in either exercise is to some extent circumstantial. For instance, in the 9F’s, the class discussion on “How we pay for electricity” took up the whole lesson, mainly because the periods on that day had been shortened to 30 minutes each. Nomzamo then had to wait five days before the next lesson with this class. It was only then that she could move on to the “Paying the account” investigation which was intended to draw the students back into science (or more precisely mathematics). This lesson was to some extent successful, although here Nomzamo came up against a major source of difficulty, namely the students’ poor mathematical skills – most of the 9F’s, as with their fellow students in the other three classes, struggled to make any headway at all with the calculation of kilowatt-hour (kWh); and their failure in this regard seemed to put them back in their shells (so to speak).43 When it came to the lightning exercise, we believe it would be fair to say that Nomzamo’s lack of experience in openly dealing with these issues meant that the opportunity to make the connection between the indeterminacy of scientific theories and the way people hold to a variety of beliefs about the same phenomenon, was not fully realised. Yet given the excitement which this discussion generated in Nomzamo and among her students, it is perhaps not all surprising that this side of the lesson got lost. For as we have already suggested, the significance of this exercise cannot be overestimated: by foregrounding (and valuing) indigenous knowledge, the students were able to “celebrate” their own culture in a constructive and enabling way – it was unlike anything they had experienced before. If our argument that students are bound by scripts of non-participation and failure holds true, then their “opening up” in this way was a most significant step indeed.

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Furthermore, in a context such as this, where science teaching and learning is clearly a cross-cultural experience, Aikenhead and Huntley’s (1999) suggestion that the science teacher needs to fulfil a role as a “culture broker” – who actively assists students to move back and forth between their indigenous culture and the culture of Western science, and who helps students deal with cultural conflicts that might arise – seems a particularly useful image to hold in mind. For Nomzamo, the STAP programme undoubtedly represents then an awakening and significant first step in her own attempts to do just that. Upon reflection, while there is no doubt that for many of the students the STAP programme was an exciting and stimulating experience, for a whole lot of reasons (some of which are discussed in this chapter), this did not necessarily translate into a greater level of student engagement. Amongst all other considerations, we believe that a specific challenge faced by those involved in curriculum development is to reconsider some of the assumptions that are made about what truly amounts to relevance in science education, particularly as it applies in the context of a township classroom. Moreover it is necessary to carefully think through and structure suitable activities which will aid teachers, in their role as “culture brokers”, assisting students to move more freely across the border between their own world and that of the science classroom. 4.8. THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN THE LEARNING OF SCIENCE

Over the past few decades increasing attention has been given to the role of language in the learning of science, and a considerable amount of research has been carried out in this field.44 Curtis and Millar (1988) sum it up well when stating that: Language plays a crucial role in the child’s ability to construct meaning; the learning of abstract scientific concepts therefore depends both on the child’s ability to use language to explore his/her existing conceptions and on the richness of the word- and the idea-associations which the child has with the particular scientific ideas involved. (p. 62) In contexts where students are being instructed through the medium of a second language (L2), there is now a growing awareness that L2 learning problems are one of the main obstacles faced by students in their study of science.45 In this regard a large body of work now exists which has focused specifically on the difficulties associated with the learning and teaching of science through a second language.46 Strevens (1976) creates a useful framework for identifying and explaining sources of language difficulty, which he categorises as being either linguistic or socio-linguistic in origin. In the light of previous research work undertaken in a similar context,47 it came as no surprise that Nomzamo’s students’ experienced considerable difficulties in having to learn science through the medium of English. In this respect they are in a similar position to many other black students – it is generally accepted that the standard of English at all levels in African schools is disturbingly low.48 As 102

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we shall come to consider, this is not a problem unique to South Africa; wherever English as a second language is used as a medium of instruction, students (and their teachers) are faced with numerous challenges. As a starting point, it is worth noting that one set of problems relates directly to the teachers’ own lack of competence in English. Macdonald (1990a) explains how the apartheid system has ensured that most teachers do not speak English with confidence or fluency and consequently struggle to use it effectively as a medium of instruction in the classroom.49 The problems run deep, for it concerns in part the kind of training to which many teachers are exposed in the colleges of education and the kind of teaching which is practised in schools, which are both dominated by methods that still tend to focus on developing grammatical rather than communicative competence. Buthulezi (1984) concludes that the English taught at the school level is primarily literary in content and does not equip students to communicate effectively – a situation which is exacerbated in subjects like science, where teachers encounter major obstacles in teaching the language dimension of their subjects. Not only do teachers lack training in how to identify the language demands of their subjects, but they also do not know how to meet these demands. Another problem which has been identified is that the environment in which students live is not always supportive of English as a medium of instruction.50 A further consequence of the segregationist policies of apartheid still felt to this day is that the majority of African students continue to have very little interaction with L1 English-speaking people. Their exposure to spoken English is basically limited to the school classroom, and even here one cannot assume that English is being used. Commenting on the situation in rural schools Amuzu (1992, p. 132) notes that: “. . . while officially English is the medium of instruction, in practice, it is little used.” Similarly, Weimann’s (1986) recordings of classroom teaching (at the Grade 10 level) indicate the extent to which both English and Xhosa were being used as a medium of instruction.51 As reported by Gough (1996), certainly in the majority of black schools (in both rural and urban settings) most everyday interaction outside of the classroom is carried out in the primary language.52 This was the situation at Yengeni High where English is definitely not the language of the playground, nor is it used (or insisted upon) by the majority of teachers in any of the out-of-class interactions with their students. And while staff meetings were held in English, this was mainly because three of the teachers were non-Xhosa speaking. Naturally, the extent to which teachers employ a mixed-language approach53 in their classrooms varies considerably and is dependent on a range of factors – from the teachers’ own competence to teach their subject through the medium of English, to issues relating to the students’ ability to understand what is being taught. Some teachers like Nomzamo (prior to the STAP trialling exercise at least), are firm proponents of as much “English-only” instruction as possible. Others adopt a more pragmatic approach and code-switching54 is a regular feature of their instructional practices. Based on the students’ recollections of their primary schooling and the existing practices of their teachers at Yengeni High, 103

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it seems that in most cases their teachers adopted a mixed-language approach in which instruction was given in both English and Xhosa: Jon: Luleka:

How much do your teachers teach you in Xhosa? I would say they all do . . . except the English and biology teacher [one of the three non-Xhosa speaking members of staff].55 Moses: Ja, and the English teacher she do also sometimes explain things in Xhosa to us. Jon: And last year? Asanda: Everyone! Nolisapho: Except Mam —- [their English teacher]. When it comes to the whole issue of the efficacy of mixed-language approaches such as code-switching there are, as Gough (1996) points out, two opposing perspectives: (1) the purists who reject code-switching as leading to, amongst other things, a lowering of standards; and (2) those who view it as a resource. He suggests that a useful concept is the distinction between formative and supportive mediums. The formative medium should be the medium through which fundamental concepts in a subject are consistently developed; the supportive medium should be used for just that, namely, support (including clarifying purposes, etc.). Couched in such terms, this raises a number of issues which lie at the heart of the medium of instruction debate, which is, as Rollnick and Rutherford (1996) point out, a controversial one throughout the developing world, where languages have often been inherited from former colonialists. In this regard, Cleghorn (1992) is worth quoting in full: The status of mother tongue languages relative to English has suffered in countries that have experienced long periods of colonisation as well as the earlier influence of missionaries. And, it is only recently that educators have understood the link between language, culture and schooling – demonstrating that the under-achievement of the ethnically, racially and linguistically less powerful is related to an inferior sense of identity, acquired at the hands of a dominant (often English-speaking) group. These long-internalised negative attitudes towards one’s own language and culture are amongst the most difficult to dislodge: the intuitive belief that “an all-English schooling is better” is reinforced by the apparent evidence that economic success and therefore prestige come to those who work in English. (p. 60) Given the circumstances in South Africa (with eleven official languages), the medium of instruction debate is a sensitive issue at the moment.56 Reporting on an extensive study of science instruction in Kenyan primary school classrooms, Cleghorn et al. (1989) found that a variety of code-switching patterns were used. For example, in naming and explaining culturally foreign concepts as well as for providing concrete, familiar examples, code-switching strategies were better suited than English for establishing the meaning of what was being taught, and also helped in reducing cultural and linguistic incongruities between home and school.57 104

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Based on their work in Swaziland, Rollnick and Rutherford (1993, 1996) suggest that the use of a mixed-language approach by teachers makes sense in pragmatic terms because it allows the use of the primary language as a medium for exploring existing ideas. While this may be so, teachers (particularly at the high school level) face the dilemma that an over-reliance on the primary language may seriously hinder attempts by students to develop their English language skills – a necessity, given that both textbooks and examinations continue to be written in this medium. As we shall see in Chapter 6, concerns such as this lie at the heart of what we have termed Nomzamo’s “dilemma of code-switching”. In any event, a problem faced in Anglophone countries throughout the continent is that there is considerable “distance” (to use the socio-linguistic term of Strevens, 1976) between the primary language of the student and English as a medium of instruction. Berry (1985), using an informal and intuitive concept of linguistic distance,58 suggests that it is likely to be easier for a student to function effectively in a second language which is semantically and culturally close to his primary language than in one which is remote. Learning problems are compounded when the student’s primary language is the language of what Wilson (1981) refers to as a “pre-scientific” culture; such languages have only limited scientific registers and they may lack the terms, words, expressions and so on for communicating about science.59 It must be noted that the problem is also embedded in the use of nontechnical terms60 ; this is because the understanding of words is heavily contextdependent.61 For instance, many words used in science are also used in everyday conversational language. Science students need to deal with the same concept words (such as force, weight and energy) but with not quite the same meanings. The concept words force, work and energy are a case in point. Jiya (1993) claims that for L2 students, problems are compounded because these three concepts can be collectively interpreted as one word – amandla (matla) in most indigenous languages in Southern Africa.62 Strevens (1976) has this to say about the primary language’s lack of equivalents for the scientific concepts presented in the science classroom: When a learner of science is a native speaker of a language not yet adapted to the purposes of science, his learning through English entails very special, additional difficulties of cognition and understanding. He cannot appeal to translation into his mother tongue for the resolution of doubt or the dissipation of ignorance. (p. 58) With evidence from research showing that teaching and learning through the medium of the primary language leads to improved understanding of scientific concepts,63 there have been some initiatives aimed at developing scientific terminology in indigenous African languages.64 Yet with the policies of using English as a medium of instruction so deeply rooted in our South African education system, it seems inevitable that instructional policies will continue to have little relevance to the majority of students’ actual educational needs.65 105

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When all is said and done, what one can hope for is that teachers come to use the primary language not as a crutch but as an aid to learning, i.e., to play a supportive role, as Gough (1996) would have it, in support of students’ attempts to negotiate meaning out of the complex and often highly abstract concepts presented in school science. As Cleghorn et al. (1989) put it: As long as teachers have difficulty using English, it is important that the present restrictions on language use be removed to facilitate the making of concreteabstract connections across cultural and linguistic boundaries. (p. 39) Before we return to Nomzamo’s classroom, we need to consider one further consequence of the way medium of instruction manifests in South Africa, which has had a significant impact on L2 students’ levels of communicative competence in English. Bilingualism in L2 Classrooms There is continual debate, particularly in the light of recent government initiatives in this regard, about when and how to go about making the crucial shift in medium of instruction from the primary language to English.66 At present in the majority of African schools, students study all their subjects (except their primary language subject) through the medium of English from Grade 4 upwards. However the “sudden switch” approach which we adopt in this country has been shown to have a profound impact on students’ learning. Indeed, Macdonald (1990a) suggests strongly that many of the learning problems that persist throughout an African child’s schooling can be traced to the fundamental disruption that occurs with this sudden switch of medium. In order to come to some understanding of the role which language proficiency plays in academic achievement, we need to turn (albeit briefly) to the work of John Cummins (1979). He draws on research into language acquisition in bilingual children which suggests that the development of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) in the primary language (L1) is vital if it is to develop also in the second language. This forms the basis for Cummins’ (1979) “linguistic interdependence hypothesis” which, simply put, proposes that a threshold must be reached in the primary language before a student is able to develop certain academic skills. An implication of this hypothesis is that if effective early learning of the student’s L1 fails to occur, then not only will the student struggle to reach acceptable levels of competence in the L2 but will also face “arrested development” of the L1.67 Starfield (1990) suggests that this is what has happened here in South Africa with the sudden switch to English medium instruction in Grade 4 – CALP has not been established in the primary language, nor are conditions in place to ensure that it will be established in English either, with the result that the study of a subject like science in the L2 is severely impeded. The following example taken from a case study of science teaching in a rural Grade 5 classroom, graphically illustrates the kind of context-reduced communication which is a consequence of this policy: 106

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The teacher wrote the following facts on the board as a list of English sentences: Frogs are green. Frogs are amphibians. They live in water and on land. Frogs lay eggs. He drilled these sentences and then asked, “What colour are frogs?” An eager student replied, “Water!” The teacher couldn’t help but be frustrated. The student couldn’t help but read his frustration as her own failure. (Diamondidis, 1998, p. 39)

4.9. SPEAKING

Prior to the STAP trialling exercise, Nomzamo’s day-to-day teaching followed a familiar “initiation, response, feedback” (IRF) pattern68 and the following extract from a lesson dealing with “energy transformations” illustrates how sentence completion and chanting in particular are woven into the interaction between herself and the students: Nomzamo: Look at the example with the kettle, where does that steam come from? Student: You must apply heat. Nomzamo: Where are we applying the heat? To the coal? [cue] Student: To the coal . . . Nomzamo: To the coal . . . no! The coal is giving us heat, we don’t apply heat to the coal. The coal is giving us heat and that heat was used to boil water. The heat from the coal was used to boil . . . ? [cue] Student: Water. Nomzamo: Water, and when water comes to the boil it comes out into the air as . . . ? [cue] Student: Steam. Nomzamo: When water boils you get steam and that steam that was coming out was then used to drive the . . . ? [cue] (No reply) Nomzamo: The engine of the . . . ? [cue] Student: Train. Nomzamo: When the engine starts to move, what happens to the train, the train will start moving . . . ? [cue] Students: (Chanting together with Nomzamo) Forwaaaards . . . Nomzamo: Right! So we get a change from what energy to what energy? Where did this all begin, it began with the . . . ? [cue] Students: (Chanting together) Heat (Nomzamo joins in) energy Nomzamo: At the end, what happened to the train? Students: It moved . . . Nomzamo: The train moved, so what energy’s there? Student: (Chanting) Kinetic (Nomzamo joins in again) . . . kinetic energy. 107

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This exchange also embodies elements of a type of IRF discourse which Edwards and Mecer (1987) have called “cued elicitation”. It is a typical feature of studentteacher interactions in many classrooms (in both L1 and L2 contexts) and is used by teachers as a strategy to draw students into more active participation in the lesson rather than merely sitting back and listening to the teacher talking. As Edwards and Mecer (1987) remind us, the rules of classroom talk are implicit rules of interpretation, and in order to participate in the classroom students have to be familiar and competent in dealing with a variety of discourses. Elsewhere Mecer and Edwards (1981) have called these implicit rules of talk (and practice) “educational ground rules”. In the context of African L2 classroom-talk these include: sentence completion, chanting and whole-class recitation. Because students have been exposed to these forms of student-teacher interaction from their earliest days of schooling, they form part of the predictable, repetitive protocol of classroom life. Critically, they are routines that serve to signal that a teacher is acting in a manner that is normatively recognised, and to which the students have long grown accustomed. What happened as Nomzamo started to use the STAP material was that she introduced a whole different set of ground rules for the way classroom talk was to be organised. Suddenly students were being actively encouraged to share their own opinions, ask unsolicited questions, etc., and in so doing engage in language behaviour to which they were clearly unaccustomed. Consider, for example, the following exchange between Nomzamo and her students, which occurred at the beginning of a lesson in which she was busy recapping the previous day’s work: Nomzamo: Do you understand how electricity flows? Students: Yes! (But also some No’s!) Nomzamo: Can anyone explain how electricity flows? (No reply) Nomzamo: (Changing tack) Did we do an experiment yesterday? (No reply) Nomzamo: (Changing tack again) What did we do at the front [of the classroom]? Student: (Barely audible) . . . a model. Nomzamo: Yes! A model. What’s the use of a model? (No reply) Nomzamo: What did we use the model for? Student: How something works . . . Nomzamo: Yes! (She then turned to the board and wrote up: “Model – helps us understand how things work (things which we cannot see)”). This brief exchange encapsulates many of the difficulties which continually plagued Nomzamo’s attempts to get the students to speak out in class. For a start, at this early stage of the trialling exercise she had yet to shift her approach 108

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to include more active use of code-switching (particularly for clarification purposes), so part of the problem lies with her use of English. For instance, when she rephrased the question, “What’s the use of a model?” with, “What did we use the model for?” at least some of the students understood what she was asking. The example also illustrates the reluctance of individual children to speak out – their shyness fuelled (as we saw earlier in the chapter) by a fear of appearing foolish in front of their peers, and exacerbated by their poor L2 skills frustrating their attempts to communicate in English. A further consequence of which is that they struggle to construct adequate sentences and can do little more than offer one- or two-word answers.69 This is evident in the following exchange where students are battling to put their thoughts into English: Nomzamo: Student 1: Student 2: Nomzamo:

Why does the heater use more electrical energy? It has bars [referring to the heating elements]. It has more watts. . . . it has a high power rating.

Although technically neither student is providing an incorrect answer, their limited L2 skills are clearly constraining their ability to “talk science”, which leaves the verbal interaction (as it reads) stunted and without much substance.70 Nomzamo was to some extent able to break this verbal “log-jam” by providing students with more opportunities to interact with her through the medium of their primary language. Also, her confidence and ability to engage in a more interactive style of questioning developed with time. But often she was left having to revert to the tried and trusted cued elicitation patterns as a way of ensuring that the students responded accordingly. This is neatly illustrated in the following exchange during a discussion with the 9C’s about an investigation into kettle designs. Nomzamo: . . . we are talking about the plastic. Student: It keeps the heat energy in Nomzamo: Why does it keep the heat energy inside? (No reply, then comes the cue) Nomzamo: Plastic is not a good . . . (Now students pick up on her cue) Students: (Chanting together) . . . conductor of heat. Nomzamo (Affirming their answer:) Yes, plastic is not a good conductor of heat.71 While those of Nomzamo’s students who are weak L2 readers are trapped into interpreting text at a word level only,72 a similar problem also seemed to arise at times during verbal interactions. Consider for example the following exchange between Nomzamo and her students: Nomzamo held up a bulb with two connecting wires attached and asked: “Is the electricity flowing or moving in the circuit?” Some students called out: “flowing” others “moving”, no student called out: “yes” or “no” or even: “not 109

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flowing” or “not moving” – the correct response based on what they saw in front of them (i.e. the bulb did not light up because there was no battery present). No doubt Nomzamo’s use of two words (flowing and moving) instead of one contributed to the “miscue”, but even so the students were responding to a demonstration which they could actually see in front of them. This highlights just how weak the students’ L2 skills are, and how easily they tend to misinterpret a teacher’s spoken questions. The above incidents also reveal a problematic side (and limitation) to cued elicitation strategies – there being a real danger that students end up essentially trying to read all the signals available in a guessing game in which they have to work out what it was that the teacher was trying to get them to say. Thus, cued elicitation may give a false impression of the extent to which students are always understanding what they are saying when they chant out responses to their teacher’s prompting. In a similar vein, Chapman et al. (1993) have criticised such teacher-centred practices because of their tendency to minimise student involvement and initiative. However we would argue that it would be a mistake to dismiss, out of hand, rhythmic questioning and whole-class responses as simply being manifestations of rote learning. For a start, as we have seen, they are clearly a consequence of and response to the poor L2 communicative skills displayed by the students. Furthermore, based on the arguments presented earlier in this chapter, we would agree with Fuller and Snyder (1991) that chanting and whole-class recitation are lowcomplexity methods for sparking verbalisation and student engagement which closely model and reflect broader cultural patterns of acceptable adult-child interaction in an African context. Cleghorn et al. offer a similar interpretation which both acknowledges and problematises the impact that this has on classroom talk: The main problem seems to lie in the fact that . . . traditional interaction patterns between adults and children militate against the establishment of an interactive teaching style. Thus, the likelihood of meaning being a negotiated process, constructed out of classroom dialogue is remote. It seems more fruitful to look toward existing and traditionally rooted interaction patterns such as those that are characterised by a rhythmic questioning and group response. These patterns, observable throughout Kenya in various outdoor gatherings, are echoed in early primary classrooms in what is often too simply described as learning “by rote”. The rhythmic instructional patterns found so commonly in the early primary grades, in particular, may manifest the way schools generally reflect larger cultural patterns. (Cleghorn et al., 1989, p. 37) In the context of a township secondary school like Yengeni High, such traditional interaction patterns (which place a heavy reliance on “memory, repetition and recall”) continue to influence the nature of student-teacher talk and find expression in the deeply entrenched patterns of cued elicitation to which students (as noted before) have long grown accustomed. Once again this brings one face to face with a “cultural dimension” which is not easily ignored, and one which has far-reaching consequences. For it would 110

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seem that the suppression of student-talk at the primary school level reduces the opportunities for oral practice at a critical time when students are struggling to develop their L2 skills. So much so, that without being given sufficient opportunities to speak, students reach secondary school burdened with an inability to express themselves freely in English. As we saw earlier in this chapter, the students identified their lack of oral competency as being one of the main reasons why they do not want to talk out in class. Rangaka’s (1982) comment, made more than two decades ago, seems to echo through the years: Lacking oral competence, the pupils dare not open their mouths in class for fear of the mockery of their peers and the ire of the teacher. Teacher-pupil interaction is, therefore, stifled, classroom talk teacher-initiated and maintained, and the joint venture of teacher and pupil in the formulation of knowledge rendered impossible. (p. 27) It would seem then that many L2 classrooms are caught up in a vicious circle in which teachers, irrespective of their inclination to do otherwise, are trapped into narrow channels of communication in which (for example) they can do little more than ask questions at a low level of complexity in keeping with their students’ low level of English proficiency.73 It is hardly surprising then that students, socialised into an essentially passive role, burdened by poor L2 communicative skills and confronted by a different set of “ground rules” for language behaviour, struggle to take advantage of the opportunities for more active, vocal engagement offered by a programme like STAP. It is important to note that undoubtedly part of the success of the lightning lesson was the fact that it was conducted almost entirely in the students’ primary language. 4.10. READING

While the students’ poor L2 verbal skills had a significant impact on the nature of student–teacher interactions, Nomzamo’s attempts to get the students to engage in more self-directed learning (either at the group or individual level) came up against another major set of language-related constraints – this time due to her students’ weak L2 reading skills. The difficulties which students have with reading can be taken as a further manifestation of the system-wide failure of (nominally) English-medium instruction to develop communicative competencies amongst L2 students. In order to make sense of Nomzamo’s students’ reading problems, it is once again important that we have some understanding of where they come from. As before, it seems that a “root cause” can be traced back to the negative impact of the sudden switch of language medium in Grade 4. This is illustrated in quite graphic terms by Chick (1992) citing the Threshold Project’s researchers, who worked out that the vocabulary requirements in English increased by 1000% by Grade 5. Looking specifically at science texts, they estimated that even if students had benefited optimally from currently used ESL schemes (i.e., “English 111

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Second Language” instructional programmes) in Grades 1 to 4, they would still not have encountered more than half of the vocabulary and would be unfamiliar with syntactic elements in up to 60% of sentences in a Grade 5 science textbook. Moreover, students might be so ignorant of the conventions of expository writing as to undergo what Chick (1992) refers to as a “register shock” when reading these texts; something that we would argue many of Nomzamo’s students still suffer from five years down the line. Macdonald (1990) talks here of a “loss of meaning” which the students experience: The children are likely to be alienated by what they have to learn, and only dimly perceive the implications and linkages between the concepts they are presented with. (p. 141) Faced with these odds, many teachers resort to providing notes that the students are required to memorise, with the result that students often learn what they do not understand. Because of the language complications described earlier, it would seem that a context which is already prone (as we saw earlier in this chapter) to rote learning, further predisposes teachers to reduce the content of lessons to overtly simplistic accounts of the content ideas involved.74 Peacock (1997) makes a similar point in noting that, at the primary school level, teachers tend to respond to the difficulties which their L2 students experience with expository science textbooks by summarizing these texts, often in simplistic and reductionist ways which may impoverish content and not improve comprehension.75 Peacock goes on to suggest that a negative consequence of this practice is that it results in a failure to teach students text-processing skills which are needed later on in schooling. Relatively little work has focused directly on the problems which South African students experience with science texts. Wegerhoff’s (1981) study, a seminal work at the time, revealed that many science textbooks then in use were encoded in language way beyond the comprehension levels of L1 users.76 Whilst the implementation of the new OBE curriculum has seen a large number of new textbooks enter the market, the extent to which L2 readers are any better served by these books is in some doubt. Based on some of Jonathan’s previous research,77 and his present day classroom experiences, we would go so far as to argue that textbooks remain a major cause of difficulty in learning science in a L2 context. This is a serious problem for other reasons as well. In the absence of any research to confirm the opposite, one can speculate that the situation in South Africa remains no different from that in most other parts of the world, where the textbook is the curriculum in most classrooms. If this is the case, then the chances are that the strong teacher and learner textbook dependencies of the past still hold sway in this country. And Young’s (1986, p. 47) comment that textbooks (be it in science or any other subject for that matter) are the “pretext and text for most lessons” holds as true today as at anytime in the past.

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How do teachers cope with textbooks that their students are struggling to read and make sense of? More often than not, they respond by producing what are little more than point-form summaries of the “main (content) points” of the textbook. Nomzamo’s pre-STAP teaching evidenced this kind of response, as seen in the following account from an observation of a lesson in which she was teaching about “energy transformations”: Nomzamo quickly (and again very neatly) put up a set of summary notes and told the students to take out their notebooks and to copy them down. She used a notebook from a girl in the 9E class next door (they had already covered this work). This was what she wrote by way of summary for the section of work she had just spent the past few lessons covering: Energy 1. Energy is the ability to do work. 2. The more energy you have, the more work you can do. 3. Amount of work done is always equal to the energy transferred. 4. Energy is measured in Joules (J) – same unit as work. 5. Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can be changed from one form into another.

We are not suggesting that, given her students’ difficulties with their science textbook, this is not a well-meaning attempt by Nomzamo to provide them with a more useful summary; rather, as Ryf and Cleghorn (1997) point out, the problem is that this “thinning down” of subject content to a set of concrete “facts” disconnects them from the abstract ideas and processes of which they are a part. Also, students invariably interpret this focus on “facts” as being what a lesson is all about78 – in this example, that there are five facts about energy that they have to learn – and this further contributes to the low conceptual load of these lessons. A vicious cycle now emerges. Faced with poorly understood context-reduced science texts, students are forced to rely on what amounts to doubly contextreduced teacher notes. While it is debatable how much in the way of meaningful learning results from the students’ rote memorisation of such notes, what is clearly not in doubt is that their comprehension skills remain frozen at an alarmingly low level. It has been argued (for example, Clark, 1997a) that an inevitable consequence of our long history of having to rely on poorly written science textbooks is that for years now, across both L1 and L2 contexts, the majority of science students do not read their science textbooks to any great extent, yet at the same time feel quite dependent on them. Nomzamo’s students expressed the following sentiments about their science textbook during one of the interviews: Phelo:

The textbook is thick and it is threatening. You just look at it. 113

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Luleka:

You read, yet you do not have an idea of what they are talking about. You would like to see what they are talking about and I don’t even touch a textbook.

Nolisapho: The textbook bores you. It really bores you . . . The answer to this problem is not simply one of trying to “fix” texts for L2 users, but of shifting the focus of attention much more closely on to the role of the reader in the reading process.79 In response to this, an effort was made during the development of the STAP programme to produce written material which could serve as a reading text.80 Yet if the text is to be used effectively as such it is clear that both students and teachers need to develop appropriate reading strategies which will allow them to successfully engage with such a text. It may seem obvious that instruction is the key to developing skills for the comprehension of science texts and that this is rightly the responsibility of the science teacher; but what is all too easily forgotten is the extent to which the majority of science teachers may, themselves, lack the skills to assist in their students’ language development.81 The struggle which Nomzamo had in wearing the cloak of “reading teacher” becomes, as with “code-switching”, one of the key areas in which she came to rethink her practice and to which we will pay particular attention in Chapter 6. Students’ Grappling with Text It is important to remember that the STAP booklet which Nomzamo’s students were using was still in draft form, so any discussion of students’ reading difficulties needs to acknowledge that problems sometimes arose because of inappropriately written (and presented) text. Indeed, when it comes to evaluating the suitability of the written text, the trialling exercise at Yengeni High confirmed once again the value of classroom-based trialling of curriculum materials.82 Despite the preliminary nature of the text, the trialling exercise revealed, time and again, instances where students came up against what often seemed an almost invisible barrier (i.e., their weak reading skills) which resulted in their becoming “locked out” of the text. The disturbing thing here is that this was happening with a text that had been written with great concern for the needs of L2 readers and in a style and structure more commonly associated with narrative text than the stiff and formal prose so common in expository science textbooks. The students’ difficulties became particularly apparent during practical activities where weak readers struggled to make sense of either the instructions in the text or the accompanying diagrams.83 After sitting with a group of students who were working on an investigation into short circuits, the student teachers made these observations: Nceba:

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. . . they never bothered to read the instructions, how to do it, how to use the twin flex on page 40. In fact all they did was just look at this picture [on page 40], then they went ahead.

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Nceba then related how this group of students had then called him over to show him their circuit, but they had failed to include the piece of twin flex wire. So they could not understand the question which asked them how the bare wires affect the circuit (they did not have any bare wire). As he put it: “. . . they saw [in the diagram] the cells, the wires and the globe but they didn’t see the twin flex wire”. Frank:

What I observed was that most of them weren’t reading the instructions from the book, they were just looking at the picture and . . . I dunno whether they don’t have confidence in their reading skills or something. Sometimes you find that they don’t understand the words that has been written, so they constantly come and ask you questions. It boils to they couldn’t understand the words, they come and ask you, “Is this the right way to do it?”

Observations of group practical-work revealed a similar pattern: in most groups students seemed to do little more than “dip into” the instructions in no more than a very cursory manner. They might try to set up an electric circuit using the diagram(s) in the text as a guide, and then skim through the numbered instructions without bothering to read the text in italics (i.e., the questions which encourage them to think about the activity they are engaged in). In this respect their behaviour is consistent with that observed during an earlier trialling exercise in a similar L2 context.84 The students’ inability to read independently serves as a further barrier which impedes their attempts to engage in more self-directed learning. Students are trapped by their weak L2 skills in a continuing dependency relationship with their teacher, and the dilemma facing Nomzamo was that she was forced to intervene at a time when she was trying hard to encourage the students to work on their own. This dependency revealed itself in numerous other ways, some less dramatic or obvious than the above example, but equally indicative of the depth of the problems which the students (and their teacher) face. For instance, at one point, students had to interpret a collage which shows a collection of different electrical appliances and their energy use. When Nomzamo came to review the third question in the “For Your Notebook” activity and asked the students, “Which appliances are the most expensive to operate?” a number of students called out, “. . . computer”! Clearly they misunderstood the question. Perhaps they did not know the meaning of the word “operate”; or were confusing purchase price with operating cost (they are all aware that computers are expensive appliances); but it may well be that some students simply read as far as: “. . . most expensive . . . ” and stopped at that point. This seems to offer further evidence of how students tend to read only at the word level and struggle to extract the meaning of the whole sentence. Vocabulary The students’ limited English vocabulary was also a crucial factor limiting their ability to interpret the STAP text. A problem here is that it is not always obvious which words students are going to struggle with. For example, on one occasion 115

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they had to read through a fictitious newspaper article and underline the words which they did not understand: Fire Guts Building Rush-hour traffic in downtown Cape Town was brought to a halt late yesterday afternoon as firemen battled to control a blaze in Plein Street. The old Herbert Department Store building was seriously damaged by a fire which raced through the building. Investigations are continuing, but it is thought that the blaze was started by an electrical fault in the recently abandoned building. Mr. Burns, Chief Fire Officer for the Cape Metropole Council, confirmed that arson had been ruled out. He suggested that one possible cause of the fire could have been rats eating away at the insulation which protects the electrical cables. This caused a short circuit which could have easily started the blaze which engulfed the building.

After a couple of minutes Nomzamo started asking them to give her the words which they didn’t understand. Hands shot up and things became quite animated and the noise level grew as the students began shouting out the words. After a few minutes the following list was on the chalkboard: blaze confirmed

guts arson

halt engulfed

battled abandoned

suggested cable

It is interesting that students took to this exercise in this way; usually they have to be on their guard against exposing their weak L2 vocabulary to their teachers whereas here they were actually being encouraged to tell the teacher without fear of sanction what they didn’t understand.

A further problem (which should have been anticipated) is that colloquial English words like “guts” are rarely, if ever, understood by L2 readers. This in turn alerts one to the significant role which background knowledge plays in reading comprehension.85 Here students are being asked to grasp not only the content but also the context of the text, something which they found extremely hard to do (they struggled to imagine where the fire was taking place). Another example of this kind occurred when students were asked to explain why it is that some kinds of vacuum cleaners have a number of different power settings. For a start, no-one knew what a vacuum cleaner was – the colloquial word used in the townships is “hoover”. But even once this had been explained no one was then able to suggest why it should have different power settings. Talking about it afterwards, Nomzamo and Jonathan realised that knowledge about such appliances is in many ways beyond the students’ experience (Nomzamo said she had not seen one before either). Lacking relevant background knowledge, Nomzamo’s students struggle to make sense of such questions. And their reading problems are such that they are, to use Pillay’s (1988, p. 562) ex116

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pression, “linguistically bound to a text” in ways which ensure that they cannot make effective use of whatever content and textual clues are provided to them. As in verbal exchanges, a further consequence of the students’ weak L2 skills was that they struggled to cope with questions in text written at a high level of complexity. This created problems in a number of different ways – particularly as they went about answering class and homework assignments, and was especially apparent during the first STAP test written by the students in which they struggled to make sense of questions requiring more interpretation than that to which they were accustomed. The following account describes what happened when the 9D’s wrote the test. It also raises issues concerning another dimension of the students’ L2 problems where, in addition to their weak verbal and reading skills, they also battle to write in English. It was soon after the question papers were handed out, that hands were raised and, in an attempt to get Nomzamo’s attention, students started calling out, “Miss, Miss . . . ”. Walking around the class it became clear that many of the students were really quite baffled by the questions and that they were struggling to understand what it was they were being asked to answer. After a few minutes of helping individual students, Nomzamo decided that the best thing to do would be to go through the questions one by one, explaining in Xhosa as she went along. This took up the next 15 minutes. While most students seemed to be listening attentively to her explanations, some questions, like number 5 where they were being asked to ’Explain what this means’, were still posing problems – now because the students were struggling to write down their answers in English. Indeed, when it came to the last question, she decided that it would be best to “cut our losses” and allow the students to answer in Xhosa – an offer which was gratefully received if the response of the class was anything to go by! Leaning against the wall contemplating the crowded 9D classroom, one feels a deep sense of the language difficulties which students experience and the profound impact this has on their learning of science . . . In retrospect, there were problems with the test on two fronts. Firstly, it underestimated the extent to which students’ poor L2 reading skills would limit the range of questions which could be asked. For as in their reading of the STAP booklet, the students were “locked out” of the text as soon as the level of linguistic complexity rose above a basic level. And once past this first hurdle, and assuming of course that they had thought of something to say, the challenge they then faced was one of trying to find a way to write down an answer in English.

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4.11. WRITING

There is now widespread recognition of the value of expanding both the types and purposes of student writing in science, in order to promote more effective learning.86 Writing is one of the many activities which create opportunities for students to develop their knowledge of concepts in science, encouraging them to explore, clarify and consolidate understanding.87 While Nomzamo’s students spend a significant amount of classroom time writing, most of these tasks are restricted to question answering, and note taking which mainly involves the copying down of teacher-generated chalkboard summaries. Given the difficulties that students experience with their textbooks, teachers rarely (if ever) expect students to generate their own notes and their poor L2 skills preclude any kind of notetaking during teacher-talk – all their concentration goes into simply trying to follow what a teacher is saying. In her shift towards using more formative assessment methods, Nomzamo sought to create opportunities for her students to engage in (albeit limited) forms of more self-directed writing. For example, before starting the STAP programme Nomzamo had given her Grade 9 students an assignment in which they had to read through some photocopied notes she gave them on the life and work of famous scientists (Newton, Joule and Watt). They were then expected to answer questions like: “Write a brief family background” and “What contributions did he make to science?” Given the level of difficulty of the source material it is unlikely that the students would understand much of these texts and this shows in their answers. A perusal of their efforts revealed that, at best, students managed to do little more than identify the relevant information in the original text and then copy it down verbatim into their notebooks.88 During the course of the STAP programme Nomzamo’s students were presented with opportunities to write in a variety of ways – from the “For Your Notebook” exercises (which follow many of the group tasks), to the homework questions which conclude each unit. Exercises such as the DRTA (directed reading and thinking activity)89 were specifically designed to improve students’ comprehension skills and the inclusion of activities such as a “letter-writing” exercise, to promote the integration of “language in science” teaching. While the “Points to Remember” provided an overview of the salient features of each unit, there were occasions when Nomzamo also drew up chalkboard summaries which the students were expected to copy down. Before looking at some specific examples of where the students’ written work reflects their poor L2 competencies, an examination of their homework and classwork books reminds us once again of the immense practical difficulties faced by a teacher like Nomzamo: not only the functional-logistic problems involved in monitoring the written work of such large, mixed-ability groupings, but also the extent to which the students themselves seem at times unwilling (or perhaps even unable, given their low level of motivation) to put much effort into their work. Indeed, one of the most disheartening observations made during a review 118

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of the students’ books was the widespread practice of their doing little more than rewriting the questions from the STAP booklet into their notebook without then providing any answers. Perhaps having something written down in their books served to draw attention away from themselves (or signal at least an attempt to do the work?). In any event, they knew that besides the infrequent occasions when Nomzamo took in their books to mark a specific assignment such as the “letter-writing” exercise, the chances were good that she would not give their other written work anything other than a cursory glance. Where they do attempt to write, the most obvious problem which students face is that they often have very limited English vocabulary and a poor understanding of grammatical structures. Consequently, much of the students’ writings are made up of incomplete and/or badly constructed sentences which reflect the extent to which many of them are struggling to communicate in English. Indeed, many students’ books were often little more than a highly fragmented set of incomplete notes and half-finished exercises. While this is a consequence of their poor L2 writing skills, it also underlines the critical role which the teacher can play in helping the students acquire the necessary skills to better organise their work; again, a daunting task in such large, mixed-ability classes. One of the strategies employed in the STAP text to compensate for the students’ poor L2 writing skills is the use of “sentence clozing” exercises. Here students are expected to “fill in” a number of missing word(s) and in so doing “cloze” the sentence. In addition to the examples provided in the STAP text, Nomzamo also experimented with this technique on a number of occasions. The following two accounts speak for themselves and indicate how students’ ability to deal with clozing exercises links up with broader issues relating to their level of L2 communicative competencies: The 9F’s As part of her review of the previous lesson’s work, Nomzamo drew on the board a circuit diagram for the second investigation and wrote up: long wire — very dim — less electricity short wire — brighter — more electricity She then added a sentence, similar to the one she had used previously with the 9C’s: The circuit.

the wire the

the bulb and therefore the

electricity in the

Urged on by her, “Think people!” the 9F’s at first did little more than sit in silence, trying to avoid her gaze. Yet once Nomzamo filled in the first gap with: “The shorter the wire . . . ”, the students quickly called out words which she accepted as being correct for the other two gaps (brighter and more were accepted). Why did they struggle to break out of their silence, and why did things fall into place once the first gap had been filled with a suitable word? Maybe it was because a “sentence clozure” exercise like this one wasn’t as easy as it might have appeared! And also because the students’ English was so limited they really struggled to make sense of the sentence. Yet one clue was enough for many to come up with correct guesses.

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The 9D’s Prompted by her experiences yesterday with the 9C’s, Nomzamo went up to the chalkboard and wrote the following sentence with spaces for the students to fill in: In the olden days, the kettles were heated from using . nowadays they are heated from

using

and

Once she had finished, Nomzamo began to circulate amongst the groups and it didn’t take her long to realise that the students were unclear about what was expected from them. She then explained in Xhosa what they should be doing. After a few minutes, Nomzamo called upon the students to give their answers to the first question. This is what some students proposed: “In the olden days kettles were heated from fire using wood. Nowadays, they are heated (second one left blank).’ Realising their confusion, from electricity using Nomzamo then tried again with a modified sentence so that the students had to choose instead between two words: “In the olden days kettles were heated from outside/inside, . . . , etc.” Faced with a more direct cue they were then able to offer a correct answer. Talking together after the lesson, we agreed that episodes like this illustrated once again how the students struggled to interpret and then express themselves in English. Not only that, but how we (as science teachers) were not going to find it easy to play at being language teachers! We were reminded of this later on in the lesson when Nomzamo asked them the following question (hoping that they would say – “an element”): Nomzamo: What’s inside a kettle? Students: (Calling out together) Water . . . Finally, another problem which revealed itself on a number of occasions was that many students had difficulty in copying down chalkboard notes without making mistakes. This seems to be a further consequence of their poor L2 writing skills. While a missing preposition here or there hardly matters, some of the weaker students also tended to struggle to write quickly and the more pressure they were under to finish the chalkboard notes, the more likely they were to make mistakes. As with their homework books, their classwork books also reveal at times a jumble of half-completed or poorly written notes. One is left wondering how much the weaker students are really able to make sense of what they have written in English when they try to revise from their own notes. 4.12. SOME THOUGHTS IN CLOSING

To close on a more positive note, Nomzamo’s own growing awareness and sensitivity towards the language problems of her students was, as we shall see in 120

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Chapter 6, one of the key areas in which she began to rethink and modify her existing classroom practices. For instance, as the weeks passed she began to explore ways of resolving her “dilemma of code-switching” by adopting a more mixedlanguage approach in her teaching; she began to use the STAP text more as a reading resource (and encourage student reading) and tried to persuade students that they could speak out in class. In so doing, Nomzamo began to feel her way into the unfamiliar role of a language teacher in the science classroom. On this level alone, the introduction of an innovation such as STAP clearly presents a significant (if not profound) challenge to a teacher and her students to find ways of cutting through the Gordian knot of the double bind which entangles both parties in conventional patterns of pedagogic practice. As experiences during the STAP trialling exercise revealed, this is no simple matter at all. While Nomzamo willingly came to explore ways of teaching which were far more supportive of active student participation and inquiry, and in so doing free herself (as it were) from her side of the bind, the same could not be said for her students. As the trialling exercise proceeded it became increasingly evident that a significant constraint on change lay in the students’ inability to break free of the passive role which, it seems, years of schooling had conditioned them to accept. The argument presented here is that this inability is in no small part because they were being challenged to shift behaviour in ways which were in conflict with cultural expectations of what they ought to do in their role as learners. In addition to this, language also plays an absolutely pivotal role in Nomzamo’s classroom – with the students’ poor L2 communicative skills raising yet more barriers which served to limit and constrain their efforts at more self-directed learning. As was noted at the beginning of this chapter, there is, in a language situation like that at Yengeni High, a complex web of linguistic and socio-linguistic factors at play, factors which simply cannot be ignored when introducing change into a township science classroom. Finally, it seems that a useful way of conceptualising the introduction of innovation and change in the science classroom, is in terms of a dual process which simultaneously involves both the teacher and student. As Nomzamo struggled with shifting her own practice, she faced perhaps the greater challenge of encouraging her students to accept that they could step out of the shadows, and come out from behind the curtain walls of silence to play a more active role in their own learning. NOTES 1 Talbert and McLaughlin (1993). 2 See, for example, Black and Atkin (1996), Macdonald and Rogan (1990), Wildy and Wallace

(1995). 3 Prophet (1995). 4 Hand et al. (1997). 5 In using this term, rather than the more familiar “home language”, “mother tongue” or “first language”, we take our lead from Desai and Taylor (1997). They suggest that primary language is preferable because it acknowledges that a person’s linguistic repertoires are not only determined by

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CHAPTER 4 birth, that there are choices involved which are both circumstantial and individual. Hence a person’s primary language can change. 6 We are mindful of the fact that adopting elements of a “cultural perspective” towards teaching and learning is fraught with considerable difficulties. No more so than in our South African context, where under apartheid, the use of “cultural terms” to legitimise forms of discrimination and social control, did much to discredit them as terms for serious analysis. Therefore, while accepting of the “dynamic and historically rooted way in which beliefs and values are shaped, used and change in economic and political contexts” (Millar, 1984, p. 306), we do however hold to the belief that an approach which seeks to unpack (rather than ignore) the socio-cultural context to teaching and learning can only add to our understanding of the complex dynamic of interrelated influences at work in any classroom. 7 Indeed, in Chapter 6 the issue of language will emerge as one of the key themes around which Nomzamo came to rethink her own practice. 8 Here we take our lead from the work of Lanham (1980). 9 As noted before, on three days in the nine-day cycle, Nomzamo teaches five classes, which can mean seeing up to 300 students in one day. 10 Hilsdon (1997). 11 For research which highlights the important role naming strategies play in student-teacher interactions, see Barkhuizen, G.P. (1996). Using names in the classroom: Elicitation of a novice English teacher. Southern African Journal of Applied Language Studies, 4(1), 32–56. 12 Hilsdon (1997). 13 Hargreaves (1994) reminds us that guilt is a central emotional preoccupation for teachers. He distinguishes between guilt traps and guilt trips. When it comes to guilt traps, he differentiates between persecutory guilt – which arises from the accountability demands and bureaucratic controls i.e., “tasks failed to be completed” as he puts it; and depressive guilt – experienced by teachers whose purposes are strongly shaped by the commitment to care (particularly for young children). We believe that Nomzamo’s “dilemma of not knowing” is a guilt trap of no small proportion. 14 On a number of occasions in this book, the pedagogical problems which Nomzamo faces will be couched in terms of dilemmas of practice (as in our use here of “the dilemma of not knowing”). In doing this, we draw on the work of Magdalene Lampert (1985) who argues that some of the classroom problems which a teacher faces are better managed than solved. [Lampert, M. (1985). How do teachers manage to teach? Perspectives on problems of practice. Harvard Educational Review, 55(2), 178– 194.] As noted by Carter (1992), teaching dilemmas by their very nature do not lend themselves to direct and decisive courses of action. Instead, they are paradoxes for teachers in that a chosen course of action may simultaneously correct one problem and prompt others. Consequently, Lampert’s notion of the teacher as a dilemma manager seems a particularly apt way of describing how someone like Nomzamo copes with the daily demands of teaching in her classroom. 15 Interestingly enough, it was the girls who tended to keep the peace. This was often demonstrated in the 9D class, where the boys were a distinct minority – 12 out of a class of 53 students. If the boys attempted to disrupt the class, some of the more vocal girls would turn on them and quite emphatically tell them to be quiet. The observation that girls tend to dominate in the junior classes (they are also generally more vocal than the boys) raises some interesting issues about gender roles, particularly as research from elsewhere on the continent (Kenya) has reported on girls having to cope with aggressive behaviour from boys. [Ndunda, M. and Munby, H. (1991). ‘Because I am a woman’: A study of culture, school, and futures in science. Science Education, 75(6), 683–699.] 16 While similar “live and let live” relationships between high school students and their teachers has been noted elsewhere (Willis, 1977), we would concur with Fullan (1991) that such implicit bargaining – which allows some students to be left alone as long as they do not disrupt the classroom – serves to protect the status quo using power to form a negative pact (as he puts it) which makes it harder for a teacher to enact changes in her classroom. [Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labour. Westmead: Saxon House.] 17 When examining student deviance in secondary schools, Davies (1984) developed the notion of “scripts” and “typescripts” to describe the sources of students’ behavioural styles, particularly in explaining the way that students positioned themselves within various gender “roles” etc. The notion of “typescript” which is seen as a kind of discourse, in that it is the broad set of expectations attached

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THE ROLE OF STUDENTS AT A TIME OF INNOVATION AND CHANGE to a social position – like teacher (or student). A script on the other hand is a much more individualised and possible experimental statement, which acts to say something to oneself or others about who you are and where you stand at a particular moment. 18 In similar vein, Namuddu (1989) talks about a “cycle of regression”, in which students begin to define their own ability in similar terms to that of their teachers’ low expectations. [See Namuddu, K. (1989). Teaching and learning biology in secondary schools in Kenya. Studies in Science Education, 17, 57–98.] 19 The first time that one of the students asked an unsolicited question during observations of the trialling exercise was on the 16th of April, in the fifth week of the programme. The question (asked in Xhosa) concerned whether or not a video camera worked off batteries and/or the mains supply. 20 See the discussion on corporal punishment in Chapter 2, Section 2.6. 21 The Threshold Project reports on research work in primary schools in Bophuthatswana (one of the pre-1994 self-governing states). Undertaken in the mid to late eighties, it was part of the Primary Education Upgrading Programme (PEUP) which was working at the time on the reform of lower primary schooling throughout the region. The Threshold Project remains one of the most seminal projects of its kind undertaken in Southern Africa. 22 See, for example, Macdonald and Rogan (1990) and Prophet (1990, 1995). 23 Akatugba and Wallace (1999, p. 313). 24 Scollon and Scollon (1995). 25 Fuller and Snyder (1991). 26 Yoder and Mautle (1991, p. 12, cited in Tabulawa, 1997) argue that modern, formal primary education should be understood, at least in part, as carrying something of the traditional role of the extended family in the teaching, socialising and disciplining of young children. 27 For example: – In the Caribbean: George, J. and Glasgow, J. (1988). Street science and conventional science in the West Indies. Studies in Science Education, 15, 109–118. – In Nigeria: Okebukola, P.A.O. and Jegede, O.J. (1990). Eco-cultural influences on students’ concept attainment in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27(7), 661–669. – In New Zealand: McKinley et al. (1992). – In Botswana: Prophet (1990). 28 Jegede and Okebukola (1991). 29 Bray et al. (1986). 30 Examples of normative goals are the accepted standards and beliefs governing correct behaviour; whereas creating unity and consensus are examples of expressive goals. For an interesting description of traditional education from a feminist perspective, the reader is referred to Ndunda, M. and Munby, H. (1991) – for reference, see note 15 supra. 31 Fuller and Snyder (1991) and Prophet and Rowell (1993). 32 Chapman and Snyder (1992) and Prophet and Rowell (1990). 33 Chapman et al. (1993), Heyneman (1984) and Kouwenhoven (1997). 34 Arthur (1998). 35 This has been noted by Prophet (1990). In this regard, Nomzamo was no different to many other teachers. 36 Based on her observations of the classroom practices of a number of American science teachers, Brickhouse (1989) makes the point that in some classes the rate of coverage was so fast that students did not have time to formulate questions, and even if they did have questions they may be afraid that the question will be deemed inappropriate and they will be reprimanded for asking it. [Brickhouse, N.W. (1989). The teaching of the philosophy of science in secondary classrooms: Case studies of teachers’ personal theories. International Journal of Science Education, 11(4), 437–449.] 37 The fact that success in school science is by and large defined in terms of passing tests and exams is a typical feature of schooling throughout the world, and is well documented. See, for example:

– McRobbie, C. and Tobin, K. (1997). A social constructivist perspective on learning environments. International Journal of Science Education, 19(2), 193–208.

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CHAPTER 4 – Roth, W.-M., Boutonné, S., McRobbie, C.J. and Lucas, K.B. (1999). One class, many worlds. International Journal of Science Education, 21(1), 59–75. – Talbert and McLaughlin (1993). In our African context, the imperatives of external exams has been noted by, amongst others, Prophet (1990) and Cleghorn et al. (1989). 38 O’Sullivan’s (2004) research confirms the difficulties encountered by attempts to implement student-centred approaches. [O’Sullivan, M. (2004). The reconceptualisation of learner-centred approaches: A Namibian case study. International Journal of Educational Development, 24, 585–602]. 39 As Knamiller (1984, p. 77) so succinctly puts it: “. . . for certification is the way out of poverty, the union card for a modern sector, paying job.” [Knamiller, G.W. (1984). Linking school biology and community in developing countries. Journal of Biological Education, 18(1), 77–81.] For a discussion of the role of certification in schooling, see Ronald Dore’s (1976) seminal work: The diploma disease: Education, qualification and development. London: Unwin Educational. 40 Macdonald and Rogan (1990) make the same point in relation to the work of the SEP project (which we will have reason to discuss further in the next chapter). 41 Anamuah-Mensah (1998) describes traditional beliefs as being the meanings derived from taboos, folktales, initiation ceremonies and other traditional practices. They are a way of making sense of the causal linkages concerning phenomena such as sickness, death and other natural occurrences. [Anamuah-Mensah, J. (1998). Native science beliefs among some Ghanaian students. International Journal of Science Education, 20(1), 115–124.] 42 The lesson’s original title mistakenly suggested that a sangoma has the power to create and control lightning. The sangoma is in fact a kind of herbalist or medicine man who has no control over lightning at all. In the revised version of the STAP material, this heading was changed to: “What is lightning – Umtakati’s medicine or a part of nature?” In Xhosa tradition, umtakati are witches who have the power to use lightning for malevolent purposes (i.e., for killing people). Under some circumstances, a powerful witchdoctor (ixhwele) can also make lightning, but not for evil purposes; rather, the witchdoctor can use lightning in a “good fight” against an evil witch. 43 We would contend that the poor mathematical skills displayed by many of Nomzamo’s students has a major impact on their (in)ability to cope with science. Based on anecdotal evidence which emerged throughout the trialling exercise, we would go so far as to suggest that some children in her Grade 9 classes were close to being functionally innumerate, and many others displayed severely limited mathematical competencies. As always, these are complex issues, for students experience understandable difficulties in “boundary crossing” between real-world contextualised mathematical problems into more abstracted classroom ones, even when it might appear as if the classroom problem is couched in real-world terms. For instance, in one of other interviews, Jonathan shared this experience with Nomzamo by telling her: “. . . that group of boys I was talking to at the back – when you say to them, ‘A sweet costs 25c, so how much will eight sweets cost?’ They are able to figure it out and come up with the correct answer of R2. But when you ask them, ‘A kilowatt hour costs 25c, so how much will eight kilowatt hours cost?’ They are stumped . . . ´’ (19/5). 44 Studies focus on a number of topics: – The uses of reading and writing in the development of scientific understanding: Carre, C. (1981). Language teaching and learning: Science. London: Wardlock. – The role of language in science examinations: Johnstone, A. and Cassels, J. (1978). What’s in a word? New Scientist, 18 May 1978, 432–434. – The specific problems presented by the language(s) of scientific texts: Turk, C. and Kirkman, J. (1982). Effective writing. Improving scientific, technical and business communication. London: Spon. Sutton and Lemke’s work both cover many aspects of the role of language in the learning of science, for example: – Sutton, C.R. (1992). Words, science and learning. Buckingham: Open University Press. – Lemke, J.L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning and values. Norwood: Ablex. 45 See, for example, Lynch et al. (1985), Prophet (1990), and Wilkinson et al. (1987).

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THE ROLE OF STUDENTS AT A TIME OF INNOVATION AND CHANGE 46 Harrison (1973) and Strevens (1980) to name but two. 47 Clark (1998). 48 Austin (1991) and Young (1986). 49 Starfield (1990) suggests that one of the outcomes of language policy under Bantu Education,

which sought to reduce the role of English medium instruction, is that the English proficiency of at least two generations of teachers has been affected. This is evidenced in Ridge’s finding that most English teachers at the secondary school level in black schools are under qualified to teach English. [Ridge, E. (1990). Training teachers of English: getting to the root of the problem. Journal for Language Teaching, 24(2), 32–41.] 50 Mawasha (1986). 51 Jonathan’s own experiences over the eight years he shared laboratory facilities with colleagues for whom English was a second language confirm this. The reality of most science lessons, particularly at the junior secondary level, is that besides the specific terms and expressions of science for which the primary language lacks equivalent terminology, lessons are given almost exclusively in the primary language. 52 Similar findings have been reported from elsewhere in Africa – see Dlodlo (1999) in Zimbabwe, Cleghorn et al. (1989) in Kenya, and Reinhard (1996) in Malawi. [Reinhard, B. (1996). How does the medium of instruction affect the learning of chemistry? School Science Review, 78(283), 73–78.] 53 Here “mixed-language” refers to a teacher’s use of both English and primary language(s) in (mainly) verbal instruction (i.e., teacher-talk). Its use has been noted by researchers in other African countries, for example by Luutu (1996) in Uganda. 54 The whole issue of “code-switching” (which is a major strategy employed in mixed-language approaches) is dealt with extensively in Chapter 6. In Heugh et al. (1995, p. viii) it is defined as follows: “Code-switching means shifting from one code (i.e., language, dialect or language variety) to another between utterances or for a section of an utterance that is at least of sentence length”. [Heugh, K., Siegruhn, A. and Pludderman, P. (Eds.), Multilingual education for South Africa. Cape Town: Heineman.] Cleghorn and Dube (1998) in turn, describe code-switching as a voluntary action by bilingual teachers and learners, and serves a range of macro to micro socio-linguistic purposes, depending on the situation and the context. As they put it, code-switching is a choice as well as a resource for ensuring that meaningful communication takes place. Based on their research, they suggest that it serves three purposes: (1) to explain or clarify procedures to be followed, (2) to promote understanding of concepts and (3) to build an affective bridge between the school and home. [Cleghorn, A. and Dube, R. (1998). Code switching in mathematics lessons in Zimbabwe. In N.A. Ogude and C. Bohlmann (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics and Science Education. Pretoria: University of South Africa, pp. 121–125.] For a most useful overview of the topic of code-switching, which also provides a comprehensive list of references, see Martin, P.W. (1999). Close encounters of a bilingual kind: interactional practices in the primary classroom in Brunei. International Journal of Educational Development, 19, 127–140. For recent South African research, see Ncoko, S.O.S., Osman, R. and Cockcroft, K. (2000). Codeswitching among multilingual learners in primary schools in South Africa: An exploratory study. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 3(4), 225–241. 55 This interview was undertaken after the trialling exercise, when Nomzamo’s own instructional practice had shifted to include a considerable amount of code-switching. 56 For an overview of emerging language policy in South Africa, the reader is referred to Desai and Taylor (1997). 57 Cleghorn et al. introduce their concept of dual translation to describe the situation where many of the ideas taught in school via English do not have equivalents in the students’ primary language or culture. This means that the strategies required for understanding the content of instruction are more complex than usual; the mental load on teachers in relating the abstract to the concrete, and on students understanding new concepts, is surely much greater than when the cultural-linguistic gap between home and school is not so large. Indeed Rollnick and Rutherford (1996) suggest that L2 students experience a kind of “language duality” as they identify the home and school as being two separate worlds.

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CHAPTER 4 58 See Dawe (1983) for a more detailed discussion of this concept. [Dawe, L. (1983). Bilingualism and mathematical reasoning in English as a second language. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 14, 325–353.] 59 This is not to suggest that indigenous (African) societies were lacking in technological know-how. Dlodlo (1999) makes the interesting point that most of the technical vocabulary which was developed in sub-Saharan Africa before the arrival of Europeans has been lost because it has not been used since then, and that it is difficult to reconstruct because of an absence of written records. 60 The difficulty which L1 school students have with non-technical terms has been extensively researched by both Gardner (1980) and Cassels and Johnstone (1985). [Gardner, P.L. (1980). The identification of specific difficulties with logical connectives in science among secondary school students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 17(3), 223–229; Cassells, J.R.T. and Johnstone, A.H. (1985). Words that matter in science. London: Royal Society of Chemistry.] It has been confirmed in a L2 context by Marshall et al. (1991) [Marshall, S., Gilmour, M. and Lewis, D. (1991). Words that matter in science and technology. Research in Science and Technological Education, 19(1), 5–16]. As O’Toole (1992) points out, the major value of the research into non-technical vocabulary lies not in the actual members of the word lists produced, but rather in the light their results throw on the communication gap between teacher and student. Teachers use many words without thought, because they expect that students already understand them. [O’Toole, M. (1992). Both bridge and barrier: the potential and problems of science for the second language learner. Tesol in Context, 2(1), 13–17.] 61 Pickersgill and Lock (1991). 62 In a similar vein, Mori et al. (1976, cited in Taylor, 1995) did a comparative study of the effect of alternative connotations of the word speed amongst Thai and Japanese-speaking children. They found that because in Japanese the same word is used for fast and early, students confused the concept of speed twice as often as the Thai students. This led the authors to conclude that language has a significant impact on concept interpretation. They go on to suggest that the words themselves are not as important as their culturally applied connotations. [Taylor, P. (1995). The effect of culture on the learning of science in non-Western countries: The results of an integrated research review. International Journal of Science Education, 17(6), 695–704.] 63 See, for example: Bamgbose (1984), Collison (1974) and Ehindero (1980). 64 For some recent initiatives in this regard, see Dlodlo (1999) and Luutu (1996). 65 This point has been made in the context of other Anglophile countries – in Botswana by Fuller and Snyder (1991); in Kenya by Cleghorn (1992); and in Zimbabwe by Roller (1988). [Roller, C.M. (1988). Transfer of cognitive academic competence and second language reading in a rural Zimbabwean primary school. TESOL Quarterly, 22(2), 303–318.] 66 Desai and Taylor (1997). 67 Delpit (1988). 68 Based on Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) work, Edwards and Mecer (1987) take and elaborate on their conception of IRF as being the basic exchange structure in classrooms: an initiation by a teacher, which elicits a response from a student, followed by an evaluative comment as feedback from the teacher. As they put it, once seen it is impossible to ignore in any observed classroom talk. This exchange system has been used and adapted by others who have investigated classroom discourse. Mehan (1979) refers to this as initiation-reply-evaluation. [Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons: Social organisation in the classroom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press]. Fanselow (1987), who calls them moves, refers to them as solicit-response-reaction. [Fanselow, J.F. (1987). Breaking rules: Generating and exploring alternatives in language teaching. New York: Longman]. 69 This consequence of students’ poor L2 skills has been noted elsewhere. See, for example, Prophet and Rowell (1990). Bamgbose (1984) makes particular reference to the inability of L2 students to construct adequate sentences in English. 70 While it was not so evident amongst Nomzamo’s students, other studies have noted a tendency for L2 students to display a high level of frustration when trying to express themselves in English (Collison, 1974; Prophet and Rowell, 1990). 71 This is a good example of where in everyday language water can have heat energy, while in physics it cannot. From a physics perspective, Nomzamo is quite wrong – heat in physics is energy in transit due to a temperature difference, a distinction which is not normally made either by teachers (or their textbooks!) at the Grade 9 level in most classrooms throughout the world.

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THE ROLE OF STUDENTS AT A TIME OF INNOVATION AND CHANGE 72 This confirms findings of some of our earlier research (see Clark, 1993). 73 A similar point is also made by Diamondidis (1996). 74 This has been observed in other L2 contexts (see Rowell and Prophet, 1990). 75 See also Van Rooyen (1990). 76 Elsewhere in the world there is a small but growing body of research which has moved beyond conventional readability measures in its analysis of science texts. For instance, Gilbert (1989) and Vachon and Haney (1991) have analysed texts in terms of their structural and format complexities, and found them to make greater demands on students’ processing skills. [Gilbert, S.W. (1989). An evaluation of the use of analogy, simile and metaphor in science texts. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 26(4), 315–327; Vachon, M.K. and Haney, R.E. (1991). A procedure for determining the level of abstraction of science reading material. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28(4), 343– 352.] 77 Clark (1987, 1993). 78 A point made by, amongst others, Tobin and Gallagher (1987). 79 Here it is acknowledged that reading is a highly complex affair. In Reading Theory, the interactive reading model argues that reading is best conceived as an interactive process between reader and text. This model stresses the vital role of the reader as an active participant in the reading process, and suggests that the extent to which reading is successful depends upon a range of reader and text-related factors. 80 In the description of the STAP programme in Chapter 2, a commitment to produce written resources which could address the needs of L2 readers was presented as one of the cornerstones of the project’s work. 81 See Cleghorn (1992). 82 After the Yengeni High trialling exercise the STAP booklet underwent a comprehensive review which led (in places) to a fairly substantial reworking of parts of the text. Here the concern was not only with unclear or ambiguous text, but also with issues relating to visual literacy, i.e. the overall layout of the text, the suitability of diagrams, pictures, etc. 83 The extent to which illustrations help or hinder comprehension is of considerable importance. When developing the STAP material, attempts were made to integrate illustrations into the text to ensure they did not create additional learning difficulties. We were well aware that methods of reading and interpreting pictures have to be learnt by students. For instance, Melman’s (1993) research found that reading patterns revealed no evidence of comprehension or integration of text and graphics. [Melman, J. (1993). An evaluation of a visual design for ‘Science for All’ Grade 5. Unpublished report for the Independent Schools Science Materials Project. Johannesburg.] Melman’s data seems to confirm theories proposed by Reynolds and Baker (1987) that when both text and graphics (as adjunct visuals) are presented, comprehension is frequently no better than with text alone and frequently not as good as with visuals alone. [Reynolds, R.E. and Baker, D.R. (1987). The utility of graphic representation in text: some theoretical empirical issues. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 24(2), 167–173.] It appears as if Nomzamo’s students were struggling with precisely this problem – they found it extremely difficult (in the absence of guidance) to make use of the diagrams and the text as they went about their practical activities. 84 Clark (1998). 85 Johnson (1981) goes so far as to suggest that inaccessible background knowledge is the single most significant factor in reading comprehension. Trying to avoid this problem is a major challenge (and unavoidable tension) facing the development of common text materials which seek to be applicable across educational contexts. [Johnson, P. (1981). Effects on reading comprehension of language complexity and cultural background of text. TESOL Quarterly, 15(2), 169-181.] 86 Parker (1992). 87 Connor et al. (1994). 88 This seems to once again underscore the pivotal role which instruction plays in the development of students’ communicative competencies (be it in reading, writing or speaking) – students will not acquire these skills without the active guidance and support of their teacher. 89 The DRTA (directed reading and thinking activity) is an innovative form of comprehension exercise which is intended to encourage students to read for meaning. However it is structured differently

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CHAPTER 4 in that the format is inverted, with students having to read each question before being directed to seek out answer(s) in a specific part of the text. Our experiences at Yengeni High indicate that this is an extremely useful way of developing students’ comprehension skills.

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If we dwell only in the present . . . we rob ourselves of understandings derived from the past. Butt, Townsend and Raymond (1990, p. 260) 5.1. INTRODUCTION

In Chapters 3 and 4 we considered how factors ranging from school functionality, the occupational culture of fellow teachers, and students’ classroom practices all came to influence Nomzamo’s attempts to transform science teaching in her classroom. While conceding the pivotal role which a myriad of such factors play in influencing the development of a teacher’s curriculum and pedagogy, it should be remembered that they are all mediated by the teacher as person – for it is the teacher’s person, or self, who remains the final arbiter in determining what emerges as classroom practice. Implicit in this position is an acceptance that in order to understand something so intensely personal as teaching, it is critical that we know about the person the teacher is. Proponents of life history research such as Ivor Goodson,1 recognise the importance of the teacher’s self in understanding educational issues, and have called for a return to the use of personal biographies and life histories in studying education. A consequence of adopting an approach which considers the “teacher-asperson” is that it allows a shift away from having the teacher’s practice as the centre of research on teaching; a position which Goodson (1992) argues may falsely represent the “teacher-as-practice” (and teachers are certainly more than their practice) and lead to a focus on what is invariably for any teacher the most exposed and problematic aspect of their work. Instead the teacher needs to be approached not simply as a practitioner but as a striving, purposeful person – which implies that issues of class, gender, lifestyle and life cycle are all formative influences upon her and her teaching. Fullan and Hargreaves (1992) quite aptly sum this up in suggesting that: Many factors are important in the making of a teacher. Among them are the times in which teachers grew up and entered the profession, and the value systems and dominant educational beliefs that went with those times . . . Also important is the stage in life and career that teachers are at, and the effect this has on their confidence in their own teaching, their sense of realism, and their

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attitudes to change. The teacher’s sex is another factor, in particular the way that teaching and work in general for men and women are bound up with very different sorts of lives and interests. This view of the teacher as person has crucial implications for our understandings of change, professional development, and working relationships between teachers and their colleagues. (p. 36) By tracing a teacher’s life over time, it becomes possible to view the changes and underlying forces that influence the person at work. The study of teachers’ lives holds then the promise of developing our understanding of the socialising influence of a broad range of life experiences on their classroom practice. In this respect, the life history research of Goodson and his colleagues represents just one strand in what has become an extensive field of inquiry into teachers’ personal and professional lives.2 For instance, studies by Ball and Goodson (1985) and Sikes et al. (1985) consider how teachers perceive their career and how they react to changes in their job situation. With an emphasis also on the conditions under which teachers work, attention is paid to portraying the interaction of person and context over time, particularly the press of institutional and social structures which shape teachers’ professional lives. Several studies have sought to identify different patterns of phases in professional development, with the large-scale longitudinal study of Huberman and associates being a particularly well-known (and often cited) example.3 His interview study of 160 secondary school teachers in Switzerland examined collective aspects of teachers’ careers and has been particularly illuminating about the different trajectories which seem to typify many teachers’ life cycles. To the best of our knowledge, there is no equivalent life-cycle research amongst African teachers in township schools in this country. Thus, the extent to which the generalised findings of Huberman’s study (in particular the various career trajectories he proposes) can be usefully applied in our context remains unclear. Also, given the rapid expansion of African schooling in recent years, most teachers (particularly at the secondary school level) are still relatively inexperienced. Although it is pure conjecture on our part, we would argue that given the constraints under which township teachers operate, not least the disrupted/dysfunctional nature of schooling, it would come as no real surprise to find that following an initial stage of survival and discovery (mostly “painful beginnings”!) many teachers have entered into a state of what Huberman terms “bitter disengagement” at a relatively early stage of their careers. And that the “lassitude and fatigue” more normally associated with some teachers in late career may afflict no small number of Nomzamo’s quite inexperienced colleagues. This goes some way in explaining the seemingly low levels of morale and motivation which were described in Chapter 3. Measor (1985) and Sikes et al. (1985) characterise “critical incidents” as key events in an individual’s life around which pivotal decisions revolve – “like oases in the desert” (Woods, 1993, p. 3). Such critical incidents mostly take place during critical phases: 130

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It is during these periods of changing and choosing that critical incidents are most likely to occur. The incident itself probably represents the culmination of a decision-making process, crystallizing the individual’s thinking rather than being responsible for the decision. (Sikes et al., 1985, p. 58) Critical incidents are thus events which lead people to reconsider their choices and personal priorities in work as teachers, and as such challenge a teacher’s professional notion of self. Retrospectively, teachers will mention these moments as important for their professional development. The “biographical perspective” adopted by Kelchtermans and Vandenberghe (1994) acknowledges that teachers’ professional behaviour and its development can only be understood properly when situated in the broader context of a career and a personal life history. Their research, which emphasizes teachers’ subjective interpretations and the narrative nature of professional biographies, focuses on how the professional experiences of teachers result in the development of a sense of “professional self ” and what they term a “subjective educational theory”.4 Also avoiding a narrow definition of critical incidents, they too have reported how teachers often remember some past experiences in great detail and describe them as having had a significant influence on both self and professional development. Indeed, these experiences were often used by teachers to structure the telling of their career stories. In addition to critical incidents, Kelchtermans and Vandenberghe (1994) noted how teachers often mention specific individuals, or “critical persons”, who had an important impact on their professional biography – a finding which is supported by Nias’ (1985) work on reference figures and their influence on teachers’ self. Butt et al. (1990), who place a similar emphasis on teachers’ personal experiences, have explored the biographical nature of teachers’ knowledge through what they term “collaborative autobiography”.5 Their research illustrates how approaches to teaching are profoundly influenced by such factors as ethnic background, social class origins, and gender influences. They found that teachers’ own experiences of being a student in school were particularly formative, as were a range of professional experiences. Teachers in their studies repeatedly invoked previously encountered significant others (i.e., critical persons), past events (similar to the critical incidents discussed above) or relationships. The researchers suggest that teachers’ personal biographies not only influence their responses to context and opportunities, but also help frame their search for specific professional development.

5.2. THE ROLE OF SUBJECT COMMUNITIES

As noted by Hepburn (1996), there has been a great deal of reference in the educational literature in recent years to school cultures, teaching cultures and subject communities.6 Although the cultural unit has varied in this body of work, they all involve a network of strategies developed by a group or community sharing a common purpose. For instance, Hargreaves (1994) provides a sense of how 131

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teacher cultures serve as a frame of reference for practising teachers and at the same time provide community norms into which new teachers are socialised.7 An emerging area of study on teacher culture is the influence of the subject community on teacher practice. In the context of the more highly resourced schools8 found in First World countries, subject communities are normally associated with the school departments within which teachers work, and they have been identified as one of the defining influences on teachers’ professional lives.9 Whether considered in this sense or more broadly (for example, all those who teach, say, physical science), subject communities provide the teachers who participate in them with a community identity, pedagogical methods, and an appreciation for what is, and what is not, the subject. Given the nature of secondary schooling, which is largely organised around discrete subject or discipline-centred departments, prospective teachers are exposed to training at either college or university, which emphasises subject speciality. The subject community into which a novice secondary school teacher is socialised involves more than just an association with disciplinary content or subject matter; it also provides the professional community in which teachers become members. To a lesser or greater extent (depending on the context), teachers frequently become part of a socially cohesive community that provides support for members and a network for discussing content and sharing pedagogic strategies. The consequence may be that, as Siskin (1994) puts it: By virtue of the subjects they teach, these teachers bring distinct perspectives, procedures, values, and discourses of their fields into the school – and sometimes into conflict. Intellectually and professionally, as well as socially, they inhabit quite different worlds. What is evident from examining the differences among these subject cultures is that in many ways teachers have more in common with geographically distant colleagues in the same subject than they do with colleagues in the same school but an intellectually distinct department. As subject specialists, they share a sense of who they are, what they do, and what they need to do it. (p. 180, our emphasis) Little (1993), in her study of high school teachers in the United States, concluded that subject affiliation is a powerful component of professional community, particularly in academic subjects (such as science), which enjoy a higher status owing to their association with the university. In addition, status stems from the academic background of the teachers, the rigour of the high school curriculum and the perceived quality of the students who opt for these subjects. The extent to which academic teachers are proud of their subject specialisation, like their subject, and are loyal to it, entails what Little (1993) describes as a “consciousness of kind”. In a similar vein, Talbert (1995) also points to the power of the subject department in forging professional community; as far as he is concerned, while teachers’ professional lives form within “multiple embedded contexts”, the subject department remains the primary one. Out of much of this literature comes the claim that the “subject is not merely the stuff of curriculum, texts, and tests; it is more fundamentally a part of being 132

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a teacher” (Little, 1995, p. 184). Subjects are not “labels that can be peeled off” (Siskin, 1994, p. 184), but are rather fundamentally experienced by teachers as identities.

5.3. SUBJECT MATTER AND IDENTITY

Helms (1998) agrees that teachers acquire a sense of professional identity from affiliation with an academic subject area. Yet she takes this concept of identity further and suggests that science teachers feel a sense of personal identification with science – that is, their sense of what makes science special is rooted in their own sense of themselves as science teachers and individuals in the world. In her view, the self comes not just from what a person does, or his or her affiliations, but also from what a person believes, what a person values, and what a person wants to become. As she puts it: Just as communities of teachers provide an important context for understanding teaching, so, too, does the individual teacher. I underscore the fact that within professional communities, such as that of science teachers, there exists tremendous diversity in beliefs about the subject matter (e.g. religious, rational, aesthetic, creative), a sense of purpose and a sense of what is worth doing. That is, while the teachers’ thoughts and actions were conditioned by the social and cultural context, their search for meaning . . . came from their sense of themselves as individuals in the larger world. (Helms, 1998, p. 831) Ever mindful of Goodson’s concern about the dangers of falsely representing teacher-as-practice, Helms is still able to argue convincingly that there is a close relationship between subject matter and a teacher’s sense of self. As she recounts her research (on the “stuff taught” as she puts it) she came to realise that there was more to the story: There was an identity, as self, a person becoming that had much to do with what was happening in practice . . . there seemed to be a sense in which the teachers’ subject matter figured conspicuously in the teachers’ descriptions of themselves and their hopes for the future. (Helms, 1998, p. 832) Acknowledging that teachers define themselves in large part by what they do, and by the subject that they teach, is not to claim that subject matter is the sole or even primary determinant of a teacher’s identity. Clearly, identity is a multi-faceted and fluid concept; yet by focusing on the relationship between subject matter and a teacher’s sense of self, one can gain valuable insights into a teacher’s pedagogical commitments. Indeed, it would seem that Helms’ (1998) specific caution about the possible threat posed by integrated science courses to teachers’ hard-won sense of expertise (which is in turn inextricably bound to that person’s deeply felt sense of self) can be applied in a broader sense to many other situations in which they are being asked to shift their practice away from the familiar and well-worn routines of the past.10

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Having traversed, albeit briefly and somewhat selectively, the broad field of inquiry into teachers’ personal and professional lives, we can now turn our attention to Nomzamo and her own personal biography. The rest of this chapter is therefore devoted to an account which seeks to highlight those aspects of her career and life history which she articulates as having played (or plays) a major role in influencing her work as a science teacher. However before embarking on Nomzamo’s story, we wish to make the following point. While it is evident from the above discussion that there is a growing interest in the lives and work of teachers in the First World, the same cannot be said for the situation in developing countries. Osler (1997) suggests that overriding concerns about broader issues in educational development have led to an emphasis on large-scale quantitative research, and consequently teachers’ own perceptions of their lives and work has largely been overlooked.11 This is particularly the case in a subject area like science, where so little attention has been given to the question of teacher identities and the ways in which these impact on their work. 5.4. NOMZAMO – FROM STUDENT TO TEACHER

Where does Nomzamo’s story begin? Perhaps it is with the old, well-fingered black and white photograph she carries in her wallet – a memento of herself as an infant, one of those timeless studio snapshots taken during a visit to Durban in 1967. The just-out-of-focus image of a little girl, the first-born of the family. She is held on the lap of her proud young mother, who sits easily with the ghost of a smile on her face. Next to them is her father, leaning forward on his chair with his hands clasped tight against his knees, staring intensely at the camera. The Early Years (Grades 1–6) Nomzamo, the eldest of three children, was born in 1967 in a small rural town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It was here that she was to spend the first ten years of her life in the care of her paternal grandmother – separated from her parents who lived and worked in Natal.12 At the age of six, Nomzamo joined other local children and siblings from her extended family, at a nearby mission school. While only elusive memories of her early schooling remain, she recalls more vividly her brushes with sickness in 1973–74 and the ensuing round of visits to doctors, specialists and hospitals which followed each bout of ill health. Fortunately by the time she turned nine her health had improved dramatically and her final year at the mission school passed uneventfully. Plagued by periodic bouts of ill health, her parents decided in 1976 that Nomzamo and her brother and sister should move in with her maiden aunt, who lived in the town of Umtata, the capital of then “Transkei”.13 Separated from her parents for most of the time (the family were only reunited during school holidays), the next two years were an unhappy period of Nomzamo’s childhood. 134

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Blissfully unaware of the momentous events shaking other parts of the country,14 her two years at a local primary school seem marked by little more than memories of gymnastics and the excitement of the students’ participation in the celebrations which accompanied Transkei “independence” in 1977.15 Moving Town (Grades 7–8) Faced with growing pressure from their children (not least Nomzamo16), at the beginning of 1978 Nomzamo’s parents decided that the family would live together for the first time under one roof. Even though her father had a relatively well-paid job as a laboratory technician at a paint factory in Durban, he battled to secure accommodation for his family.17 Times were hard. For the next two years the family moved from place to place, sometimes renting a single room in a house or being forced to set up home in a backyard shack without running water or electricity (Nomzamo recalls five such moves).18 Fortunately, given her good academic record, Nomzamo had no difficulty in securing a place in Grade 7 at one of the local township primary schools. As with many of us, it is from this time of early adolescence that Nomzamo begins to recall more readily incidents from her schooling – and her teachers and their teaching begin to swim into sharper focus: I used to like my general science teacher when I was in Grade 7 and 8 because he was quite a disciplinarian. In fact I understood most of my subjects, so the only teacher I didn’t like was the geography teacher because he had a racial attitude towards me, he always referred to where I had been born . . . (indistinct) . . . so I didn’t like it, he was too tribalistic.19 So I didn’t like him just for that. Otherwise, the other teachers – I didn’t have problems with them because I didn’t have a problem in understanding what they were teaching. Besides this unpleasant brush with prejudice, Nomzamo seems to have spent a relatively unexceptional two years at the school. Based on her memories of the place, it seems to have been a fairly typical township higher primary school – the classes were not excessively large (around 40 students in size) nor the workload for a student of her ability too demanding. She recalls how her academic performance was good in all subjects except Afrikaans, which she hadn’t been taught in the Transkei. Being something of an outsider meant that she managed to stay out of trouble most of the time. However, in common with other African schools, discipline was harsh and not always fairly administered. As Nomzamo recalls an incident in which she feels she was unjustly beaten, one can sense the emergence of a strength of character (and a keenly developed sense of right and wrong) which is a quality she carries with her to this day: And in primary school I was caned just because the class was making noise and unfortunately I wasn’t making noise because I couldn’t even speak Zulu! So, I was just quiet in class, and all the kids were making noise because they could speak Zulu, they were Zulu speakers. And there I was stuck, not speaking Zulu 135

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and I would only talk to my friends and also not very loud because I didn’t want them to laugh at my . . . the way I spoke. So I would be quiet most of the time. And the teacher came in and just said, “Everyone on the desk!” and we were caned on the back, on the bottoms, we lie on the desk on our stomach and caned just like that . . . And I was so angry because I never made noise in class, but then I told him that okay, if I’m going to get caned for not having made noise, then I’ll take it to be my duty to write down all those who are making noise and I will give you the names, whether you want them or not. Because I’m not going to stand it for being caned for something I didn’t do. So I then decided to take on the responsibility of writing down all those who were making noise and giving them to the teacher to see what . . . because I just didn’t want to be punished again. And I told that class as well, that this is what I’m going to do because I’m not going to stand being caned for you, because I’m not making any noise in class. New Beginnings – The Seminary (Grades 9–10) Nomzamo’s life changed quite dramatically at the beginning of 1980 when her father decided to leave his job and enter the Christian ministry. The family packed up their belongings once again and left for the Theological Seminary, which was to be their home for the next couple of years. This career change entailed considerable financial sacrifice and Nomzamo’s mother returned to dressmaking as a way of generating an income. Although times were hard, the family was by no means destitute and her parents were able to scrape together sufficient money to ensure that they lived comfortably enough. As she once said, “for the first time we were in an environment more conducive to a good family life, so to say – unlike the kind of life we’d had before.” And in other ways too it was an enriching time for the family. The early 1980s were still the days of grand apartheid and the seminary was unusual in that it was one of a handful of non-racial institutions in the country tolerated by the National Party government. This gave Nomzamo the opportunity, shared by few other South Africans at the time, of being able to live in a community which drew together people from across the racial divides. Her experience of living there has undoubtedly left its mark – evidenced today not only in her command of English (which was very much the lingua franca of the seminary), but perhaps at a more deeply personal level, in the ease with which she relates to people from different backgrounds. That was the first time in my life where I had a white neighbour, white neighbours almost all over, and we even had people from Namibia. So it wasn’t only about race, also seeing people from other countries as well, trying to learn their language and how they live in their areas and so on. Sharing these experiences, so it was very much enriching. I think if a child is exposed to that environment early in life, then the child grows with an open mind . . .

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Unfortunately their move to a new home coincided with another bout of ill health. This time Nomzamo went down with scoliosis – a debilitating back illness which plagued her for the next two years, and cast a shadow over her schooling (she missed almost the entire first half of Grade 9). Although she felt that the township secondary school she was attending was better than many others in the area, Nomzamo is left with few positive memories of the place: I don’t have anyone standing out, except my English teacher. She was quite good. But the science teacher, she didn’t impress me. The biology teacher? I hated her – she was abusive. She’s the one with the potato story. And then beyond that, our science teacher [in Grade 10] – he was an alcoholic. He was teaching us maths and science, he wouldn’t come to school for the whole week. Then the following week when he’s back, he’s not very keen. The “potato story” is worth relating, because it is yet another example of Nomzamo recalling being on the receiving end of unfairly administered corporal punishment: Ja, I always remembered it. In secondary school we were caned once for not bringing a potato to the biology lesson, where potatoes were going to be used for a test on starch in a biology lesson. And my friend and I decided to share a potato and cut it into half and have half-half. Because we had seen that the experiment doesn’t require a whole potato anyway. All you need is to put a drop of the thing and see if the colour changes. So we said, okay why not share the potato, then if I didn’t bring mine. So we cut the potato into two. And the teacher came in and we had half each and she caned me for not having brought my potato and my friend for having agreed to cut her potato for me (laughs). So, we were caned for that which I thought wasn’t necessary really. Even a potato peel would have served the purpose – why bring a whole bag of potatoes? (Later) I still feel it wasn’t necessary; maybe I was wrong in a way . . . (indistinct), but there was just no need for it. And in actual fact five potatoes would have served the purpose, for the whole class. Instead of each one, we were about sixty, each one bringing a potato to be wasted at the end of the period! During her Grade 10 year, Nomzamo’s father began talking about the possibility of her changing schools once again, to a boarding school. As she recalls it, there were a number of reasons for this. On one hand, he was something of a self-made man who had been forced by circumstances to leave school early and complete his own Matric by correspondence; so, not surprisingly, like so many other people of his generation, he placed a high value on education and was determined, within the limits of what the family could afford, to round off his daughter’s education in the best possible way.20 But he was also a strict, highly religious man whose enthusiasm for boarding school was fuelled just as much by a desire to see a high-spirited young woman kept away from the negative (social) influences of the township as anything else – “away from the boys!”, as Nomzamo once laughingly said. As the year progressed so his enthusiasm for Illovo Seminary grew (a singlesex boarding school with a non-racial staff and a reputation for achieving good 137

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Matric results). It was fortunately a choice that met with his daughter’s approval, although not exactly for the same reasons: I liked Illovo simply because [of] the girls that didn’t cut their hair! It was why I wanted to . . . (laughs), so as a child I had completely lively reasons for going over [to the school]. I was just tired of cutting my hair. I wanted to go to a school where I could plait my hair and grow it long. So, I didn’t see it as a best school, I just liked it for not cutting hair! (Laughs again.) Nomzamo wrote and duly passed the school’s entrance exam, and a relieved father saw her off in January 1982 to begin the final leg of her secondary education. Illovo (Grades 11–12) Nomzamo talks about her time at Illovo with a degree of ambivalence. For a start, attending a boarding school so late in her school career was undoubtedly a bit of a shock: I’ve had happy memories and also bad memories. Illovo had its worse times and its good time. What was nice about Illovo was that the schooling was okay. But the place where the school was built, it was in the middle of the forests, sort of very remote. If you looked around, you saw no houses, just trees and hills, you know . . . very rural [her emphasis]. So on a Sunday afternoon, after lunch we would sit there and be so bored to death! (Laughing.) And you would look around and Sundays were particularly boring and then at three o’clock it was a moment of silence where we just had to be quiet, no noise – “quiet time”, we didn’t see the need for a quiet time then. Why should we be quiet? Some of things were really unnecessary. But on the positive side, Illovo was in educational terms clearly a “cut above” the township schools she was used to. As she once put it: “. . . Illovo was much more orderly, a lot of order – you had to stick to time. This time you have to be in this place, that kind of thing”. The non-racial composition of the staff also exposed her to teachers from different backgrounds; for example, in science she was taught by a number of expatriate teachers: Nomzamo: I had a lot of science teachers in [Grades] 11 and 12; my teachers were coming and going! One time we had a lecturer from the University of St Christopher. Oh, an American who just talked and talked, and you wouldn’t understand what he was saying. So, we were with him for something like six months, then he went away and we had another American again, if I’m not mistaken, who stayed for a while and left. And finally, we had Miss Zuma who was very good. So she . . . she was good! Although she was soft spoken, sometimes we wouldn’t really make out what she was saying. Jon: What was it she did . . . the way she taught, which impressed you? Nomzamo: The way she taught . . . I think if I can remember well, it was just the usual way I would say. Like, experiments were done, results are analysed, conclusions are drawn, that kind of a thing. And then if 138

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we cannot do the experiments, the practicals, then she would explain things to us. Then again, questions would be asked for us to respond to. Jon: Did you like science at school? Was it a subject which you enjoyed or . . . ? Nomzamo: (Pause) . . . Yes, I loved it. Because I . . . (trails off) Jon: Physics and chemistry? Nomzamo: I think I like physics more than chemistry. Because I found that in chemistry one had to try and remember a lot of things, and of which I didn’t have much memory. So with chemistry, chemistry was quite . . . a problem for me, but physics wasn’t that bad. Her experience of living at the Theological College also helped her when it came to the Illovo’s policy regarding the use of English – a policy which was, at the time, fairly common in rural schools21 and in part a response to the multilingual composition of the student body: I was never taught science in any vernacular language. I’ve always been taught science in English. I’ve never been taught any content [subject] in vernacular; it has always been in English. Even the lady who was Xhosa – Ms. Neer, she taught us in English, she . . . and in any case she wouldn’t dare teach in Zulu at Illovo, it just had to be in English or else you were out of the gate. Anyway, because we had Xhosa speakers, Sotho speakers, so we had to stick to a common language. For ourselves, we were told to speak English from 6 o’clock on Sunday afternoon until Friday three o’clock. We would also be punished – clean the toilets or paint – for not sticking to the language rule. I think that helped in a way because . . . the only way to learn a language is by using it. If you don’t use a language you end up forgetting it, even if it is your mother tongue and you are not using your mother tongue you end up losing it so . . . the only way you can learn a language is by using it. But then again, people have their reservations about that, but why English? What’s the point and all that stuff, why not an African language? The reality is, you definitely need English. Yes, you need the mother tongue, you need to be able to converse in mother tongue, but in terms of the academic world it’s so full of English. Yet in some other respects there were aspects of schooling which were painfully familiar: And the strictness was sometimes too much. Yes, we were beaten of course . . . It was homework things, if you didn’t do your homework. If you were late for studying. The cane and sjambok [a kind of leather whip] were used. Even the gateman was one who walked around when it’s study time to see if everyone is in class. If he saw you outside, he would chase you with a sjambok . . . Mr. Booi, our maths teacher, he didn’t do much [beating], he would just say things to you which would make you feel bad and then you . . . (laughs) wouldn’t like to do it [the wrong thing] again. At times, he never said it to 139

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me personally, he would joke with some sensitive things. Like if you make a mistake and you say the wrong thing and then he make a joke about it. So . . . as a result, other kids didn’t want to speak when it was his period. Because if you give wrong answer, he make a joke of it. So rather keep quite. He was very clever actually, he did medicine up to fourth year I think and then he left. He was studying part time at the University of Natal I think. He would write a test and get 98% and come back and say: “The lecturer just didn’t want to give me 100%, otherwise I got all of the things right”. He used to drink a lot. I don’t know what it is with these geniuses they end up . . . they don’t get far in life. With her final Matric exams approaching, Nomzamo started to think about what it was she wanted to do next. As with many other people who end up teaching, it was by no means her first choice as career – “I wanted to be . . . I’m not sure exactly, but in the medical profession, not in the teaching profession – either nursing, or anything in the line of medicine”, as she once told Jonathan. When it came to making the choice, she received little help or advice from the school: There was no guidance, it was the content subjects. And then library, because they wanted us to read as much as possible – but no career guidance whatsoever. Each one just wanted to do whatever they felt like doing, but we were not guided. In any event, the decision was taken out of her hands by her performance at the end of Grade 12, which effectively limited her options when it came to further study.22 Even today, Nomzamo struggles to hide her disappointment with the chain of events which she believes led to her obtaining such poor Matric results, in particular the Illovo principal’s blunder – entering her students for examinations that were set by the most demanding examining board in the country.23 We wrote an exam which we were not prepared for, we wrote a JMB exam, in a class where we were taught on NSC standard. So, it was really a very chaotic situation with Mrs. Khumalo and her rules. Mrs. Khumalo was our principal. So we got those bad results, and when we looked at the NSC papers we could see that we would have passed with very good results and got to university with Matric NSC exams. So, we were stuck with those bad results. So it was my results which were not good enough for University entrance, so I had to go to College. And in fact I wanted to repeat Grade 12, but my father refused. He said, “No ways! You are not going to school, you are going teaching”. I said, “I don’t want to be a teacher! I hate it, I just can’t do it!” He said, “You go there; when you are there you will change your mind. You might find that you like it, and you might find that afterwards you get even other opportunities which you never thought of”. Her father had his way and with his words echoing in her ears – “Teaching will open many doors for you” – a somewhat reluctant Nomzamo headed off at the beginning of 1984 to Ndlovu College, a large co-educational teacher training college in the heartland of Natal. 140

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“One Foot in the Door” – Ndlovu College Like many of her colleagues, Nomzamo came to teaching almost by default; yet unlike many of them, her experiences at teacher training college proved critical in providing her with the motivation and sense of vocation which sustains her to this day. Not that it was easy at first. While she was able to secure a place at Ndlovu College, getting into a STD (Senior Teachers Diploma) stream was not that straightforward given her poor Matric results. Once again, Nomzamo’s “fighting spirit” came to the fore: In actual fact, I wanted biology and maths. But biology was full, so the only class it wasn’t full was science, but we [Nomzamo and her school friend] were told it was full, and it had seven students and they said it was full! So we came in and we were the last two; so we were nine in total and they were saying that it was full. So we managed to squeeze ourselves into that class which they didn’t want us to go in because they thought seven was enough. In actual fact we were taken for PTD [Primary Teachers’ Diploma] junior (laughs). But then when we were inside [the College] we said, “No ways, we are not going to do that, we wanted to do STD!” And the rector was saying, “You can’t do anything else, your results are so poor!” And we told him that you put us there [STD] and if we fail in June, you chase us out of your College, but we are telling you, we are not getting anything less than 65%! And so he was saying, “You seem so sure of yourselves!” and we said, “Yes, we are sure of ourselves because we wrote an exam which we were not prepared for, we wrote a JMB exam, in a class where we were taught on NSC standard”. So, we managed to persuade the rector until he said, “Okay, go into the STD class with maths and physics”. And he’s saying, “I’m definitely chasing you out [if you don’t get good results]”. And we said, “Fine! You’ll see at the end of the semester”. At the end of the semester we took our results to the rector, we showed him . . . He’d even forgotten about us (she laughs again). He said, “No, I can see that you are serious, and you meant what you were saying”. It seems that “one foot in the door” was all that Nomzamo needed. Once she had settled into the STD science and mathematics class, it didn’t take her long to realise that teaching could be a more attractive career than she had at first ever thought possible. As she put it: It was then at college that was very much a turning point in my life. When I was at college I started looking at things differently from when I was at high school. So high school, really I didn’t even associate myself with teaching, so it didn’t mean anything. But then I was at college, I then realised that okay, this [teaching] is going to be my life. What brought about this change in attitude? As Nomzamo reminisces about her pre-service training at Ndlovu, it becomes clear that she was inspired by the teaching of a number of her lecturers, who more than any of her school teachers 141

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played an absolutely pivotal role in shaping the way she came to define herself as a science teacher. Nomzamo: The people who stand out mostly, who stood out at the time, maybe they still do even now, were my lecturers at college who . . . First of all, I went into teaching not by choice. So they really made me to like it more. The way they taught, they made maths and science very interesting and they made it to look simple – which then became my mission; that I will have done a good job if I could make kids realise that science is not for the highly gifted, but it is for the hardworking. And then I sort of took on that mission that I want to make kids like science as a teacher. And I want to try and simplify it to them as much as possible, to make them understand it more. So hopefully . . . I will have more students taking science afterwards, so I should make an impact on the way in which they look at science. And all of that came out of my lecturers at college and when I started teaching, I wasn’t teaching far from the College, so I kept contact with my lecturers at college, so if I needed things which my lab didn’t have at school – because it was a fairly new school – so I would go to college and I would get stuff from John Smith who was the PTD lecturer who then also taught us in course two [i.e., her second year of study]. Jon: So he was the inspiring teacher? Nomzamo: Yes, he and the maths lecturer – Mrs. Williams. Jon: Can you remember anything about the way they taught which was different to the way you were taught at school? Nomzamo: John was very good at improvisation to start with. And he related things to the real world, more than just being science out there, like stuff which only in the lab. He was more into other things and he would simplify things so it would make things so simple that . . . he would demystify things. Comments like this give us insights into the ways in which Nomzamo has come to define key elements of her professional notion of self. Given what one senses as being her extreme disappointment at performing so badly in the Matric exams, it is perhaps not at all surprising that she proclaims her mission (as she puts it) to be one of wanting to show students that “science is not for the highly gifted, but it is for the hardworking”. Yet more than this, what seems really significant about the way science was taught and presented by her lecturers at the college is that it encouraged Nomzamo to develop a much broader appreciation for the whole enterprise of science. This in turn has inspired her to conceptualise her role as a science teacher in other than purely instrumental terms – which is evidenced when she talks about wanting to “make an impact on the way in which they [the students] look at science”. Indeed a willingness to seek out opportunities which will contribute to her personal growth as a science teacher is perhaps the most enduring legacy of her college days. 142

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Nomzamo’s first year at Ndlovu College was also marked with personal tragedy. In March her father died after a short illness and the family was thrown back into financial hardship. There was no money for her college fees and she faced an uphill struggle to secure funding for the rest of the year. Once again, her sense of determination saw her through the immediate crisis: In my first year I had nothing, I would write to Anglican churches and to ask for people to sponsor me. I was very determined to get somewhere in life, so I would never see tragedy as the end of the world. So I would write to various people and ask for whatever assistance they can give. And fortunately people did respond. I even wrote to Bishop Tutu24 one time and he sent me a cheque of about R300. That’s how I paid for my fees in my first year. Interlude – Nomzamo and the Politics of the Day . . . Against the backdrop of a worsening political climate and an increasingly disrupted education system,25 Nomzamo was fortunate in that her own schooling was almost entirely free of politically motivated disturbances. This is in part coincidental – she went to school in a part of the country which was relatively free of unrest until the mid-1980s (by which time she had reached Ndlovu College); and once she had been sent off to a rural boarding school she was even further removed from any trouble.26 As she recalls those times: It was hardly disrupted. Like at Illovo, we never had disruptions, things went . . . even when things were happening [elsewhere]. Ja, because we were out there “in the bush”, so we didn’t even know what was happening around; we hardly had time to watch TV and see what was happening . . . and during those days, things were not very much reported [in the press] so, we were just in our own world, not knowing what was going on. As she came from a family in which neither of her parents showed any particular interest in politics, it was only at college that she began to learn more about the political situation in the country – “I only heard about the Soweto killings of 1976 when I was at college, of which kids at others schools knew about it much earlier on . . . ”, she once remarked. Even in the more politically charged atmosphere at the College (particularly in her third year in 1986), Nomzamo chose to keep out of any direct involvement in political activities and her pragmatic response to politically motivated disruptions was probably shared by no small number of her fellow students: I’ve always avoided such confrontational situation. Because even at college when I saw that things were getting out of hand, I would just pack my bag and go home. Because I didn’t want to be chased around by [police] dogs, it wasn’t a pleasurable thing, even if it was for the struggle! So I (laughs) . . . In any case I felt we [i.e., black people] needed to prove ourselves to the racist whites; that we can be better people than what they think. At the end of 1986 Nomzamo completed her three-year STD, and graduated from the college with a diploma which qualified her to teach mathematics and science 143

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up to the junior secondary level. Following her father’s death, her mother had moved from the Theological Seminary to a small house in one of the sprawling townships which surround the city of Pietermaritzburg in Natal. Mindful of her duty to help support her mother and her two school-going siblings, Nomzamo began looking for a post in the area and it was not long before she had secured a job at a school close to her mother’s home. A Novice Teacher – Amanzi High In January 1987, Nomzamo began teaching at Amanzi High, a recently opened secondary school. While the expression, “being thrown in at the deep end” tends to sum up the experiences of most novice teachers, for Nomzamo things were further complicated by the fact that when she joined the school she was the only staff member with a qualification in science. Because of this, the principal had no hesitation in assigning her classes in Grade 10 as well (i.e., a year higher than she was qualified to teach).27 As she recalls those days: Nomzamo: I didn’t really [get any help] . . . because I was the only science teacher at school anyway. Jon: The HOD [Head of Department]? Nomzamo: No, the HOD was a history person. So it was that thing of someone heading science, history and whatever, we were struggling for a big school. So, I couldn’t get help from him either. The HODs didn’t really know what they were doing. It was a case of being given a number of subjects [to look after]. They couldn’t really help in as far as subject matter or things related to subjects were concerned. He could only help in history which is what he specialised in. Ja . . . basically I was all by myself in terms of the school. While all teachers have to develop strategies which will allow them to cope with working in relative isolation,28 Nomzamo found herself having to deal with the additional burden of being the only science teacher at Amanzi High. This means that there was simply no one within the school to whom she could turn for help or advice when faced with subject-related difficulties. Having to muddle through on one’s own during those first crucial months in the classroom may be seen by some teachers as no more than an unavoidable part of the “rite of passage” into the profession. Yet what seems to be poorly understood (or even appreciated) is the extent to which this lack of support or contact with more experienced subject specialists may impact negatively on a teacher during those early, highly formative years – particularly in contexts like a township school, where (as we have already seen) conditions may severely constrain a teacher’s actions in the classroom. A teacher’s response to such circumstances is to some extent contextdependent. Some have little choice but to learn to cope on their own, but others, like Nomzamo, respond differently. Within weeks of joining the school she had re-established contact with her college lecturers (fortunately Illovo was only a few kilometres away) and was visiting the campus once more. While these visits were often motivated at first by little more than a need to borrow some piece of 144

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laboratory equipment or other, they do seem to signal quite clearly Nomzamo’s intention to make up for the lack of support within the school. Indeed a willingness to reach out, a willingness (and need) to be part of a community of practitioners is a central theme which, as we shall see, in no small way helps explain Nomzamo’s ongoing involvement to this day. It was also fortuitous that she arrived at Amanzi High at a time when a prominent NGO, the “Science Education Project” (SEP) was expanding its operations into a new cluster of schools in the area:29 So . . . I first saw them when I started teaching and I was really impressed with them because here was something that made life really easier. I think at that time SEP was already functioning [in the area], so I sort of jumped into something which was already moving, so I wasn’t really in the first group which sort of started in that area. SEP was already there and they had targeted certain schools, so I happened to get a post in a school which was targeted. So that’s how I got into the whole thing. And they were targeting DET [Department of Education and Training] schools in Maritzburg, I don’t think they were working in KwaZulu schools. So I was lucky enough to teach at a DET school.30 While actual classroom-based visits by a SEP implementer31 were relatively infrequent (about once every two months), more importantly than this Nomzamo had the opportunity to participate in monthly meetings and regular workshops which allowed her to meet and interact with fellow science teachers from neighbouring schools. Also, as part of its involvement with the SEP project, Amanzi High was supplied with sets of practical kits which were a welcome supplement to the modest stock of laboratory apparatus provided by the education department. With sufficient equipment and class groups of around 40 children each in the junior standards, a young and highly motivated teacher like Nomzamo was perfectly placed to participate fully in the SEP project. And in so doing, to fulfil some of the expectations constituted during her college days, particularly of being able to engage her students in a more practically oriented approach to teaching science. Not surprisingly then, Nomzamo looks back on her first year of teaching with a degree of quiet satisfaction. As she once said, “I would say I was quite happy at my first school. I had quite a good relationship with my kids and it was really nice”. She was also able to start up a science club: We had a constitution which was on file, nicely written out. We had T-shirts for our science club; we got someone to design T-shirts for us. Members of the science club were wearing T-shirts when we were going on an outing. And we had a committee, which were very much involved in fundraising themselves. You know, it was very much active. Her successful entry into the field was cemented in the following year when her enthusiastic involvement in the SEP project was rewarded by her being chosen to participate in a British Council-sponsored programme at Leeds University. It was with great excitement then that in January 1988, Nomzamo climbed for the first time onto an aeroplane and headed off for a three-month stay in the United Kingdom. 145

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Leeds University Although it is many years since her visit to Leeds, her experiences there left a lasting impression on Nomzamo: Oh . . . it was a wonderful experience. It really boosts you, you come back energetic, with lots of ideas and you are really ready to go. I don’t know whether if I went now I would come back with the same energy as I had then! Since I have other things now affecting my life. But I still feel it would definitely boost one, particularly at this time when there is so much going on which demotivates you. It serves really as a great motivation. The part which stood out the most in my mind was the part where we went to . . . (unclear), it’s a farming area. So . . . there we actually mixed the sciences – it was more of integrated sciences, not just physical science standing out alone. Like we’d go to a stream, we looked at the ecosystem around the stream. We looked at the . . . we measured the velocity of the water and we counted the animals found in each part [of the stream] and looked at the shape of the animal in relation to the speed of [the water]. You know, that kind of thing – integrating biology and physical science. And seeing how kids were taught there. It actually made me look at the way we teach in S[outh] A[frica] a bit differently. And sometimes I would try and copy some of the things which I saw there. We had about a month, two months where we were attached to certain schools. So we would go there and sit in the lessons and things. So we would sit in science lessons and see how teachers were doing things and it was wonderful. And I kept contact with that teacher even when I was back here and I wrote to him until he retired, he was quite an old man . . . I liked their syllabus, it’s lifebased. It’s science which helps children in making decisions at home, in doing things at home. It’s more like STAP. I really liked it. I remember sitting in a class, they were looking at removing a stain from a material. Which material holds stain more than others. And kids were given this task to do and they were left to work out things on their own. And then they would write a report of what they had done and actually justify their conclusions and that kind of a thing. And they were developing a lot of skills in that process, which I really liked a lot. Nomzamo returned in April 1988 full of enthusiasm and new ideas, all of which helped sustain her as she came once again face to face with the “reality check” of Amanzi High and the closed, prescriptive science syllabi she was expected to teach. But again, one couldn’t change the syllabus [here], so although you come back with those ideas, you still have to do some of the routine. But at least you can make your classes more interesting by including a bit of this and a bit of that . . . Okay, with some of the things I must say they didn’t work as well as they worked over there – because over there they are taught in that way. So it wasn’t 146

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just one person doing something different. So they [the UK kids] are used to that style of working. But with mine [at Amanzi High] I found that even in with those things they couldn’t just think things out themselves, I had to kind of give them more like back to the recipe . . . style where they follow the recipe in doing something. I could understand, because really they were not trained in terms of thinking things out themselves and drawing conclusions, writing out reports. So, it was like they were thrown into the deep-end really, so I had to . . . it didn’t follow the style that it was done over there. But at least it was something again, something different. As Nomzamo recounts the problems she encountered in trying to get her students at Amanzi High to come to terms with new ways of learning (“They couldn’t just think things for themselves”), one cannot help but reflect on how a similar refrain will be heard ten years down the line at another school in another context (i.e., implementing the STAP programme at Yengeni High). Storm Clouds Gather – Amanzi High Nomzamo had hardly returned from overseas when the political unrest which was gathering momentum in other parts of the country, finally burst upon KwaZuluNatal. From having been fortunate enough to avoid any direct involvement in political disturbances, she suddenly found herself trapped in the thick of what was rapidly becoming a low-grade civil war between supporters of the ANC and Inkatha.32 As 1988 drew to a close, schooling in and around Pietermaritzburg became more and more unsettled and all but collapsed due to the internecine fighting which broke out in the townships in 1989. The first year was okay, we didn’t have much of the ANC-Inkatha thing, because the township was mixed Inkatha-ANC staying together and having no problems. It only started when Inkatha started mobilising and . . . then the ANC started raising their head and also making their move. The township started fighting, which was round about ’88, and then it was just . . . terrible! When the fighting started, the IFP [Inkatha Freedom Party] were driven out of the township, to the outside, to the area just outside the township, and the school was at the border. So the other side we had the IFP, and the other side we had the ANC and they were fighting together, so we were caught in the crossfire. When the fighting started we just had to run out and get out of the township as quick as possible. And the kids had to take their guns and go and fight in the bushes and so on . . . it was terrible. It went on the whole year ’88. ’89 was worse; ’88–’89 were very serious. Until I decided to leave because I felt I just couldn’t take the whole thing, because every day I would dream of being chased by men carrying guns, jumping fences over [i.e. into] the school, and I said, “No, no – these things are getting into me, I’ll end up having psychological problems. I’d rather move out whilst I still maintain my sanity!” 147

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Having made the decision to leave Amanzi High, Nomzamo started searching for a post in a less troubled area. Once again her qualifications in mathematics and science put her in good stead and it was not long before she found herself being called to an interview at the Bovingdon Farm School. The principal was obviously impressed by what he saw. Here Nomzamo recalls him saying, “No, the post is yours. I don’t have to interview anyone else. You can just come when the schools open!”. With these words echoing in her ears it was with no small sense of relief that Nomzamo headed back to Pietermaritzburg, secure now in the knowledge that the New Year would bring a fresh beginning, and one which was for her far enough away from the troubled township she called home. “A Fresh Start” – Bovingdon Farm School A significant number of children living in rural areas attend schools on white farms33 and these schools are generally perceived to constitute the most neglected sector of the South African education system,34 however, the school Nomzamo joined was very much an exception to the rule. For a start, Bovingdon was one of a handful of farm schools which offered classes beyond the primary level (in 1990 it extended from Grade 1 to Grade 10) and more importantly, it was a relatively well-resourced institution. The reason for this is not hard to find – it was on the grounds of one of the most prestigious private schools in the country: Bovingdon College. Strangely enough, it was a farm school but it was so well equipped because of Bovingdon College. So, it was a farm school, because it was on a farm but in terms of the facilities it was way beyond the other DET township schools because we were getting everything from Bovingdon College. I taught science from in Grades 7, 8, 9 and 10; and maths in Grade 9. And Bovingdon College staff were very supportive, whenever I needed something I’d just give them a ring and they would bring the thing to the farm school. The conditions at Bovingdon Farm School provided Nomzamo with an opportunity to regain her equilibrium as a teacher after her debilitating experiences of the past year at Amanzi High. As she put it, “[It was] very quiet, it was lovely there. If I had stayed teaching in Natal, I would probably still be teaching there . . . ” With the encouragement of the principal, Nomzamo’s enthusiasm for extracurricular activities was rekindled and she was once more able to put her energy into starting up a science club, although the club was not to function as well as the one she had run at Amanzi High. As she explained it: The problem with the farm schools is that the kids have to walk kilometres to school. So you really can’t keep them at school for a long time, an hour after school is quite a lot because they have to walk long distances. Otherwise they would get home when it’s already dark, and their parents won’t like it. So you just have to grab them at lunchtime perhaps. And again, that’s not very productive time because they need to take a break as well. 148

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Even so, Nomzamo was able to enter some Bovingdon students (for the first time) in a provincial Science Expo organised by SEP and they came away with a number of prizes. It had not taken Nomzamo long to re-establish her links with SEP and then to become instrumental in organising a science competition amongst neighbouring schools. Here we can see how the collaborative context which had helped sustain Nomzamo during her involvement with SEP in 1987–88 was re-established, and for the first time she was also fortunate to find a fellow teacher within her school with whom she could work. There was the principal’s daughter, who was teaching biology. We were working together closely. Even when we were attending SEP workshops, we would mostly go together. When we were planning the science competition, I was working together with her. We formed a committee with teachers from other schools, so it was a team work. Recalling her days at the farm school, Nomzamo readily acknowledges the supportive role played by both the administration and individual teachers at Bovingdon College. And with her characteristic pragmatism, she talks without obvious rancour about what may seem to an observer as the incongruity of what was undoubtedly a skewed relationship between the farm school and its more privileged benefactor. We talked about this during one of the interviews: Jon: Was the College supportive of your efforts [at the farm school]? Nomzamo: Very much. And even the manager of the farm school was very supportive. He was at Bovingdon College, and would take us to wherever we wanted to go to. And if we were not going to use the College combi [minibus transport] he would give us money to hire a combi. And when we were going to the Expo in Durban we actually went with the College boys, my kids from the farm school and the College boys. So I had a good relation even with the College, the science teachers at the College really helped me whenever I came to them for assistance. Jon: How did you feel about it being such an elite institution and you having to teach with 40 kids in a class? Nomzamo: To me it was more concerned about a peace of mind; I was tired of politics from the environment where I was. I just didn’t want any place which had something to do with any political organisation. So when I got there, I really wanted to be away from it all – away from all the noises of the town and so on. I saw Bovingdon as more of a place . . . a resource centre more than anything for me. And in terms of photocopying things, I really used their facilities a lot. Because I would go over and ask if they can photocopy things and so on. And the manager would send them over . . . Jon: No envy? Nomzamo: I envied them in terms of what they had, but at least I appreciated the fact they were prepared to share with those that do not have. I really 149

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appreciated that, they were not like [saying] . . . our kids are paying thousands and thousands [in fees] so . . . we keep this to ourselves. They were really prepared to share, so I really appreciated it. Because the other people would have all those facilities and yet when you come and ask for assistance they wouldn’t be keen to help in anyway. So I had a good working relationship with them. Jon: You never felt that they were looking down at you? Nomzamo: No, they never made me feel that way. Because even when I was there it wasn’t like . . . Sometimes I would go to their lab in the afternoons. I had all the time anyway and I was staying at the farm. So after school really on a farm . . . town is very far, so you have a lot of time. So I would just go to their lab and I had easy access to their lab and I would sit there and do whatever work I wanted to do. It wasn’t like, “What is she doing here, where is she from . . . She won’t be able to do this. So they were wonderful, those teachers. Every Friday afternoon Nomzamo would leave the school and return for the weekend to her mother’s home. While her attention at school was focused on her job (“I was really occupied by science projects . . . ”), at home it was increasingly focused on the attentions of Samuel Lekota – a young theology student (soon to become a pastor). Their plans for a future together were complicated by his posting in early 1990 to a diocese in Swaziland. This is because South African teachers, like Nomzamo, were unable to secure posts in neighbouring countries. They married in December 1990, and they accepted that while Samuel tried to secure a transfer back to South Africa, Nomzamo would continue teaching at Bovingdon. Fortunately they didn’t have to wait too long, and after only one more term at the school a now pregnant Nomzamo left to join her husband, in a year which was to be filled with both joy and sadness for the newly married couple. In September they duly celebrated the birth of their first-born – a son – only to have Nomzamo’s mother tragically killed in a car crash on New Year’s Eve. As she took her leave from Bovingdon she was able to look back at the eighteen months she had spent at the school with a degree of satisfaction. On a personal level, her time there had done her a world of good and had certainly helped heal some of the emotional wounds inflicted by her experiences of the 1989 fighting in Pietermaritzburg. On a professional level she also felt a sense of achievement – as she put it, “I don’t regret having gone to the farm school and I really touched a lot of kids . . . ”. Yet the pendulum was due for another downward swing, and it was with some trepidation that she dutifully followed Samuel as he headed off to Roosdal – the small, dusty Free State35 town which was to be her home for the next 18 months. Sepeng High As Nomzamo talks about her time in Roosdal, it is clear that this was not a happy period of her life. “Oh, but Roosdal oh oh . . . I really didn’t enjoy it. It was terrible!”. Not only did she have to come to terms with the loss of her mother but 150

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also she found herself having to adjust to the dynamics of a small-town community which was not particularly welcoming to an outsider like herself, even if she was the wife of the new preacher. She also had to endure life in a community in which deep-rooted racial divisions largely defined (and distorted) the relationship between most white and black people. Nelson Mandela may have been released from prison and the ANC unbanned but apartheid lingered in platteland (country) towns like Roosdal in the early 1990s. It was here that Nomzamo recalls experiencing racism for the first time and in ways which left her in no doubt as to how white people viewed her: In the Free State they wouldn’t really have to call you a kaffir36 to make you feel like one! It was here too that Nomzamo – far removed from any family support structure – found herself, as a married woman with a small child, having to cope for the first time in her teaching career with the demands of both home and classroom.37 To make matters worse, Sepeng High was not a particularly good school even by the low standards of DET. For a start, the school served a community in which socio-economic conditions were, to say the least, appalling. Many of the children whom Nomzamo taught came from extremely poor families who lived in small, overcrowded ramshackle houses or shacks, often without running water or electricity. Even though education was valued by many parents (no small number of whom were barely literate themselves), dropout rates among their children were high and, for the few who persevered with their schooling, there were few formal-sector employment opportunities available in the area. Conditions at the school were further complicated by the fact that many of the staff at the school were quite young and the presence of a contingent of students from the Witwatersrand, who had been sent by their parents to Sepeng High in a bid to escape the continual spiral of unrest in township schools. More politicised than their country cousins, their presence added to the level of political ferment at the school. It had a lot of youngsters. Sometimes it helps to have matured people amongst the staff members. Almost everyone were quite young, it made the school to fall apart because people would be concerned about political issues rather than teaching. To add to these problems, Sepeng High – like all other black schools in the area – was poorly resourced and woefully short of even the most rudimentary laboratory equipment, with the result that Nomzamo was forced to “theorise” science (to use her colloquial expression) and teach in a way which was anathema to someone who had so eagerly embraced the “hands-on” experimental approach of SEP. It is hardly surprising then that Nomzamo struggled to motivate either herself or the students: The kids were . . . they seemed disinterested because . . . I think what was happening there is, right from primary schools, since there was no equipment, science was taught like history and I just didn’t want to do that, I just couldn’t do that. Because I was from a history of SEP, so I just couldn’t function at all without apparatus. As a result, when they were taught science kids were really 151

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dead, and you could see that it’s not because they don’t like the subject as such. If we could change the way it’s taught it could make a big difference in their lives. Some had never even seen a beaker! You’d draw a beaker and it doesn’t make sense . . . In terms of her job, what seems to have been the most difficult thing to come to terms with was the fact that Nomzamo felt so terribly isolated at Sepeng High. Not only did she find herself in the position of being the only qualified science teacher at the school, but for the first time she was unable to link with other science teachers at other schools as she had done through the SEP zonal system. Deprived of the company of other science teachers, she struggled to sustain her enthusiasm. From the way she talks about these days, it was (professionally speaking) a bleak period in Nomzamo’s career: Maybe it was because it was right in the ‘bundus’ [rural area], too remote – away from everyone. Not just family, in terms of my work I really felt isolated there. The school didn’t have apparatus, and I couldn’t function at all, until I made links with SEP in Natal. You know then, at least . . . but even then I wasn’t happy. I was really alone . . . Maybe what I hated there was, there were no institutions around which one could liaise with, no NGOs, none whatsoever. So I had no-one to talk to, I really felt out of place. Fortunately it was shortlived! Maybe I would have resigned from teaching if I’d stayed on there . . . (our emphasis) Yet once Nomzamo had got over her initial shock of teaching in such constrained conditions, she persuaded the principal to make available some money from the school funds and during her next trip down to Natal she was able to visit SEP and purchase (at a reduced price) a number of kits. At least now she was able to do some teacher demonstrations, but without a more adequate supply of equipment, student-based practical work would remain at Sepeng High little more than an elusive dream. Fortunately her “exile” at Sepeng High came to an end when Samuel decided to leave the ministry in 1993 and return to his family in Kubukene township, where he promised to help secure a job for Nomzamo at one of the neighbouring secondary schools. This he duly did, and in late 1993 they left Roosdal. Yengeni High It was with no small sense of relief then that Nomzamo moved down to Kubukene township and, having secured a job at Yengeni High, she looked forward to the opportunities which life in a big city would bring. As she put it: “And then here . . . things started happening again. So again you know, there were institutions I could make contacts with and start again with the professional development thing and so on” (our emphasis). This becomes the story of her five years at the school – her involvement in the local SEP programme started almost immediately after she arrived at Yengeni High, and in the following year she became closely involved with a local mathe152

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matics project (she was teaching Grade 8 mathematics at the time). At the same time Nomzamo enrolled for a part-time Further Diploma in Education (FDE)38 at a local university, which she duly completed in 1995, the year she joined the core group of teachers in the STAP project. A Further Diploma in Education For someone who usually displays such enthusiasm for her involvement in outside activities, Nomzamo’s ambivalence about the value of the two years she spent studying part-time for an FDE in science education might seem somewhat surprising. However, the reasons for this emerged during one of our conversations: Jon: What did you gain from it? Nomzamo: The paper next to my name! (Laughs.) A certificate to my name. Of course, I did gain in terms of knowledge but not . . . how should I put this? The content . . . yes, I did gain but only in the lectures where the lectures were conducted in English. In the lectures that were 90% in Afrikaans, that was a nightmare. That’s why I’m saying it was the wrong institution. In 1994, when Nomzamo enrolled for an FDE, the university in question had relatively few African students, whose preference for English-medium instruction tended to clash with the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking nature of the institution. Yet the language issue aside, the alienation which Nomzamo, as an African student, experienced at what was (at the time) still a predominantly white university, is revealed in her following comments: I did feel humiliated, because I felt I wasn’t welcome. I was in a wrong place. That’s how I felt: I was in a very wrong place. But at the same time I wanted to prove . . . one thing that made me stay on because we were about three women and then the others decided to quit. And then I remained the only woman in the class. So I decided to stay on, and also the other Africans quit. So I was the only one left, the only African and the only woman. So I just stayed on to prove one thing to all those lecturers – that I can do it! No matter how much they try to suppress me I will rise and I will make it. And I made it! So, it was more of now trying to prove a point, that I am not the failing type. I’ll show them that I can do it. Through incidents like this, we are reminded of just how strong-willed Nomzamo is – “I am not the failing type” seems to sum up so much of her character – how, driven by a desire to prove herself, she is able to “see things through” even when others around her have resigned themselves to failure. This emerges in the stories she tells about her life: during incidents from her school days; in her determination to get into (and stay) in the STD mathematics and science class at Ndlovu College; and perhaps most strikingly of all, in her ability to sustain her commitment and enthusiasm for teaching even under the most trying circumstances. 153

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The Science Education Project Nomzamo’s arrival at Yengeni High coincided with the school’s incorporation into a newly formed local cluster of SEP project schools. Not only did this hold the promise of a supply of familiar workbooks and equipment,39 but also official permission (and encouragement) to participate in whatever workshops the project would be organising. Nomzamo could also look forward to the opportunities this would create for collaborating with other science teachers from neighbouring schools – the one thing she had missed so much during her time in Roosdal. Much to Nomzamo’s disappointment, the local SEP programme never really got off the ground in the ways it had, for her, in Natal.40 When talking about those days, Nomzamo is quite frank about why she thinks things did not work out. Given her expectations in this regard, it is no wonder that she comes across as being somewhat disillusioned with the approach adopted by some of her fellow teachers: I don’t think it worked as much as it did; it really worked wonders in Natal. I just don’t know why, maybe the people weren’t as motivated as there. Because what I found out here was that people were going back for the money they were getting for transport, of which in Natal we were not getting money for attending workshops. We were just going there because we wanted to be there and there wasn’t a kind of incentive of money being . . . we didn’t have to be bought to go to workshops! Now, here people were getting money for transport. Now fine, that was a cherry on top, but then . . . ultimately it looked like people were just . . . it was a day of being away from school and then getting something at the end. The first thing I noticed here was that teachers were lazy. Even when it was meetings, I dunno . . . meetings were kind of not moving easy. You could sense some . . . difficulty. I can’t really describe it. I think that people over there [in Natal] were much more enthusiastic. But here . . . that really surprised me! Not to be discouraged, Nomzamo started casting around for something else in which to be involved and at the beginning of 1994 she ventured into what were for her the unchartered waters of mathematics INSET (in-service education and training). The Mathematics Project Nomzamo’s involvement coincided with her being given two Grade 8 classes to teach. It was, as she once put it, “a year of heavy contact” – whereby, in addition to weekly workshops, she participated in a number of seminar presentations and attended a conference at an out-of-town university. Later in the year she worked closely alongside project staff that used her classroom as a site for research into student misconceptions. Nomzamo talks fondly of this interaction with others: Rosy at one time, did almost like you . . . Ja, Ja I remember! And they took videos! There was a time, was it six months? There was a time when Rosy was here most of the time, she’d come but for those two classes. She would sit at the 154

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back and oh . . . the other thing is they [the students] were working in groups again, at that time. And Rosy would be sitting there, listening to them as they were discussing in their groups. It was wonderful really, it was very lively – maths. Unlike just doing something on the board and then they follow your pattern and solve their own problems. And we worked closely with a teacher from Birchwood Heights. With the usual state of teachers’ professional development being one of long periods during which individuals work alone, many teachers choose social isolation to defend and maintain their sense of self; for as Butt et al. (1990, p. 264) remind us: “to venture forth and interact can open the door to accountability, value difference, criticism, and lack of agreement”. In this respect, Nomzamo’s continual seeking out of opportunities to venture forth and interact with others, and the ease with which she allows others access to her classroom, certainly sets her aside from many of her fellow teachers (irrespective of context). This is even more remarkable given the conditions under which she has taught; conditions which, as we have already seen, are essentially unsupportive of within-school collegiality (we will return to this issue later). Whatever satisfaction she obtained from her work with this project, Nomzamo was content to limit her involvement to just the one year. Her decision to abandon mathematics teaching was also tempered by what can only be described as a (healthy) dose of pragmatism about the relative “rewards” of teaching a subject in which so many students struggle to achieve:41 Nomzamo: Maybe because maths is a failing subject, you end up looking at yourself negatively, the way the kids fail! At least here if I was teaching five classes of maths, I would end up seeing myself, thinking of myself, negatively really when it comes to results at the end of the year. So one needs to have something positive. Jon: And you see science as being . . . ? Nomzamo: Ja, at least you get some results . . . Yes, they were good that year [Grade 8 maths], the results were quite good and even the office [principal] said, “No, it’s the first time where we have such good passes in maths” and he mentioned the classes. But still I didn’t want to get too deeply involved. Such public affirmation for a “job well done” was important recognition for all the hard work she had put into teaching mathematics during the course of the year, particularly seeing as it came at a time when was she still in the process of establishing herself at the school. Still, Nomzamo remained firm in her resolve to focus her attention in future on science teaching, and to this end lobbied (successfully) to be assigned only science classes to teach the following year. For the first time she was also given the responsibility of teaching the senior Matric class at the school. As she recalls those days, “I became quite interested in maths again, but I think at the end of it all my love for science is more than for maths” (emphasis ours). 155

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We would argue that in comments like this, Nomzamo is articulating the extent to which her professional notion of self is strongly bound up with her identity as a science teacher – so much so that her involvement in mathematics, whilst providing a range of diverse and enriching experiences, was in some respects little more than a diversion (in professional terms that is), an interlude in her ongoing pursuit of her “mission” which had served to sustain and motivate her from those early “awakenings” during her college days. The beginning of 1995 found Nomzamo once again “between projects” and on the lookout for opportunities to become involved in some science initiative. While SEP was still functioning in township schools, the local operation continued to disappoint and Nomzamo realised that the promise of a collaborative context similar to the ones she so fondly remembered from her days in Natal was not to be. It would have to come from something or somewhere else. Yet not entirely unexpectedly, the presence at Yengeni High of a keen, outward-looking science teacher had not gone unnoticed – just as some students will surface as individuals in a class, it is inevitable too that teachers like Nomzamo will also become known (by name at least) amongst the relatively small number of science educators who work in and around township schools. Becoming Involved in STAP So it was by such “word of mouth” that the project leader of STAP, came to hear of Nomzamo, who towards the end of 1995 agreed to join the group of practising teachers around which much of the project’s development work would focus. It is perhaps no small coincidence that back in the 1980s the STAP project leader had been instrumental in setting up the SEP zonal structure in KwaZulu-Natal which provided Nomzamo with her first, formative experiences of working together in a broader community of science teachers. STAP became the “home base” around which much of Nomzamo’s professional involvement in science education revolved for the next three years. As the project gained momentum in 1996, Nomzamo became the first teacher to spend a six-month secondment period (from January to June) in the project’s offices at the local University of the Western Cape (UWC).42 Besides affording her a welcome respite from the “daily grind” of the classroom, this also gave her the opportunity to become more closely involved in various aspects of the project’s work – from materials development (helping to establish a resource bank of curriculum materials) to assisting with the organisation and running of STAP workshops. Nomzamo also agreed to trial the first draft of the project’s Grade 8 material as an after-school exercise back at Yengeni High, with a volunteer group of students drawn from a number of classes. Nomzamo’s first use of the STAP material was undoubtedly a most valuable experience – not only did it provide her with the opportunity to try out in her own teaching context some of the materials which she had been so closely involved in developing, but it also created opportunities for her to “tinker” with her practice (to use Huberman’s 1992 expression).43 However, for a variety of reasons, it 156

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appears this was quite a different (and decidedly less intense) exercise than that which she faced in the following year with the Grade 9 material. For a start, while many of the students revelled in the opportunities to engage in activity-based group work, the fact that it took place “out-of-class” meant that it was little more than a highly enjoyable enrichment exercise. While there is nothing wrong with this, it may well be that it sent a somewhat mixed signal with respect to “ease of use”, particularly to Nomzamo. Similarly, the dynamics of teaching a small group of willing students (with rarely more than 25 attending on a regular basis) are markedly different from those that Nomzamo faced during the course of her day-to-day teaching. Also, from the project side, the focus of the trialling exercise was firmly on a first assessment of the suitability of the STAP text material for the L2 context of a township school – issues of readability, text cohesion and the like. Nevertheless, as suggested earlier, the trialling exercise certainly provided Nomzamo with the opportunity to rethink some of the ways she saw her role in the classroom. As she wrote not long afterwards: Trialling the materials was also another important component of my development. It made me discover a lot about myself. It made me realise the importance of sitting down and critically looking at one’s teaching styles (where the teacher is the dominant role player in the classroom) and adopt new ones (where the children take the lead in their quest for knowledge and the teacher only facilitates). I also found that one cannot say one has the best material until you actually trial it and see if it works in a real classroom situation. Some things had to be changed after the trialling. Generally students felt good and excited about the materials. In the same correspondence, she goes on to describe how she feels about her broader involvement in the project and the positive impact it has had on her professional development as a teacher: Looking back at the process that I have been through, I feel really great about myself. I feel a sense of achievement that I have been part of such a successful project. The experience that I have gained gives me great confidence in my abilities as a teacher . . . My self-esteem has really been boosted. There is nothing so good as seeing the end product of something which has come about as a result of hard work. Similar sentiments were echoed in an interview she gave as part of the ongoing review of the project’s work: It has changed me a lot; particularly I’m trying to . . . now when I’m teaching that I don’t just give knowledge. I don’t just go in class and teach. Like today, I had quite a lot of discussions going on in class and the class was quite noisy. But then I said to myself, “As long as I’m sure they’re discussing what I asked them to discuss, it’s fine”. I wasn’t bothered by that, whereas before if there was noise I would just think, “Ah, those kids are just making a noise”. And you don’t feel comfortable – you feel that you’re losing control of the class and so 157

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you want to take over and become the main role-player in the classroom. But I don’t have that anymore – I’m relaxed about what goes on in class. And also, I always have an open mind for anything that comes up that maybe interests students which is related, but outside what we’re doing. I’m quite happy to handle those, instead of saying, “That’s not part of what we’re doing, you’re wasting my time!”, and move on. So I believe my teaching style has changed a little bit. Also in trying to involve them [the students] as much as possible in class, instead of me delivering the facts – I try to involve them as much as possible – which is what STAP really aims at. (Marshall, 1998, pp. 14–15) Articulated in such terms, it would appear that her experiences in STAP (of which the trialling of the Grade 8 material was just one part) had made Nomzamo rethink certain aspects of her pedagogic practice. For instance, saying that “. . . now when I am teaching (that) I don’t just give knowledge” signals an intention to move beyond a style of teaching in which subject content is the only focus of the lesson. Having “an open mind for anything that comes up” feeds her desire to encourage students to raise issues beyond the narrow path of the syllabus. Accepting that the students can be allowed to talk amongst themselves, without fear of losing control, is certainly no small step for a teacher to take – “I’m relaxed about what goes on in class”, is the voice of a teacher confident in herself and her newfound ability to conceive (and allow) a much broader dynamic of student-teacher interaction in the classroom. There are undoubtedly other aspects of her involvement in STAP which had a positive impact on Nomzamo’s professional development. For instance, during the early stages of the project’s work, she participated in the workshops in which the STAP group grappled intensely with a range of quite fundamental curriculum issues – including what were to be the aims of STAP and what pedagogical approaches could be adopted to achieve them. Her involvement in what became at times a quite intensive inquiry into the very nature of school science education gave Nomzamo the opportunity to reflect on her own beliefs about, and understanding of, the subject with which, as we shall shortly come to consider, she identifies so closely. The discussions around the formatting and layout of the material provided opportunities for her to reflect, in turn, on issues relating to teaching methodology – particularly seeing as the text was being written with the specific intention of promoting more student-centred learning. Furthermore, the opportunity to write curriculum material in a critical (yet supportive environment) was something that Nomzamo clearly valued greatly: After I’d written my first two units – the first drafts, I really felt great. I said to Brian [the project leader], “I’ve written two units, and I think they’re great! I don’t care what the group says when they’re critiquing them, but to me having written them is quite an achievement”. And I’ve kept those original copies, and I’ll keep them forever, because I want to have a record of how my writing style has developed – from the time I wrote my initial draft, then the second one which had been critiqued by the group, and then the final stage. It’s permitted 158

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me to keep a record of the process which I’ve gone through in developing my writing skills. Nomzamo’s comments confirm the importance of teachers’ having a sense of ownership of curriculum materials and the approach inherent in them (a point made elsewhere by Raubenheimer, 1992). Through her involvement in the materials-development side of the project’s work, Nomzamo’s confidence as a writer grew, so much so that she was approached by a publisher to join a small team of authors working on a series of school general science textbooks – a compliment indeed! With the positive experience of trialling the Grade 8 material behind her, Nomzamo’s involvement (as that of other members of the group) shifted to the development of the project’s Grade 9 programme, which continued through 1997. By the end of the year, plans were being made for full-scale classroom-based trialling of the Grade 9 material. Nomzamo agreed once again to participate, and the beginning of 1998 found her poised to undertake a trialling exercise which, unlike her previous experience with the Grade 8 students, would be run during normal school hours and not with a small volunteer group, but in four large, mixed-ability classes with almost 240 children. Because of these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Nomzamo viewed her oncoming participation with great enthusiasm and some degree of trepidation, as seen during one of the pre-trial conversations: The important thing for me is to . . . really see how the material, if it really works in a situation where you have big numbers as we have . . . also to see, to test in a real-life situation. If it works under these conditions, it will work everywhere! So it’s really a big test for the material. But then, as you have said before, when you were talking about the numbers and so on, the numbers will pose a problem to organisation, management that kind of thing. But because that is the reality of our schools, one should just go through it and see how it goes . . . But it will be demanding. The first demand of course will be on shift . . . on the method of teaching, and being able to . . . like in the way that you have been teaching, like an experiment had to be done it was usually demonstration, and not an experiment done by pupils. So to see nine groups working at the same time and trying to co-ordinate all of those groups is quite a challenge. Unlike a demonstration which goes much quicker, but having to try and manage nine groups . . . ! And like, pulling everything together [at the end of a lesson] is also quite a challenge. And taking the role of a facilitator, instead of the role of being there as the giver of knowledge is also a challenge. Because the tendency is you would say I want to play the role of a facilitator, but two minutes later you realise that I’m actually going back to the old teaching style, because it’s been in you for a long time. So that’s another challenge in terms of one’s teaching methodology. But it doesn’t scare more than seeing it as a challenge at a way of making me look at things differently. And if at the end of it all I can manage to do that, then I could say – Ja, I’ve achieved something. 159

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Before moving on (in the next chapter) to consider her experiences during this exercise, it would be instructive to pause and look back over Nomzamo’s past, to draw together from what she has revealed from her personal biography those significant influences (be they events, people or her involvement in projects such as STAP) which have helped shape and mould the teacher that Nomzamo is today. At the same time her relationship with the subject that she teaches is also worthy of further attention, for science and her teaching clearly play a central role in shaping who she is – how she thinks about her life, her career and her future. 5.5. “SCIENCE HAS BECOME MY LIFE, REALLY . . . ”

As we have come to see, Nomzamo’s experiences in the classroom have been anything but uneventful. She has had to endure the emotional strain of teaching during extended periods of civic unrest; and she has had to cope with teaching in schools like Yengeni High, functioning in a state of constrained individualism with little or no real support from her colleagues. In the light of these experiences one may be forgiven for wondering how (and why) it is that Nomzamo has been able to sustain her enthusiasm for teaching. “What keeps her going?” is an obvious question to ask. Reflecting on her eleven years in the classroom, Nomzamo swims into focus as a teacher who has a resilient, well-developed professional notion of self which is grounded – like the teachers in Helms’ 1998 study (see Section 5.3) – in her strong sense of personal identification with science: Nomzamo: Science has become my life, really . . . Jon: What do you mean? Nomzamo: When I say science has become my life, I mean science in terms of my teaching profession, whereby I would go out of my way for anything that I see will develop me professionally in terms of science. Unlike maths, which is part of my teaching profession but I’m not interested in it . . . I see myself as a science teacher and not as a maths teacher. That’s why I’ve been saying that science is definitely, in terms of my way of putting it . . . I would say it is part of my life. Because . . . I mean looking at how much time one really sacrifices for science-related things which one should be spending with . . . be it your family or whatever, then I don’t mind spending my spare time for science. Here we are left in little doubt as to where Nomzamo’s pedagogical commitments lie. Her statements are loud and clear: “I am a science teacher” which leaves no doubt that science and her teaching thereof play a large role in shaping who she is and where “her centre of gravity” lies, to use Goodson’s expression (1991, p. 36). That she chooses to define herself in terms of her practice, “science has become my life” also confirms the extent to which her professional identity is forged not only in terms of the subject that she teaches, but also within the broader community of science. Nomzamo sees herself as being both a scientist and a science 160

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teacher – “I am in a job which is within the sciences” as she once said. So when she puts on a white laboratory cloak it is much more than a mere convenience, or vanity; it is a signal to those around her who she is.44 What exactly is this “science” with which Nomzamo feels such a strong personal identification? What is it she is called upon to teach and why is it important that students should study this subject? That these are questions she struggles to answer is not unexpected, for as with most of us, Nomzamo is rarely (if ever) asked to articulate exactly what she thinks or feels, particularly about profound issues such as these. Furthermore, one has to accept that she may not even be aware of her own beliefs and may lack the language needed to share them or even be reluctant to espouse them publicly, even to someone like Jonathan with whom she has a close working relationship. With this in mind, we present the following extracts, taken from two interviews, as but a portion of the ideas which Nomzamo was willing or able to share with us. On the Purpose of Science I would say science is generally . . . the purpose of science is to make meaningful . . . meaning out of one’s daily life. Because you are supposedly talking about things which happen in your daily lives, so it is to make meaning of what happens. And also, to help improve our lives in one way or another . . . of which now they are taking it in a broader context, like technology and all that stuff. That’s basically the meaning of science. With the aim of changing the world, or improving our human lives. At the same time it can make things worse, it can destroy at the same time. So it’s kind of striking a balance between the two. What Scientists Do Scientists are involved in different things. Like you have scientists who are teachers, who are involved in teaching science. Those people are also qualified to be scientists, because in the processes which are involved in teaching [science] . . . , scientific processes are also involved. So you are trying to impart those . . . that knowledge to the kids. Then you have got a scientist, that is people who are working like engineers, medical doctors. They are also using scientific processes in their work. Be it investigatory work – trying to find a cure for a certain disease or virus – they are involved in investigatory work and in so many things. Engineers, before they could decide how a bridge should be built, they have to consider a whole lot of things, so there has to be a whole lot of scientific investigations going on before decisions can be taken as to where and how, and all those kinds of things. But of course scientific work at times can be in opposition with people’s feelings at times, and you find that you are stepping on peoples’ toes in trying to pursue your scientific endeavour. Then in such cases you find that scientists encounter problems, like in environmental issues and so on.

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For Nomzamo, science offers a powerful vehicle for making sense of the world around us, for “making meaning out of one’s daily life”. Her words evoke an image of science as progress, as an endeavour which has the potential to make a positive contribution to growth and development, which in turn can lead to “improving our human lives”. This does not mean that she holds to some kind of blind acceptance that the scope of scientific authority is unlimited and beyond reproach (which Duschl, 1988, p. 52 calls the “ideology of scientism”). Rather, Nomzamo acknowledges that there is a need to “strike a balance” because the scientific endeavour can “make things worse, can destroy at the same time”. In her description of scientists at work, Nomzamo articulates once more her belief that her science teaching is an extension of what a scientist would do. Furthermore, what a scientist does conforms to her own vision of what is important in science teaching. Here we see Nomzamo attempting to articulate her broader vision of the scientific endeavour, one in which she values science more as a process of inquiry than a mere collection of facts (i.e. content). While her conception of what it is to teach science has been inspired by an array of formative influences; it is here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that we see the impact of her involvement in projects like SEP and STAP, both of which are underpinned by approaches which emphasize science as a process of inquiry rather than as a body of knowledge. The way Nomzamo values science on both a personal and professional level is further illustrated by her comments regarding the role of science inside her classroom: On the Purpose of School Science It is mainly kids’ understanding of science in general. One is constantly trying to find a way of making students understand science more and more. One is constantly trying to find a way, although one doesn’t always succeed of doing away with misconceptions in the students. Also, making their lives more meaningful, more meaningful with the science that they learn at school. Here again Nomzamo’s belief that science can contribute to a more meaningful life functions as a significant raison d’être for teaching the subject. She perceives her role as teacher as being one of assisting students to develop their understanding of science so that they are able to apply what they learn in school science to their everyday lives. Her striving “to find a way of making students understand science more and more” surely helps explain why it is that Nomzamo has continually sought out opportunities to develop her own expertise. At this stage it is worth recalling how she came, following her experiences at college, to articulate “her mission” as a science teacher as being: [doing] a good job if I could make kids realise that science is not for the highly gifted, but is for the hardworking. And then I sort of took on that mission that I want to make kids like science as a teacher. And I want to try and simplify it to them as much as possible, to make them understand it more. 162

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Her desire to “simplify it to them . . . to make them understand it more” reflects how Nomzamo’s own experiences of school science, in particular her disappointment at performing poorly in her final Matric exams, have had a powerful influence on the way she has come to conceptualise her role in the classroom. The importance of values and beliefs is another crucial component of Nomzamo’s personal and professional identity. Her religious and traditional beliefs and their relationship to science come together in her sense of who she is. While there is a complexity to these aspects of herself, there does not appear to be any conflict; rather, each “way of seeing” seems to complement the other aspects of her life: On Science, Religion and Traditional Beliefs Nomzamo: I’ve always maintained a thought that what science cannot explain is simply God’s mystery. So, it’s beyond scientific knowledge, then it falls under the category of the mysterious. (Later) In fact there is this thing of . . . if you speak to a witchdoctor he would tell you, “We do this, we do that – we fly with brooms”, and that kind of thing. And it sounds like a fairy tale, and you would say, “No, no it’s highly impossible – how do you defy gravity with no kind of a propelling machine that is pushing you up?” – that kind of a thing. Just by a mere broom, that is highly impossible. And they [the witchdoctors] would maintain that it does happen, and if you want proof – I don’t know whether they can prove it to you or what . . . Jon: Do you believe it? Nomzamo: Now, how do you explain such a thing? And they just say, it’s beyond my understanding; it’s beyond my knowledge of science. Jon: Do you find it quite easy to make the shift? Nomzamo: Yes, I can make that shift quite easily. Maybe because . . . maybe because as I was growing up I spent some time of my primary education in the Transkei and then I went back to Natal. I spent most of my time in Natal, of which . . . back in the Transkei it is where a lot of these things are supposed to be happening. So, you are kind of exposed to that kind of thing, although you don’t actually . . . some of us haven’t seen them happening. But, because it is something that is talked about, that is . . . people maintain that it is happening. So you kind of get used to those kind of things and learn to accept them. Nomzamo: What do I believe? I believe that God created the earth I also believe in the evolution story because . . . like if someone puts the facts to me and says look at these characteristics and I can see the characteristics through the ages of a man changing from being that state of a baboon to . . . there’s even another theory that we were even all black initially. As long as a theory can be backed with more information and it makes sense to me, I don’t have a problem in accommodating the 163

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theory within my beliefs. It doesn’t bother me. Because even that theory which says we were all black once . . . I read it in a magazine, and I was very much interested in it. And I read it through and they were explaining why we then have people who are very light-skinned, etc., . . . They are all possibilities, so why not believe in them, if they make sense? Jon: So you believe that there were dinosaurs once upon the earth? Nomzamo: Because there is evidence that there were dinosaurs on the earth. If it was said that there were dinosaurs and there was no evidence then I wouldn’t believe it. So . . . (Later) As long as the facts are supporting the theory, and it makes sense to me, then I don’t have a problem believing. Jon: Do theories change, or do theories stay the same? Nomzamo: A theory will change if the facts come out and they actually oppose the theory and then another theory will be following later. In respect to the facts that . . . what am I trying to say – a theory is a theory until it is proven to be a fact. So a theory can change, but a fact cannot change. The fact remains . . . Jon: So there are a lot of facts out there! Nomzamo: And I think that there are still theories as well, which still need to be proved. Like I heard one theory at the exhibition the other day when I took my Grade 11’s: that snails like beer. Now . . . for kids to design a project and prove that. To me it’s still a theory because I haven’t proved it. Then until someone proves it and I actually see the results and evidence, then it will become a fact to me that now, snails really do like beer. These statements provide evidence of Nomzamo’s epistemological beliefs about the nature of science – that for her the process of inquiry (which is science) has the power to turn mutable theories into immutable facts and that science is by and large a body of knowledge, quite separate from us and waiting to be “discovered”. Described in such terms, one would be tempted to label Nomzamo as someone who holds beliefs associated with naïve realism or an inductivist view of the nature of science. Yet we agree with Koulaidis and Ogborn (1995), who point out that people who are not professional philosophers do not hold absolutely consistent views; thus it is hardly surprising that a science teacher such as Nomzamo (or anybody else for that matter) holds eclectic views taken from different philosophical positions.45 While her involvement in projects such as STAP have introduced Nomzamo to some of the debates surrounding current conceptions of the nature of science,46 it would appear that her general knowledge of science remains fairly limited. Here, too, the fact that she has little or no background in the history, philosophy, or sociology of science is surely a comment, more than anything else, on the way in which she experiences the subject both as a student and as a teacher.47 164

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These issues lead us almost inevitably to question the extent to which Nomzamo’s understandings and beliefs about the nature of the subject matter influence her classroom practice. While a number of classroom-based studies have sought to show the congruence between different aspects of teachers’ beliefs about science and their actual pedagogical practice48; we concur with Abd-ElKhalick et al. (1998), who argue that research has failed to validate the intuitive assumption that teachers’ conceptions automatically translate into their classroom practice.49 Elbaz (1983) points out that a teacher can hold images of teaching that are quite different from her actual practice. In her case study of a “teacherat-work”, Watson (1995) convincingly illustrated that there is often a critical disjuncture between a teacher’s beliefs and practices because, as she puts it, “knowing what does not necessarily entail knowing how” (p. 56). A central enigma in teaching is the relationship between thought and action50 and we shall have the opportunity to consider it further in the next chapter, where we will consider more closely some aspects of Nomzamo’s own teaching. When it comes to formative influences, it is instructive to reflect again on the extent to which the roots of her identity as a science teacher, and in particular the foundations of her commitment to the broader profession of teaching, are grounded in Nomzamo’s days at Ndlovu (teacher training college). The reader will recall how Nomzamo talks of the college as being “a turning point” in her life, where a reluctant student became enthused about the possibility of a fulfilling career as a science teacher: “. . . I then realised that okay, this [teaching] is going to be my life” as she remarked on more than one occasion. It was there, too, that her interest in the subject was awakened and where for the first time she began to gain a much deeper appreciation for the whole enterprise of science – which in turn helped inspire her to conceptualise her future role as a science teacher in broader terms than one of simply teaching the syllabus. One college lecturer in particular stands out as a critical person, whose positive influence Nomzamo acknowledges to this day. The pivotal role which college seems to have played in her early development stands in quite stark contrast to some of the reported research, which tends to downplay the impact of pre-service education and training on novice teachers.51 What of her own schooling? While the three years she spent at Ndlovu College can be clearly identified as an important critical episode in Nomzamo’s professional development, it becomes a lot harder to unravel the impact of her own experiences as a school student. Again, this is hardly surprising. As with most of us, Nomzamo recalls but fragments of her twelve desk-bound years – a complex, tangled web of snapshots from the past, which stretches back to her earliest memories of childhood. Yet even from our relatively limited exploration of her personal biography, some interesting things emerged. For instance, Nomzamo’s emphatic denial of having any role models amongst her own teachers – “. . . there is no way I could have associated myself with any teacher when I was still at school because I didn’t want to be a teacher” as she once put it – is perhaps as much a comment on her relationship with those who taught her as anything else.

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In examining Nomzamo’s own schooling, one is forced to grapple with issues which are extremely difficult to bring into focus. On the one hand, the assertion made in the previous chapter that Nomzamo’s students have been socialised into accepting an essentially passive role for themselves in the classroom, must to some extent hold true for Nomzamo’s own experiences of schooling. Yet she is fairly adamant that this is not how she remembers herself behaving during her own school days, particularly during her stay at Illovo Seminary. In reply to the question about whether or not they were encouraged to ask questions in class, she said: Mmm [yes] . . . and we talked! We raised issues . . . [and] in the junior, I remember in higher primary when I was in Grade 7 we used to ask. I dunno . . . maybe it has to do with the state as one grows. As a child you are curious, but then you get to thirteen, fourteen and then you start being aware of yourself and you start being shy of making mistakes in front of boys and so on. At Illovo it was just girls, so we were free . . . I dunno whether it has to do with the type of school you are in. In a one-sex school you are very open and you are not worried about being embarrassed to whoever, you just don’t care, I dunno maybe . . . I don’t know whether, because that’s exactly even beyond Matric, that’s how I was at college because of having been at school. Yet we were mixed, and I never stopped [asking questions]. I think people are different . . . because there is a lady who we were with at Illovo who also we went together to college, she was different from me, she was . . . kind of quiet. For all that, the imprint of her own schooling experiences, particularly the two years she spent at Illovo (Grades 11 and 12), is visible in Nomzamo’s teaching in a number of ways; for example, her insistence on teaching almost entirely in English has been a cornerstone of her pedagogic practice. Also the school’s quite rigid adherence to a structured schedule (“you had to stick to time” as she put it) has also undoubtedly influenced her own behaviour as a teacher. The reader can hopefully appreciate from our deliberations in Chapter 3 that this is an area in which Nomzamo was decidedly more purposeful than many of her colleagues at Yengeni High. On a more affective level, Nomzamo sees herself as a teacher who treats her students “fairly” and “with respect”; one who is “even-tempered” and avoids openly abusive or sarcastic behaviour.52 Contrast the way she wishes to project herself as a teacher with those occasions when she herself was treated unfairly and with disrespect – the “potato incident” in biology and her “tribalistic” geography teacher spring immediately to mind. Reflecting on the links between Nomzamo’s present-day behaviour and her own experiences as a student, one can argue (as alluded to earlier) that for many teachers a desire to avoid acting like those negative stereotypes53 of one’s past, to “do better” as it were, functions as a powerful source of intrinsic motivation. Nomzamo’s attitude to corporal punishment is a further case in point. Some of her most vivid memories are of being unjustly beaten for “crimes” she did 166

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not commit. With her keenly developed sense of justice and fair play, it is not surprising then that Nomzamo has never been a great user of the “stick”.54 During one of the interviews, she was at pains to point out the following: I’ve never punished a child for not knowing what I’m asking or for not understanding the work. Maybe for not doing homework at times . . . I would punish them with a [chalkboard] duster on the fingers, that sort of thing. But I’ve not been very strong with beating. Perhaps the most memorable feature which emerges from a review of the eleven years Nomzamo has spent in the classroom is her participation in collaborative ventures with other science teachers/educators. Since her working life has been mostly spent functioning (at a subject level at least) in relative isolation, Nomzamo has had to seek out support and engagement beyond the confines of the school in which she has been teaching – she has had to substitute the lack of a collaborative context within the school setting with an external one.55 As is evident in the way she talks about them, there is no doubt that these outside involvements have contributed in significant ways to Nomzamo’s professional growth as a teacher. Moreover, by providing an external locus of attention, they appear to have also played an absolutely pivotal role in providing a counterbalance to the constraints within which she has so often had to work. “[Being] involved in other things actually revive[s] you as a teacher . . . otherwise life can be very dull and boring if you just go to school” as she once observed. The importance of this involvement is surely no better illustrated than when it was not available. Her negative experiences of teaching at Sepeng High were so exacerbated by the sense of isolation she felt, that she found herself questioning her commitment to teaching. Clearly, the relationship between Nomzamo’s outside involvement and inside (i.e., classroom) teaching is complex and multi-layered. Her collaboration with others has played a crucial role too in helping Nomzamo find for herself a place within a broader community of practice, which in turn creates the opportunities for her to become known as a committed, dedicated science teacher. Reflecting on her experiences of playing the leading role in organising a local Science Expo, she remarked (somewhat in jest), “Well, I’ve now made my mark in the Cape. I made my mark in Natal, in the Free State – now I’ve made my mark in the Cape, maybe I should just retire . . . ”. From comments such as these one can begin to appreciate just how much Nomzamo’s sense of professional worth and (crucially) identity is bound up in her involvement in outside activities, in ways which seem to allow her to weather not only the disappointments of her own classroom, but also the debilitating conditions she faces in a dysfunctional school setting like Yengeni High. Nomzamo: But I really felt satisfied . . . beyond the classroom. The frustration of the classroom . . . really makes one . . . (indistinct). You really get more effective beyond the classroom. Jon: Do you feel that you can only do so much in the classroom? So you go outside of it and that’s where you get your own professional 167

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sense of worth (Nomzamo murmurs agreement). Well, that’s what I think, that’s what I see. It struck me the other day . . . it explains why Nomzamo keeps on doing this, going from one thing to another. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have an effect on the classroom – of course it does. But it is outside of the classroom. It’s almost as if . . . it’s a bigger challenge to organise something outside of the classroom, it’s more strain but it’s ultimately more satisfying than it would be to sort out the laboratory! (Nomzamo bursts into laughter.) They are equally a challenge . . . but you would go outside. Am I right? You’ll work at things you think you can succeed at, now the lab you know is heartache. Nomzamo: What is really depressing with the Yengeni lab is . . . if there were enough classrooms and the lab was used for what it was meant for, then you know it would really . . . (indistinct). Now you do . . . you try some things out and then the next thing is that you don’t really have control over it in the sense that . . . it’s used for all sorts of things and you cannot really say, it would be unfair for one to say: “No! The lab is to be used for only this”, when I know the problems that the school faces. So you have to be understanding to the situation and stuff. So in a way I’ve . . . kind of . . . Jon:

Given up?

Nomzamo: No, not given up but taken other things as priorities to it. (Later) It doesn’t work. You ask people to do certain things, and find that things are not done and you end up doing everything yourself [i.e., in the lab], which again is not a nice thing because it always looks as if you are monopolising things. But if you say that it will not be done. At the end you end up doing all sorts of other [outside] things . . . In diverting her energies elsewhere, taking “other things as priorities” and “doing all sorts of other things” as she puts it, Nomzamo is responding pragmatically to circumstances over which she feels she can no longer exert any influence or control. This is traded off against her engagement in outside collaborative ventures such as the local Science Expo and her ongoing involvement in STAP – an involvement which helps affirm her within a broader community of practice, and a coping strategy that provides her with reserves of stamina that allow her to endure working in an environment which seems to offer so few opportunities for creating personal meaning.56 Looking back over her years in the classroom, one cannot help but admire Nomzamo’s resilience, and the positive way in which she has evolved a system of practice which sustains her own unique configuration of personal interests and concerns. Yet even though this seems to allow her to cope remarkably well with the tangled web of situational constraints, accountability demands and conflicting expectations which seem to be part and parcel of daily life in a school like Yengeni 168

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High, there is perhaps a danger of underestimating (or ignoring altogether) the negative impact which working in such circumstances has on a teacher. Here we would suggest that some of the “patterns of practice” which a teacher develops may contribute to shaping and warping the growth and development of a teacher’s craft knowledge,57 to such an extent that they may hamper a teacher’s later attempts to effect changes in his/her pedagogic practice.58 Since Jonathan has taught in schools similar to Nomzamo’s, we have a deep appreciation for the extent to which the conditions of constraint and crisis found in poorly functioning schools, can limit a teacher’s actions – not only in terms of affecting one’s confidence and motivation, but in more damaging ways which strike at the very heart of the professional self. Teaching in such conditions can seem at times to be an almost deskilling experience, as one’s repertoire of teaching strategies is rendered down by circumstances beyond one’s control.59 While it may well be that such an analysis represents little more than a subjective, and to some extent emotive, interpretation, Nomzamo revealed similar thoughts: Ja . . . you end up getting used to what you are doing, and you are not facing challenges, so you don’t bother to think very hard about things. You just think on a low level, and it’s just enough to carry on . . . “You are not facing challenges . . . ”, captures the essence of what can be regarded as the “crisis of low expectations” which seems to characterise much of schooling in the townships.60 It is one more problem with which Nomzamo has to grapple, not only at times in terms of her own practice, but also more critically amongst the students that she teaches. In these matters we are reminded once again of the pivotal role which her external activities play in compensating for the disappointments of the classroom: Nomzamo: It’s those things like my involvement in other things which actually gives one hope that, maybe if one stays on, you know . . . things might get better. But there are times where I’ve felt that . . . this is just it! But then . . . Jon: Do you feel trapped in teaching? Nomzamo: Ja . . . trapped in the sense that . . . I cannot just make a quick decision, in terms of leaving the teaching profession. Partly because of the . . . house, to start with. But at the same time when I think of what else can I do besides teaching? I end up saying it looks like there isn’t much else I can do! (Laughs) The thing is I still . . . I still like teaching and even if I were to do something else, I would still reach out to those who are still . . . (indistinct). I even said one time that even if I were to take a package [voluntary retrenchment], I would still have extra classes for those students who felt that they needed more . . . tuition and that kind of a thing, because I still feel that my initial mission statement that I had when I went into the teaching profession hasn’t really subsided in my mind. But there again, the reality makes one realise that there isn’t much that you can really do. 169

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You can wish that you could do more. You can wish that you could . . . do this and that, but the reality sort of cuts it down and you can’t really do much. And that is why you start losing hope, and you want to give up. It was only on rare occasions like this that Nomzamo’s guard dropped and glimpses of her inner self emerged – a person who, beneath a robust exterior, is forced to question the value and worth of her actions, and who struggles (not always successfully) to remain purposeful and striving in a context which seems to offer so few opportunities for creating personal meaning. One also comes to appreciate the extent to which teaching, however central to Nomzamo’s sense of self, is but one facet of her life. The reader will recall that it was during her stay in Roosdal that she first had to cope with the demands of both home and classroom. With the birth of her second child in 1997, Nomzamo’s private life began to intrude on her work in ways with which she struggles to come to terms. I don’t have time at home at all . . . maybe it’s even worse this time [i.e., now], what with the little one [Mmusetsi]. So, if he was even three [years old] I would have a bit more free time to do other work. But now, the moment I come in it’s . . . ooh; it’s just the end of the story! I can’t even . . . when I try and take this to mark (glancing at a pile of students’ test books in front of her), he pulls things. And I can’t say, ‘Bodule, take him to the other room, I’m busy!’, [because] it’s not really fair. So again, I have to give time which adds on to the time which I don’t have. Sometimes I say I will work in the morning. I wake up at five or four and he’s up, he wants his bottle at four. I give him the bottle hoping he’ll fall asleep, he just wakes up. Then it means again I’m woken in the morning, but I haven’t been able to achieve anything. At this stage of her life, Nomzamo’s carefully nurtured image of herself as a dedicated, hardworking professional faces enormous challenges – particularly in relation to her private life where, as a mother of two young children, she simply does not have enough time left over from her domestic responsibilities to devote to school work. Both lesson preparation and marking have to be done at school during her free periods.61 That she is forced, for financial reasons, to also teach night school classes twice a week only adds to her burden. 5.6. SOME THOUGHTS IN CLOSING

By adopting an approach which focuses on the “teacher-as-person” we have been able in this chapter to bring Nomzamo into sharper focus, to see her in relation to the history of her time – and what times she has lived through! Her own educational experiences, firstly as a student and then as a teacher, straddle the period following the Soweto Uprising in 1976, a period which has seen black education in this country slip from one crisis to the next. In many ways Nomzamo’s story provides a kind of chronicle of the turbulent final days of apartheid education and its still unresolved aftermath. 170

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The focus in the following two chapters falls firmly on Nomzamo’s practice, and by approaching the telling of her life history in this way we have sought to lay the foundation for a perspective on her professional actions which acknowledges in a sensitive and non-judgemental way, who she is and where she is coming from. For us, the most significant aspect which emerged from Nomzamo’s story is her continual seeking out of opportunities for engaging in a broader community of practice. Her sense of professional worth and identity is closely bound up in the collaborative ventures she undertakes. These involvements affirm and sustain her in ways which allow her to endure teaching in an environment which seems at times to offer so few opportunities for creating personal meaning. Indeed, as we prepare to enter her classroom once more, we believe that it would be useful to conceptualise much of Nomzamo’s practice in terms of the dynamic tension which exists between what have often been two conflicting sets of influences – on the one hand, the constraining tendencies inherent in the teaching contexts in which she has worked and on the other, the sustaining possibilities which have arisen out of her ongoing involvement in external collaborative ventures. Having traversed, then, in the previous three chapters, the terrain of “school, staff, students and self”, it is now finally time to consider some of Nomzamo’s responses to the range of problems and challenges she faced as an inevitable consequence of introducing innovation into her classroom.

NOTES 1 Goodson (1981, 1992, 1995), Goodson and Walker (1991). 2 For instance, Butt and Raymond (1989) identify at least six clusters of what they term “life-

course” inquiry into teaching. [Butt, R.L. and Raymond, D. (1989). Studying the nature and development of teachers’ knowledge using collaborative autobiography. International Journal of Educational Research, 13(4), 403–419.] 3 Huberman (1989, 1992, 1993). 4 An important part of a teacher’s professional self is the knowledge, opinions, and values a teacher holds about his or her professional activities – the subjective educational theory which is “the global interpretative and conceptual framework by which teachers make sense of their professional situation” (Kelchtermans and Vandenberghe, 1994, p. 49). 5 See also Butt et al. (1990) and Raymond et al. (1992). 6 See, for example, Goodson (1993) and Hargreaves (1994). 7 Along with more contextual and structural determinants, the importance Hargreaves attaches to teachers’ individual and collective contributions to the subculture has already informed our discussion in Chapter 3 of the impact which the occupational culture of teaching at Yengeni High has on Nomzamo’s practice. 8 It would seem that the critical issue here is not just material but people resources (i.e., skilled teachers). 9 Grossman and Stodolsky (1994), Little (1993), Goodson (1993), Talbert (1995). 10 As a final comment on this work, Helms’ (1998) warning about categorising teachers and clumping them into arbitrary belief systems seems particularly appropriate in contexts such as South Africa, where teachers come from such different educational backgrounds and display such varying levels of expertise.

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CHAPTER 5 11 There are some exceptions: Harber and Davies’ (1997) comprehensive book on school management in developing countries (cited extensively in Chapter 3) contains references to published work in this field, of which Davies’ (1988) own research into teachers’ work in Botswana is but one example. 12 During the days of “Grand Apartheid,” it was not unusual for families to be separated in this way. Under the system of Influx Control, African men like Nomzamo’s father, who had full-time employment, were granted “passes” which allowed them to reside in urban areas. If their wives wished to live with them they had to do so “illegally” and run the constant risk of police harassment and arrest for contravening the pass laws which were still being strictly enforced at the time (see Chapter 2, note 1). Often children like Nomzamo and her siblings were forced to remain behind in the rural Bantustans in the care of the extended family. Nomzamo recalls her mother regaling them with stories of her narrow escapes from the police during the “pass raids” – an experience shared by many African people of her generation. 13 In 1963, the Transkei was set up as a “self-governing” territory which was nominally independent from South Africa. 14 As the reader may recall, 1976 was the “Year of fire, the Year of ash”, i.e., the first year of the Soweto uprising against Bantu Education. 15 As she once said: “The celebrations lasted about a week or two. And so we would go in the afternoons, and there would be choirs and the soldiers doing drills and so on. And dance . . . it was quite a wonderful thing (she laughs). We enjoyed it very much, not knowing what was going on [in the rest of the country]!” 16 As Nomzamo put it, “I insisted that they take us [the children] and make us live with them, because I was tired of living with my mother’s aunt. I just told them, “I’m not going back to Umtata again, you’ll just have to find a way of keeping us three with you guys!” 17 Money was not the issue, rather the fact that he was Xhosa (and not Zulu) – which meant that because of local politics, he struggled to get his name on a housing list for one of the four-roomed bungalows. As Nomzamo recalls, in order to curry favour with the local authorities, in desperation he eventually joined the Zulu nationalist party – the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). This seems to have worked, but by then the family was ready to move on the Theological Seminary where he was to train for the priesthood. 18 One of the most difficult things to portray for a reader (particularly one perhaps unfamiliar with South Africa’s past) is a sense of the harshness of someone like Nomzamo’s early life. While she does not come from a background of abject poverty, conditions under apartheid were such that many African people shared her family’s experiences of leading an extremely (for want of a better word) dislocated existence. 19 Nomzamo was born into the Xhosa tribe; Natal is home to the Zulus. Culturally and linguistically there are many similarities between the two tribal groupings. 20 As she once put it, “He wasn’t really affording as such, we were having quite a difficult time. But it was just that determination of giving his kids the best, no matter what you are left with at the end”. 21 At the first rural school where Jonathan taught, the principal tried (mostly in vain) to enforce an “English only” policy. An enduring memory is of Mr. Mathipa striding around the yard chasing goats (out of the school) and errant students (into classrooms). If he caught anyone speaking Setswana (the local language) they were liable to be given a sound beating for their transgression. 22 The growth of Technicon education (technically oriented university level education) is a recent phenomenon in South Africa. When Nomzamo completed schooling back in the early 1980s, there were relatively few opportunities for African students to study at tertiary institutions. Access was limited to those few who were fortunate to have either very good grades (which would help secure them much-needed financial assistance), or wealthy parents (of which there were few around). Nursing and teaching were two of the few career paths which required further study, and access to teacher training institutions was relatively easy due to the rapid expansion in schooling which was taking place at the time. 23 During the apartheid years, under the auspices of the Joint Matriculation Board (JMB), a total of eight examining bodies ran the senior certificate exams for the various education departments. Virtually all African students wrote the National Senior Certificate (NSC) papers set by the Department of Education and Training (DET). The JMB’s own exams were mostly written by students at the elite

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NOMZAMO – A SCIENCE TEACHER (mainly white) private schools and were generally regarded (as Nomzamo had the misfortune to find out) to be of a higher standard than those set by the other examining bodies. 24 Desmond Tutu is the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and leading anti-apartheid campaigner. 25 These issues were discussed in Section 3.2. 26 Due to the stormy context of urban education, the lack of boarding facilities in urban areas and the better Matriculation results in homeland schools, a considerable number of urban children found refuge in homeland schools in the period following 1976. 27 The three-year Senior Teachers’ Diploma (STD) for which Nomzamo studied was intended as a qualification for teaching up to (but not including) the Grade 10 level; however, the continuing shortage of graduate teachers in subject areas like mathematics and science means that there is nothing unusual in teachers like Nomzamo offering classes up to the Matric level. 28 It is hardly surprising that teaching is a “lonely profession,” given the constraints under which many teachers work and the culture of isolation, conservatism and privatism found in most teaching situations (Lortie, 1975). 29 Up to the mid-1990s, the Science Education Project (SEP) was one of the largest non-government organisations working in school science. The focus of its work was the science teacher in the junior secondary school. For more information on SEP, see references in Macdonald and Rogan (1990), in particular: Macdonald, C.A. (1994). Commitments and constraints. Evaluating the SEP, 1977–1981. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Rogan and Gray (1999) provide a useful overview of the role the project played in reconceptualising science education in South Africa. [Rogan, J.M. and Gray, B.V. (1999). Science education as South Africa’s Trojan horse. International Journal of Science Teaching, 36(3), 373–385.] 30 Situated in the province of Natal, the self-governing territory of KwaZulu (one of the nominally independent Bantustans) was responsible for administering mainly rural African schools, while township schools in and around cities and towns tended to fall under the DET. 31 A dominant feature of SEP programmes was the concept of regional “implementers” whose task it was to encourage and support individual teachers in the classroom. Each implementer was responsible for a cluster of around 20 “project” schools, and in addition to school-based work, implementers also ran workshops which sought to develop the professional skills of groups of teachers. 32 The violence that plagued KwaZulu-Natal for a decade (from the mid-1980s up until after the 1994 elections) is multifaceted and resists simple explanations. It is variously attributed to the political struggle between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the African National Congress (ANC); the manipulations of the apartheid state’s security forces; struggles over resources; ethnic divisions; generational conflicts; and conflict between urbanising and modernising groups and the old rural élites (Wedekind et al., 1996). For further background on the conflict in KwaZulu-Natal, see Gultig and Hart (1990) and Kentridge (1990). [Kentridge, M. (1990). An unofficial war – Inside the conflict in Pietermaritzburg. Cape Town: David Philip.] 33 In 1988, almost half a million (481,000) black children were attending small schools on white farms. The great majority of these children were in the first four years of schooling, with less than 1.5% in secondary classes. There were a total of 5,627 farm schools with an average enrolment of 86 students each, and 2,404 of these schools were one-teacher schools. For further background on farm schools, see: – Hartshorne, K. (1992). Crisis and challenge: Black education 1910–1990. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, pp. 135–143. – Christie, P. and Gordon, A. (1992). Politics, poverty and education in rural South Africa. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 13, 399–418. 34 As Hartshorne (1992, p. 136) put it, the farm schools were the “Cinderella of a system which in total has suffered from neglect and discrimination”. 35 The Free State is one of the central provinces in South Africa. Mainly (white-owned) agricultural and mining enterprises dominate the local economy. 36 The word kaffir is a derogatory expression when applied to African people. As an example of her experiences in Roosdal, Nomzamo related the following story, in which she describes how she was treated at a stationery shop in town.

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CHAPTER 5 They [the white owners of the shop] hated blacks who spoke English. They wanted you to speak Afrikaans. So there I was speaking English and I had entered the wrong entrance apparently. I said why and they said you are just not allowed to enter . . . no, you use that entrance; this entrance is for whites only. So, I didn’t have to be called kaffir, it was just implied . . . Initially I was surprised, then someone else told me that’s how they function there. But when I got home and told Samuel about it, he was really quite angry. Samuel takes racial things quite seriously. So he went there the following day, they knew him as predikant (pastor) but they didn’t know me. They allowed him to enter there (the whites’ entrance) because they were a stationery shop and he would buy a lot of stationery, so they knew that if they chased him away they would lose. So, with him they would serve him from that door. So this day he came with me. “Come let’s go into together”, he said and the people didn’t say anything, they served him. And he told them, “Meet my wife”. And I said to him I don’t want to be treated, I don’t want to get special treatment just because I am your wife. I must just be treated like everyone else, everyone deserves better treatment . . . I’m still not impressed with them. 37 The societal pressures on African women teachers, particularly those who are married, are considerable given the patriarchal nature of traditional African culture. 38 Professional considerations aside, teachers with a three-year college qualification (such as Nomzamo) were encouraged by the promise of a salary increment to enrol for accredited FDE programmes run at tertiary institutions – at the time (1994), salary scales in education were closely bound to the level of qualifications a teacher held. 39 Funds were usually made available for SEP project schools to be provided with sets of kits and the accompanying workbooks, which had been specifically developed to support the “hands-on” student group work which was a cornerstone of SEP’s practice. 40 Given its successful implementation elsewhere in the country, the failure of the local SEP initiative is not easily explained. In retrospect, perhaps a major problem was that township schools were chosen to join the project as part of an agreement which was brokered nationally between the DET and SEP, thereby short-circuiting the “free-association” principle which seems to have been such a vital ingredient in the project’s work with teachers in the past. Consequently, science teachers were in effect being told to participate, at a time (i.e., the last days of the apartheid regime) which was marked by their wholesale rejection of virtually any kind of authority or control. It is possible to conclude that the climate was not at all conducive to effective INSET work in township schools like Yengeni High. 41 As with general science, at the time of the STAP trialling exercise, mathematics was a compulsory subject taken by all students up to the end of Grade 9. 42 With the blessing of the local education department, the project was responsible for providing a replacement teacher for the duration of the secondment period. 43 The “craft” model for career development proposed by Huberman seems certainly worth considering. On the basis of his study, he concludes that encouraging and supporting teachers in their “tinkering” around in their classrooms is the best scenario for expanding and improving their instructional repertoires. 44 This is complex ground; Nomzamo’s sense of personal value and worth is undoubtedly buoyed by the fact that physical science and mathematics are (still) regarded amongst many teachers and students as high-status subjects. 45 Lakin and Wellington (1994) make a similar point when they suggest that one should avoid applying labels to teachers’ beliefs. 46 By the nature of science, we mean the “knowledge of both why science believes what it does and how science has come to think that way” (Duschl, 1988, p. 57). 47 This issue will be raised in Section 6.3. 48 For example, in Brickhouse (1990) and Brickhouse and Bodner (1992), the beliefs of three experienced teachers about the nature of scientific theories, of scientific progress, and of scientific processes were shown to influence their classroom instruction; and their views of how scientists construct knowledge was shown to be consistent with their beliefs about how students should learn science. Duschl and Wright’s (1989) study of 13 secondary-school science teachers found that these teachers were committed to a hypothetical-deductive view of the scientific method and to teaching the propositional knowledge of science. [Duschl, R.A. and Wright, E. (1989). A case study of high school teachers’ decision-making models for planning and teaching science. Journal of Research in Science

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NOMZAMO – A SCIENCE TEACHER Teaching, 26, 467–501.] This raises an issue noted elsewhere (see Gallagher, 1991; Laplante, 1997) that teachers hold views which are at odds with current conceptions of the nature of science – i.e. with many teachers viewing science more as a body of knowledge than as a process of inquiry. 49 In a number of articles over the years, Norman Lederman (together with others) has concluded that teachers’ beliefs about science have little effect on what they do in the classroom. See, for instance, Lederman (1992) and Lederman and Zeidler (1987). [Lederman, N.G. and Zeidler, D.L. (1987). Science teachers’ conceptions of the nature of science: Do they really influence teaching behaviour? Science Education, 71(5), 721–735.] 50 Lyons et al. (1997). 51 As in Butt et al. (1990). 52 Nomzamo’s “even-temperedness” was confirmed by her students, who had this to say about her during one of the interviews: Luleka: Phelo:

She is not always angry . . . but I have never seen her when she is angry. I do not know what she is like when she is angry.

53 By “negative stereotype,” we mean those particularly ineffectual or incompetent teachers which most of us have had the misfortune to encounter at some stage or another during our school careers. One could argue that such teachers provide a kind of yardstick against which an aspirant teacher does not wish to be judged. 54 This issue was dealt with in Section 2.6. 55 It was only really at Bovingdon Farm School that Nomzamo was fortunate enough to find someone on the staff (i.e., the biology teacher) with whom she could work more closely. 56 This is a problem for teachers in most educational settings. See, for example, Denscombe (1980). [Denscombe, M. (1980). The work context of teaching. An analytic framework for the study of teachers in classrooms. British Journal of Sociology, 1(3), 279–292.] 57 The concept of craft knowledge will be discussed in the introductory section to the next chapter. 58 This issue will be dealt with at some length in the following chapter, in relation to Nomzamo’s own experiences of grappling with change. 59 Much was made in Chapter 3 of the fact that teaching time is invariably a commodity in short supply at Yengeni High. The impact on classroom practices will concern us again in the following chapter. We contend that such conditions encourage, and in no small way come to legitimise, instructional approaches which focus on little more than the speedy (and superficial) transmission of the basic content of the official syllabus. 60 That the majority of both students and their teachers attach so little value to the educational process is surely a further legacy of the broader schooling crisis of the past thirty years. 61 Many women teachers who, like Nomzamo, are also mothers often encounter extreme difficulty in reconciling their professional roles with motherhood. Women struggle to balance marriage, children, work and selves (Ball and Rundquist, 1993). Feelings of guilt are common; see, for instance, Pajak and Blase (1989). [Pajak, E. and Blase, J.J. (1989). The impact of teachers’ personal lives on professional role enactment: A qualitative analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 26(2), 283–310.]

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ADRIFT ON THE SEA OF CHANGE . . .

Change is a process, not an event . . . (Fullan, 1991, p. 49) 6.1. INTRODUCTION – TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE

As Shulman (1987) points out, because of the consistency with which the best creations of its practitioners are lost to both contemporary and future peers, teaching is an occupation and profession which suffers from extensive individual and collective amnesia. Conducted as it is, without an audience of peers, it is essentially devoid as such of a history of practice. In an attempt to address such concerns (and driven in no small way by the imperatives of educational reform), the past twenty years have seen the development of an area of research on teaching which is devoted to understanding the ways in which individual teachers come to sustain and change their everyday practice. The language and discourse of this research is multifaceted, with loci of research that overlap and complement each other in a variety of ways. The diverse theoretical and methodological approaches are aptly reflected in Pope’s (1993) review of the discourse on teacher thinking, which lists 23 different interpretative perspectives which describe the craft of teaching.1 Within this broad field, the notion of teaching as craft, rather than as an applied science, has received increasing attention in recent years. From this perspective, teachers are conceptualised as craft workers, with teaching as a craft learned on the job. When viewed in this way, teaching makes sense as a messy and highly personal enterprise.2 And Huberman’s (1992) characterisation of teachers as “career cycle artisans” seems a particularly useful way of considering in what ways a teacher’s knowledge develops over time. In their review of the literature, Grimmett and MacKinnon (1992) make the point that the portrayal of teaching as craft assumes certain proficiencies and dispositions on the part of accomplished teachers – a “teaching sensibility”, rather than a knowledge of propositions. As they put it, “. . . craft knowledge represents intelligent and sensible know-how in the action setting” (p. 395). In this respect, teachers have practical knowledge (knowing how) and theoretical knowledge (knowing that), both of which inform, and are informed by, their teaching.3 As Carter (1990) reminds us, the common-sense knowledge that teachers have of classroom situations and practical dilemmas is shaped by personal history

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– including intentions, purposes and the cumulative effects of life experience – something we can well appreciate from the deliberations of the previous chapter. Cooper and McIntyre’s (1996) description of what they term a teacher’s “professional craft knowledge” seems to capture many of these elements and is therefore worth quoting in full: Professional craft knowledge – as opposed to other forms of knowledge that teachers might possess – is the knowledge that experienced teachers gather throughout their careers that enables them to make decisions about how best to approach professional tasks. This knowledge is firmly rooted in teachers’ practical experience, and is directly linked to their daily practice. By definition, craft knowledge describes the knowledge that arises from and, in turn, informs what teachers actually do. As such, this knowledge is to be distinguished from other forms of knowledge that are not linked to practice in a direct way. Craft knowledge is not, therefore, the kind of knowledge that teachers draw on when explaining the thinking underlying their ideal teaching practices. Neither is it knowledge drawn from theoretical sources. Professional craft knowledge can certainly be (and often is) informed by these sources, but it is of a far more practical nature than these knowledge forms. Professional craft knowledge is the knowledge that teachers develop through the processes of reflection and practical problem solving that they engage in to carry out the demands of their jobs. As such this knowledge is informed by each teacher’s individual way of thinking and knowing. (p. 76) Since this contextualised knowledge depends so much upon the teaching situation, person, and classroom experience, it is also associated with powerful beliefs and feelings about what are the “right” ways of teaching.4 Yet the knowledge that teachers possess about what and how to teach is not always coherent and consistent, and is something most teachers rarely articulate or are even conscious of using.5 This has been emphasized by a number of researchers6; as Tom and Valli (1990) quite cogently put it, because of its tacit nature, the attempted explication of teachers’ craft knowledge is something of an oxymoron. Grimmett and MacKinnon (1992) add that this makes it difficult to review and frame the craft knowledge of teachers such that it retains the essential features of craft without becoming another prescriptive knowledge base. Grimmett and MacKinnon (1992) are also careful to avoid presenting craft knowledge as a knowledge base as such, but rather as a framework for helping teachers develop a “repertoire of responses, understandings and magical tricks” (p. 441). Here (as elsewhere in the field) the influence of Les Shulman is most apparent. In a four-year longitudinal study, “Knowledge Growth in Teaching”, Shulman and his colleagues examined how knowledge in teaching develops. By focusing specifically on how expert learners make the transition into novice teachers, they showed that over time some teachers develop a knowledge base that enables them to present their subject to students in increasingly effective ways (“in a 150 different ways” according to Wilson et al., 1987). 178

ADRIFT ON THE SEA OF CHANGE . . .

In a number of seminal papers based on this work, Shulman (1986, 1987) described a framework for teacher knowledge in a number of different domains.7 In addition to a teacher’s general knowledge of instructional methods (general pedagogic knowledge) and knowledge about the subject matter (content knowledge), Shulman suggested that the third major component of teaching is the knowledge of specific strategies for teaching a particular subject matter (pedagogic content knowledge). According to Shulman (1987), general pedagogic knowledge is the knowledge of the broad principles and strategies of classroom management and organisation which transcend subject matter. The study by Sanders et al. (1993) with experienced science teachers in and out of their area of specialisation, led them to argue that general pedagogic knowledge provides a framework for teaching that is filled in and enhanced by a teacher’s content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge (the other two kinds of knowledge, which tend to be most often emphasized by researchers in the field). Sanders et al. conclude that general pedagogic knowledge, like teaching itself, is a complex phenomenon. Shulman’s (1986) concept of pedagogic content knowledge (hereafter referred to as PCK) is one of the most influential ways of thinking about the kind of expertise involved in subject teaching.8 At the core of Shulman’s formulation is the idea that what is unique about teaching is that it requires teachers to “transform” their knowledge of the subject matter in order to teach it. As such, PCK is highly specific to the subject being taught. It is that blend of content and pedagogy that provides teachers with an understanding of how particular topics, problems and issues in the subject matter are to be organised, represented and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and then presented for instruction.9 While there is no universally accepted conceptualisation of pedagogic content knowledge, there is broad agreement that it is a specific type of teachers’ craft knowledge which is developed through an integrative process rooted in classroom practice.10 Carter (1990, p. 69) for one, characterises it as the “collective wisdom of the profession”. In the context of science teaching, PCK is that form of knowledge that makes science teachers rather than scientists.11 As Clermont et al. (1994) point out PCK is a complex knowledge system which develops only after years of preparation and extensive experience in the classroom. Besides teaching experience, the other prerequisite for the development of PCK is a thorough and coherent understanding of the subject matter.12 The assertion that subject-matter knowledge is a crucial component of teacher knowledge is widely accepted,13 and particularly true in a subject like science where content knowledge forms the basis of most transactions between teachers and students in the classroom. Indeed, it is self-evident that in order to be effective as a science teacher one needs to have a sound understanding of one’s subject. Yet research has shown that many teachers, at both the primary and secondary school level, lack the science knowledge for teaching the subject.14 Furthermore, virtually all of the research cited here has been undertaken in developed countries, where the level of teacher expertise is undoubtedly much higher than in the majority of South African schools. Taylor and Vinjevold (1999) draw on the find179

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ings of a number of projects to conclude that teachers’ low levels of conceptual knowledge and a poor grasp of science act as a major inhibition to teaching and learning the subject in many South African schools. Whatever the context, the blame tends to be laid squarely at the door of preservice training. A number of researchers have argued that the traditional didactic pedagogy to which student teachers are exposed in tertiary science courses equips them with only a minimal conceptual understanding of science.15 Gallagher (1991) suggests that one consequence of the rapid coverage of the content of science is that little attention is paid to its origins or its applications; and therefore teachers have little opportunity to develop an integrated understanding of that knowledge. Thus, many student teachers leave science courses with only a very limited understanding of the nature of science.16 Perhaps most damaging of all, they tend to enter the profession holding serious “alternative conceptions” about the science content they are supposed to teach – conceptions which are often little different from those held by the students they will teach.17 A further consequence of having a superficial knowledge of subject matter is that teachers have little flexibility in their pedagogical choices and preferences and may thus be effectively constrained to teach “just the facts”, avoiding situations which may expose their inadequate knowledge.18 In these matters, Cohen’s (1990) case study of a mathematics teacher makes particularly interesting reading. Cohen notices that even as the teacher with whom he is collaborating eagerly embraces curriculum change, her lack of what he calls a “deep knowledge” of mathematics seems to restrict her notion of mathematical understanding (and what it takes to produce it). As he puts it: Her relatively superficial knowledge of the subject insulated her from even a glimpse of many things that she might have done to deepen students’ understanding. Elements in her teaching that seemed contradictory to an observer therefore seemed entirely consistent to her, and could be handled with little trouble . . . mathematically she was on thin ice. But she did not seem to know it, and so skated smoothly on with great confidence. (pp. 115–116) “Skating on thin ice” seems a particularly apt metaphor to describe the situation in which many science teachers find themselves. To sum up, whatever else, subject-matter knowledge clearly has a fundamental role to play in science teaching – not only as the basis of that which is taught, but also, as suggested earlier, as a prerequisite for the development of pedagogic content knowledge. Yet the transformation of subject-matter knowledge into classroom practice is, as we have seen in previous chapters, clearly influenced (and complicated) by a range of factors. We agree with Louden and Wallace (1994), who remind us that the most fundamental lessons teachers learn about teaching are the lessons they learn in practice. Consequently, a teacher’s craft knowledge accumulates slowly and changes slowly, as established patterns of teaching are modified in the light of old personal preconceptions and new classroom experiences – something we will have the opportunity to consider at some length in the rest of this chapter. 180

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What then of Nomzamo’s craft knowledge, what of its base and development over the years she has spent in the classroom? Seeking answers to this question will allow us to consider the cumulative effect which a range of contextual factors (drawn from the discussions of “school, staff, students and self”) has on Nomzamo’s pedagogy, and the way they mediate her implementation of the STAP programme and hence her experience of change. To do this, the following discussion will be loosely structured around the three categories of craft knowledge which were described above. To start off, we will consider the impact which working in a dysfunctional school setting has on Nomzamo’s general pedagogic knowledge. From there, we will move on to explore how the growth and development of her subject-matter knowledge is, like her general pedagogic knowledge, context-bound and influenced by, amongst other things, the nature of the interactions between Nomzamo and the students she teaches. Up to this point it seems inevitable that given the nature of the issues under discussion, a somewhat bleak picture will emerge, illustrating how Nomzamo’s craft knowledge is shaped (and even warped) by the various “constraints to practice” she experiences, in ways that impact heavily on her attempts to bring innovation into her classroom. Yet to tell only a story of constraint would be to misrepresent the trialling exercise, which was in so many other ways a positive learning experience which led to considerable personal growth. This personal growth will be the third (and final) point of focus of this chapter. We will explore in some detail a number of specific examples of where Nomzamo came to confront, and then work through, limitations in her own instructional practices; in ways which led to the growth and development of her pedagogic content knowledge. This will also provide us with an important vehicle for considering some of the complexities of the change process from Nomzamo’s own perspective.

6.2. NOMZAMO’S GENERAL PEDAGOGIC KNOWLEDGE

The nature of schooling at Yengeni High was discussed at some length in Chapter 3, where it was suggested that in organisational terms at least, the school operates as something of a bureaucratic façade. In support of this contention, evidence was presented to show that although the structures are in place to allow for smooth functioning – there is for instance a working timetable and a careful delimitation of teaching duties – disruptions to the scheduled programme continue to occur. What is arguably the most significant indicator of school (dys)functionality lies in the fact that instructional time remains a commodity in short supply at Yengeni High.19 What is of interest to us here is how a teacher such as Nomzamo responds to this time constraint. Facing a continual shortfall in teaching time, it might be imagined that this would encourage her to engage in more careful planning in order to maximise her use of whatever time is available. Instead it would appear 181

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(based on observations of Nomzamo’s practice) that the opposite occurs – that given the very unpredictability of daily life at the school, a teacher learns all too quickly that there is often little point in planning too far ahead. For as we have been reminded on a number of occasions throughout this book, the essentially brittle nature of the school ensures that classroom teaching is continually under threat – be it from a shortened day, a summarily called meeting, a student (or teacher) protest, or even a heavy shower of rain. Considered in such terms, the tendency of a teacher to function on a day-today basis seems then a perfectly reasonable response to the conditions at Yengeni High. Indeed, we would go so far as to suggest that it actually forms an invaluable part of a teacher’s repertoire of coping strategies which allows her to deal with the vagaries of daily life at the school. However functioning in this way clearly has significant implications for Nomzamo’s attempts to successfully implement the STAP programme. Not least because the programme demands a far more coherent response from Nomzamo’s teaching (at least in terms of the structuring and ordering of her time), something which is in many ways the very antithesis of the incoherent context in which she works. This was well illustrated during the trialling exercise, where Nomzamo battled to lift her head (so to speak) from one period to the next and struggled to adopt a more “forward thinking” approach in which she would plan for lessons more than one or two days in advance. The point is no more than this: planning skills, which tend to be a “takenfor-granted” part of any teacher’s repertoire in a more functional setting, seem to almost “get lost” in contexts where teachers become accustomed to coping with the immediacy of daily life at the school. Time and again Nomzamo would draw up plans to cover a certain section of work, only to have the programme thrown into disarray by an unexpected interruption or change in schedule. And even when the school was running “smoothly”, there was the inevitable “time leakage” – mainly because of the students’ tendency to arrive late for classes (particularly when scheduled for the first or fourth periods) – something which is well illustrated by the account of events with the 9D’s.20 Coupled with a timetable which regularly left gaps of three or four days between periods, the essentially discontinuous nature of schooling at Yengeni High had the capacity to wreak havoc on even the best-made plans. Faced with such conditions, a teacher who nevertheless wishes to function in a highly structured way needs to display (in addition to a great deal of patience) a high level of organisational skills. Many of these concerns emerged during a conversation with Nomzamo, towards the end of the trialling exercise: Jon: Have you seen how the STAP work demands a level of . . . Nomzamo: Mmmm . . . organisation. Jon: Maybe you can understand now how I cope [she sees me with my carefully structured tables and plans], because otherwise I don’t know where I’m going . . . 182

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Nomzamo: Jon: Nomzamo: Jon: Nomzamo: Jon:

You end up forgetting. So, I think that’s what the STAP programme needs. Ja, it demands certain levels of organisation. The thing is how do you do it for yourself? Getting into it, into the habit of doing it that way. But you see, my analysis of why it’s not like that here, is because that’s the way you cope here – because if you plan too much . . . Nomzamo: You can’t! Like the other day, the Thursday for instance, after talking to you over the phone on Wednesday evening, I planned for Thursday thinking of full periods – only to find it’s thirty minutes, ooohh . . . ! Jon: It throws you and then you lose . . . Nomzamo: Ja, you lose track of where you said you wanted to be at the end and like you’ve already marked in your book that this is how far you’ll get and then you don’t change it later on because the periods are . . . [shortened] and the bell rings. “Losing track” aptly sums up a range of organisational difficulties which Nomzamo experiences in her day-to-day teaching – which in turn is a manifestation of a broader problem related directly to the lack of administrative accountability which still tends to characterise teaching at Yengeni High.21 The origins of this problem can seemingly be traced back to the late 1980s, to the crisis in authority which saw an increasingly militant teacher corps challenging virtually all forms of departmental “control”. Besides the more openly political acts of defiance – such as the barring of departmental officials from school premises – the impact was felt in the staff room, where many teachers (particularly at the secondary school level) refused to submit to the authority of the principal and HODs and began to withhold their work from anything but the most nominal/superficial inspection. For instance, a specific casualty of this time was the “green file”22 in which teachers had been obliged to keep their records and copies of such things as schedules, tests, exams, work programmes and lesson plans. The crucial thing to note is that once this “system” was rejected, little attempt was made to replace it with another one; and the administrative anarchy which seemed to overwhelm many township secondary schools at the time has left a legacy which – as we have seen in Chapter 3 – continued to have a negative impact on teaching and learning at Yengeni High. Even now, Nomzamo and her fellow teachers are left pretty much alone to decide for themselves how they will keep track of their work. In this regard, it is perhaps a telling comment on conditions at Yengeni High that it was only after more than two months of schooling that typed-up class lists finally appeared in the staff room (for use in compiling the end-of-term report cards). Even though Nomzamo was the first to admit that she had always been somewhat “disorganised”, the argument presented here is that any personal “weakness” in this regard was exacerbated by conditions at the school, and this inevitably had 183

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some far-reaching consequences for her teaching. Once again, in her disarmingly frank way, this is something which Nomzamo acknowledged about herself: Nomzamo: You see what happens, when you get too much information – you get this from STAP, you get this from the University, this from there – you end up having too much. And you . . . if you are not very good at sorting out your stuff on time, you end up having piles and piles of various resources – which become useless, of course, if they are not that organised, because you don’t know how to access whatever file you are looking for. I would say initially, when I didn’t have so many . . . contacts . . . I had few to handle, which wasn’t a problem. But the moment you have this and that, it kind of gets a bit out of hand. And I would say okay, putting this into this slip [plastic cover] and then into my cupboard – which is very small of course, because I only have the top shelf to myself and we are five to a cupboard. So you have a very small space and then you don’t really get to . . . Only if you had enough room, you would say okay, this shelf is for my Grade 11’s, for my Grade 8’s and so and so on . . . and this is for my other material besides my school work. Now I have things from National Expo, from the Human Sciences Research Council . . . and I end up getting envelopes and envelopes which I end up not putting at the right places. So I am quite disorganised . . . Jon: How does it impact on your teaching though? Nomzamo: It does have an impact on my teaching, unfortunately, because sometimes I would look for something and I end up not finding it. Then a week later I find it in another . . . (wry laugh). And then it’s kind of late in terms of what I intended to do, so it does have an impact on my teaching. (Later) Jon:

But there’s not a lot of pressure to do it, is there? So when you are working in a disorganised place . . . Nomzamo: You end up being disorganised (laughs softly to herself). Jon: Is that being harsh? Nomzamo: Ummm . . . I would say, there is pressure to do it [be organised], in the sense that you see the need to do it, right. Not in terms of someone having to run after you and . . . Jon: There’s no external pressure though? Nomzamo: Ahh . . . there’s no external pressure. It’s just that you yourself see the need for it. But it’s a matter of saying, okay I’m sitting down and I’m doing it. And unfortunately I’ve been . . . my lunch periods I’ve been using for moving up and down. And my free periods I haven’t really sat down and had time to say, okay, I’m during this free period going through this. So I haven’t given myself time to sit down and do it. 184

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Because this is a sensitive topic (in some ways it throws into doubt Nomzamo’s own sense of professional competence), it is not surprising that she responds somewhat defensively – for she is perfectly well aware of the value which would accrue to her practice if she were able to adopt a more ordered approach. As she put it, “You end up having piles and piles of various resources – which become useless, of course, if they are not that organised”. It is somewhat ironic in this instance that it is not a shortage of resources but a shortfall in Nomzamo’s own organisational skills which forms the barrier to their more effective use. That she is unable to do anything about it surely warns us of the complexities of the issues involved, not least of which is her ability to explain away her actions in terms of the “constraints to practice” imposed by conditions at the school. As she reminds me – there is neither the time (she is kept busy even during her free periods), nor the place (she only has access to a single shelf in one of the staff-room cupboards), for her to act otherwise. As we concluded together, “when you are working in a disorganised place, you end up being disorganised . . . ”. Here one is drawn (almost inevitably it seems) to consider broader issues relating to the nature of teaching at a school like Yengeni High – for what actually constitutes acceptable professional behaviour in such a context? This is a question which was first raised in Chapter 3, after we presented evidence highlighting the somewhat questionable commitment of some of Nomzamo’s colleagues to the basic task of teaching.23 Yet as we have suggested before, this is complex ground which defies simple analysis; for the cumulative effect of having worked for years under conditions of “crisis, conflict and constraint” has had a truly profound impact on the way in which teachers have come to conceptualise and enact their professional roles. And this is clearly reflected in the prevailing occupational culture of teaching at the school, in which in so many ways the practices of the past remain firmly entrenched in teachers’ present-day actions. Consider, for instance, another “taken-for-granted” assumption about teaching – that in common with other professions, it often entails working outside of fixed “office hours”. This is clearly not a notion of teaching to which many of the staff at Yengeni High subscribe. For as was confirmed by Nomzamo,24 a significant number of her colleagues believe that they are being paid to do a “9 to 5” (or more accurately, a 8.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m.) job and consequently rarely take schoolwork home with them. Whatever has to be done – be it marking, setting of tests and exams etc. – is left to the staff room. When taken to the extremes it reaches at Yengeni High, there is little doubt that the unwillingness to work beyond certain fixed hours serves as a good example of where there has been a breakdown in the “culture of teaching” at the school.25 Here the issues run deep. For instance, we would argue that there is a real danger of underestimating the accountability pressures which women teachers (in particular) face from their broader societal roles. In this regard, Osler’s (1997) Kenyan study is a rare example in the reported international literature which highlights some of the contradictions and conflicts that a group of African teachers experience in establishing working cultures in which their personal and professional identities co-exist. Identities which, as Osler points out, are shaped by 185

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a variety of factors, including their professional roles, ethnicity, gender, family responsibilities and sense of service to the community. Managing the “balancing act” between personal and professional identities is something which has been a growing problem for Nomzamo in recent years. As a mother of two small children, and holding down a second, part-time job, Nomzamo has virtually no time available at home to devote to her school work; indeed, as noted earlier, this was presented as evidence of the considerable guilt she felt about her inability to discard her “professional duties”. So whatever schoolwork she wishes to do has to be undertaken while at Yengeni High – and even there, although it might appear that Nomzamo has a considerable amount of free time (on average she teaches only four of the six periods a day26), a closer examination of her schedule reveals how constrained she is in this regard. For a start, as we have noted before, most of the administrative duties have to be dealt with by the principal, his senior teachers and others on the staff. Nomzamo’s reputation as one of the more motivated and conscientious teachers means that she often gets roped in to help. Add to this her involvement in outside activities and there are days when she has precious little free time to herself. And of course when it comes to her own teaching – provided the duplicating machine is working and there is paper available – all printing of notes or tests are her own responsibility; as is the setting up and running of experimental work in the science laboratory. With all this “moving up and down” (as she puts it), Nomzamo struggles at the best of times to cope with all the demands on her time. For all this, surely the most overwhelming constraint on Nomzamo’s time lies within the classroom, where with more than 300 students to teach, something as straightforward as a monthly test generates a volume of work which takes days to mark. In such circumstances, any other kind of (out-of-class) supervision of student work presents Nomzamo with enormous challenges. And the close monitoring of the individual performance of hundreds of children, who display such varying degrees of ability and enthusiasm for their schoolwork, becomes, as the reader can no doubt appreciate, a most difficult (or well-nigh impossible) task. Finally, the hardest thing to factor in is perhaps the most telling of all, and that is the psychological and emotional burden which accrues on a daily basis from having to teach so many students in such large mixed-ability groupings – no more so than during periods when normal schooling is disrupted and teaching is, as we have considered on a number of occasions, a truly exhausting experience. At such times, a teacher can surely be forgiven for wanting to spend her free time doing anything else but thinking about her schoolwork. Indeed, a level of disengagement is in fact an absolutely vital prerequisite for dealing with the pressures of teaching at a school like Yengeni High, and in many ways it might just be the most important coping strategy of all. Bearing all this in mind, the STAP programme – with its numerous opportunities for encouraging the students to engage in self-directed work – proves something of a mixed blessing for a teacher such as Nomzamo. For as soon as she tries to raise the level of engagement by expecting more of the students in terms of, say, class/homework, she finds herself burdened not only with a load of 186

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potentially unmarkable work (the piles of books which ensue may reach alarming proportions) but more critically with the more complex organisational demands needed to keep track of this work. To function effectively in this way in the large, mixed-ability classes requires a kind of skillful practice beyond that which she was normally expected to display – for as we have seen, Nomzamo’s general pedagogic skills have developed in response to the disrupted conditions which typify daily life at Yengeni High. Because of issues such as these, Nomzamo’s struggle to set up and manage a system for monitoring the students’ work during the STAP programme is worthy of closer examination. It seems to offer a further illustration of just how contextbound a teacher’s general pedagogic skills are. On “Making a Follow-Up” The issue of “making a follow-up” first arose after the students had been engaged in a group activity looking at electricity bills. Besides the examples given in the STAP text, Nomzamo was asked whether or not she had thought to ask the students to bring examples of bills from their own homes: What I did last year, I asked them to bring in their [electricity] accounts from home. And then we looked at how much you are paying, how many units and so and so on . . . But then it was a wide range . . . oh, we only used one [account], because they had their different ones. Now it was difficult to say: “Each one look at your own and get answers” – and then how do you check if they have done the right thing? So, they pasted their accounts in their books, but then we only used one for analysis. Then I asked them then to go and look at their individual [account] and see if they can get the same information from their books. But then I didn’t make a follow-up . . . [our emphasis] There is no doubt that Nomzamo identified the potential of this exercise: by getting the students to bring along to class a copy of their own household’s electricity account (bill), Nomzamo sensed an excellent way of establishing a contextual link between home and school, which can be of great value in supporting the students’ learning of science. Using one of these electricity accounts in an illustrative way is also a perfectly reasonable part of the process, as is Nomzamo’s instruction for the students to then go off and apply the same analysis to their own accounts. However, without a “follow-up” (i.e., checking their calculations) there is surely no way that she can assess whether or not the students really do understand how to analyse an account; and there is consequently a real danger that the value of the activity is lost. A similar kind of problem dogged Nomzamo’s practice throughout the trialling exercise. On a number of occasions she would set the students a homework exercise from the STAP text, and admonish them with threats of punishment if they failed to complete it by the next period (or whenever else she wanted it finished). Yet come the due date, and Nomzamo would rarely check up on whether or not the work had been finished – either by going around in class, or by taking 187

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in their books – and sometimes no further reference was made to the exercise at all. A consequence of this practice was that by the end of the STAP programme a significant portion of the students’ work remained unchecked and more critically, uncorrected either by their own or their teacher’s hand. Coupled with the poor level of L2 skills generally displayed by the students, many of their exercise books were left as little more than a cluttered collection of half-completed exercises, a veritable jumble of “loose ends”. All of which raises more profound concerns, for it casts doubts on the extent to which student learning, at least as evidenced by their written work, is actually taking place. It is interesting to hear how Nomzamo rationalised her failure “to make a follow up”: Nomzamo: I haven’t given myself enough time to actually check them when they come, that they have done the work, and sign [their books]. What I have done is . . . like I would, quickly give the answers, as the class and I would tell them to mark their books without even going to check each and every one of them. So I would basically . . . then for those who’ve done it, it’s a good thing because they would get the right answers and be able to mark it. But for them who haven’t done it, it means that they would get away with it and nothing would be done. Jon: Have you been aware that you haven’t really been able to monitor it? Nomzamo: Yeah . . . I know that I haven’t been able to manage it really. And . . . Jon: What have you thought of doing? Nomzamo: I don’t really know . . . Jon: How do you feel about it? Nomzamo: I’m trapped in it, but there are positive sides to it as well. Like, okay, the fact that the child hasn’t done homework, will need . . . There has to be some kind of punishment that goes with it and all that stuff. But, it doesn’t mean that . . . no positive learning took place. So there are good parts to it, but then there is also that bad part of not knowing, not even checking. Whereas before, I would teach, fine – there would be some learning but it would be different from STAP’s. And then I would check the homework and who knows when the homework was written? Maybe it was just copied in class, so even then how genuine the homework may be can also be questioned. Because sometimes they just copied in class just before you come in and you are happy that homework was done, whereas it wasn’t even his own effort – it was someone else. It happens a lot of the time. So, one would think that is the good thing that came out of it, whereas I think there is more value now, but it is just that one has to improve on that homework aspect and not just leave it like that because they would never bother to do work anyway. Even though a failure “to make a follow-up” is an aspect of her practice about which she is (quite understandably) somewhat defensive, Nomzamo is able to concede the negative impact which it has on her teaching. Yet as before, she is 188

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able to rationalise her actions; for a start, Nomzamo’s close association with the project meant that she quite clearly saw the trialling exercise as being first and foremost a test of the suitability of the STAP material and her role as being one of teaching as much of the programme as possible. With her focus firmly on teaching the programme, it is in retrospect perhaps not that surprising that she struggled to concern herself with student learning, whether it be manifest in their homework, their tests or anywhere else for that matter. Yet whatever the difficulties Nomzamo faced, due either to deficiencies in her own organisational skills or the way she came to use the STAP programme in the trialling exercise, the fact of the matter is that Nomzamo was unable to find ways to effectively monitor her students’ work. Reflecting further on these matters, it seems that the root of the problem lies elsewhere, outside of Nomzamo’s practice. The “paralysis of numbers” that takes hold of Nomzamo is clearly a complex response to the excessive demands she faces from the large, mixed-ability classes with all the children she sees day in and day out at Yengeni High. Indeed, it may well be that in many ways her failure “to make a follow-up” is closely tied to the “rules of engagement” which underpin the actions of both students and teachers at the school. It is here that we need to caution against automatically assuming that Nomzamo’s students will be willing recipients of change, particularly when it involves additional out-of-class (home)work; for as noted before, Yengeni High is a learning environment which is characterised by low expectations of student achievement, and no one (least of all the students themselves) expect to work particularly hard at all. The result is that, at the best of times, most teachers place few demands on the students. Following on from this, we would like to suggest that at times Nomzamo’s failure to make a “follow-up” is indeed no more than a pragmatic response with which she deals with some of the more intractable dilemmas of practice. She knows that however much she threatens to punish them, many students will still not do their homework and there is little she can do to change that fact (unless she is willing to take the matter all the way to the principal). At the risk of over-stating this argument, we would like to suggest that on such occasions Nomzamo actually avoids a confrontation by deliberately not checking up on their work. If this is so, then it can be taken as a further example of the dynamics of the “negotiated order” in Nomzamo’s classroom, in which there is a tacit agreement between her and the students which allows students to disengage as long as this does not result in disruptive or unruly behaviour. In all this we are reminded of the complexities of the classroom. As the reader will hopefully agree, the above discussion provides some useful insights which confirm not only the extent to which a teacher’s general pedagogic knowledge is forged in context, but also (as suggested by Sanders et al., 1993) how this general knowledge functions as a framework for teaching that is filled in and enhanced by other aspects of her practice. Before moving on to the next section, we wish to close off this discussion by striking a more positive note, acknowledging that even though the organisational challenges of implementing the STAP programme exposed some deep-rooted lim189

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itations in Nomzamo’s practice, it was an area which benefited significantly from the collaboration with Jonathan. This was particularly the case towards the end of the trialling exercise when, pressed for time, Nomzamo had to make decisions about what she would and would not teach from the final units of the programme. This gave Jonathan the opportunity to help Nomzamo explore different ways of “strategising” (to use the colloquial term for “planning ahead”) and to share ideas for possible formats she could use to record her progress in the different classes. As she acknowledged at the time: Ja, I had my system which wasn’t very neat of course [she made notes in the back of the STAP book], which then you changed me to the other system, which was neater and much more clearer, which I then followed. Actually, I was saying to myself I need to . . . to get a clean page of that format and actually start filling in where I am, up to this point with the Grade 9’s. So . . . I see the need, not that I don’t see the need for it. I do see the need for it and it’s very important. In the final weeks of the programme, Nomzamo’s adoption of a more “forward thinking” approach, began to surface in other aspects of her practice. She started to “talk ahead”, to create links from one period to the next – lessons which previously had tended to end abruptly were now closed with at least a passing reference to what would follow. There was also a more conscious attempt to plan homework ahead of time, and significantly enough, in the last three weeks of the programme Nomzamo adapted for her own use a system for ensuring that the students hand in a series of group homework tasks. Even allowing for the obligatory end-of-term chaos which descended on the school (this time as a result of a Union-organised teachers’ “go-slow”), Nomzamo managed to ensure that most of the homework was attempted by many of the groups in all four classes. The point here is that in shifting the emphasis towards group (rather than individual) homework exercises, Nomzamo was able to experiment with strategies which allowed her to cut down on the volume of marking. Instead of, say, fifty pieces of work in a class, she now had only seven or eight. All of these changes certainly appeared to contribute to a greater sense of purposefulness and structure in her work.

6.3. ON CONTENT-REDUCED TEACHING AND A DEARTH OF UNSOLICITED QUESTIONS

With subject-matter knowledge playing such a central role in the teaching of science, what can be gleaned from this case study about Nomzamo’s knowledge of science? What of its base? And how has it developed over the many years she has been in the profession? In seeking answers to these questions, we are drawn (once again) to consider aspects of Nomzamo’s pedagogy that are quite difficult to bring into focus. The issues are further complicated by the fact that we are keenly aware that Nomzamo’s sense of professional competency and self worth as a science teacher 190

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are closely linked to her perceptions about the level of subject “expertise” (i.e., content knowledge) that she holds. With these cautions in mind, a starting point is to look to the foundations of her content-knowledge base. Here it would be useful to draw a distinction between the formal “syllabus-bound” knowledge which Nomzamo calls on in her daily practice and the broader, more informal knowledge and understanding of the subject which she carries with her into the classroom. As with all of us, the roots of Nomzamo’s formal knowledge of science lie in the years she spent as a student in the classroom. Based on her recollections of those times, there is nothing to suggest that there was anything remarkable about her experiences of school science; even the two years she spent at the academically more challenging Illovo Seminary were dominated (somewhat unsuccessfully as it turned out) by the imperatives of the external Matric exam.27 Given the nature of the school syllabus and the prevalent instructional practices used to teach it, it seems safe to assume that Nomzamo, like so many of her fellow students, left Grade 12 with a relatively narrow knowledge base in the subject. With a poor performance in Matric behind her, it was undoubtedly a shaky base at that – built out of little more than the isolated facts, algorithms and formulae which she had learnt for her final school exam. As we have seen, it was at college that Nomzamo’s interest in science was awakened in quite dramatic fashion. Yet, not withstanding her newfound enthusiasm for the subject, it is debatable whether or not she was able to do much more than plaster over the “conceptual cracks” she carried with her from her school days.28 Because of this, it seems reasonable to suggest that Nomzamo found herself as a novice teacher in a position no different from that of many of her colleagues, who were sent into the classroom with some limitations in the conceptual understanding of the subject they were to teach. Accepting then that this is the foundation with which she started her career as a science teacher, what of the many years she has spent teaching? How have her experiences both inside and outside the classroom influenced her subject content knowledge? When it comes to her outside involvements, besides her participation in collaborative ventures (such as SEP and STAP), Nomzamo has been party to other in-service education and training (INSET) initiatives in science, run both by the Education Department and the various NGO’s that work in and around township schools. On the face of it, her attendance at workshops, lectures and seminars over the years has created numerous opportunities for Nomzamo to develop and extend her formal knowledge of the subject. Yet in our experience many of these initiatives have tended to be reactive – by this we mean that they are structured in a way that responds to teachers’ immediate needs, which invariably concern the content of the secondary school science syllabi. With such a narrow syllabus-bound focus and other constraints, (such as the inevitable time-constraints which accompany such work), one can begin to question the extent to which a teacher has the opportunity to grapple, on anything but a superficial level, with the science under review. It could be argued that as with 191

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Nomzamo’s experiences at Training College, much of the INSET work has tended to be more a case of “plastering the conceptual cracks” than anything else. Then there is also the question of attaining the broader contextual knowledge that underpins so much of good science-teaching. Thus, what remains essentially unanswerable is the extent to which INSET involvement led to the broadening of Nomzamo’s general knowledge of science. This suggests a potential shortcoming in a significant amount of INSET work (in this country at least) – which, because of its overriding preoccupation with content and methodological concerns, makes false assumptions or excludes altogether from consideration, the level of background knowledge which teachers carry with them into the classroom. So even where a teacher is assisted in developing her conceptual understanding of a topic and at the same time obtains good advice about instructional strategies which can be usefully employed to more effectively teach it; what is missing from INSET programmes is the more general scientific knowledge which would deepen and enrich what could be termed as a teacher’s contextual understanding of the science under consideration. Should it be an issue that a teacher does not know the difference between astronomy and astrology? We would argue that it does, because a lack of a broader appreciation of science poses a potential stumbling block to encouraging more open inquiry in the classroom; for it seems to us that it is this “other knowledge”, rather than the amount of syllabus-bound content knowledge, which gives a critical depth to a teacher’s understanding (and appreciation) of the subject. Perhaps it is best thought of as the “tacit feel” which a teacher has for her subject29 and that reflects in many ways the degree to which she is herself scientifically literate.30 Taking all this into account, it is reasonable to assume that Nomzamo’s subject-matter knowledge (particularly in terms of syllabus-based content) has benefited significantly from her participation in a variety of one-off workshops and lengthy collaborative ventures, such as STAP, to which she has been party over the years. Yet, whatever constructive role this has played, what of Nomzamo’s experiences over the years of teaching science inside the classroom? It certainly seems that, as with aspects of her general pedagogic knowledge, the conditions in which Nomzamo functions have at times proved anything but conducive to the growth of her subject-matter knowledge. To justify this statement, we need to look to the cumulative effect of a number of factors, many of which have emerged as concerns elsewhere in this book. In no particular order, they include the following: For a start, the content-reduced nature of the conventional science syllabi which Nomzamo has been expected to teach favours approaches in which “knowing what” is more important than “knowing how”. Coupled to this, the tendency to focus on “getting it done” rather than “thinking it through” (noted elsewhere by Wildy and Wallace, 1995) is legitimised in a school setting like Yengeni High by the shortfall in instructional time which places enormous pressures on a teacher to complete the syllabus in whatever time is available. An over-reliance on a single resource (generally a textbook); the trend of teachers in L2 classrooms to reduce 192

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the content of lessons to the barest minimum (in response to their students’ comprehension difficulties); and the generally low expectations which, in any event, both students and their teacher hold for the learning situation – all are underpinned by the tendency for a teacher to function on a day-to-day basis with little in-depth preparation. We believe there is another factor which, while rarely acknowledged, nonetheless plays a powerful constraining influence on a teacher’s content-knowledge base. This centres on the lack of student questioning which we characterised in Chapter 4 as being one of the defining features of student-teacher interaction in Nomzamo’s classroom. In this regard, the reader may recall that only a handful of unsolicited questions were noted during more than 70 lessons; and when students did ask questions, they tended to be concerned mainly with procedural matters. As Jonathan observed Nomzamo’s classes, this aspect of the students’ lack of questioning (either on- or off-syllabus) evoked strong memories of his own experiences of teaching in a township school and it struck an emotive chord for both of them: Jon:

I realised though I wasn’t being challenged very much when I was a teacher [at Luhlaza]. And I sometimes used to worry about that, because it made me feel as if I wasn’t really broadening my science. Do you feel that you are being challenged by your students? Nomzamo: Sometimes things do crop up, just that one [with the video machine] and . . . but it doesn’t happen a lot. Sometimes I would have to be the one who asked them – go and find out more about this, something related [to the syllabus] but a little bit off. But it doesn’t happen often, it’s just that rare occasion that something crops up. But with the present Grade 12’s sometimes they . . . one or two boys would ask things, although not very challenging as such [emphasis added]. Jon: Is it off-syllabus or related to the syllabus? Nomzamo: It’s something that is related to the syllabus. Jon: Do you ever get asked off-syllabus stuff? Kinda general things around science? Nomzamo: It rarely happens. (Later) Jon:

I think that part of the silence with the kids is that they are always waiting for the teacher to talk first! Nomzamo: Ja . . . Ja. Jon: For whatever reason – and I think that it is very complicated – they just don’t seem willing to “dig” into a teacher’s knowledge, to start something which would cause a teacher to think about her response, which would maybe make her move away a bit from what she has prepared to teach. That is what I meant by a challenge to a teacher. As I have said before, when I was teaching I used to think that my own knowledge base was shrinking . . . Nomzamo: . . . narrowing down. 193

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Jon:

. . . because if I wasn’t challenged about a section [of the syllabus] and I didn’t think about it, then I just forgot . . . Nomzamo: (softly) . . . one doesn’t read more about it. Ja, it is true. Jon: And I saw it as a constraint on teaching in a place like this. Do you sense that as well sometimes? Nomzamo: Ja, you end up getting used to what you are doing and you are not facing challenges, so you don’t bother to think very hard about things. You just think on a low level and it’s just enough to carry on . . . [emphasis added]. (Later) Nomzamo: They don’t really challenge, because they don’t ask challenging questions. It’s very rare that you get a challenging question. But then, there are classes where one cannot just go to class and take chances with . . . so the way you know you have to be relatively well prepared. Then 9E’s are [like that]. But at the same time they are quite sympathetic to their teachers, in the sense that, although there will be negative, they will see some positive aspects of that teacher. Jon: What would happen if you taught at OakRidge High? You’ve said before that if you taught there, you would have to rise to different challenges. What’s different about the kids there? Nomzamo: The thing is with schools like OakRidge, maybe I’m wrong – I don’t know – but I believe that the kind of education that they have been through is very enriched and very . . . they are used to the system of working hard, of researching on their own. They have access to a number of things; it’s easy for them to get access to information. So, if I were to remain the way I am and not bother to go all out and get more information, then I would really be exposed in such a situation, and then I would then be pushed to go all out – not just end here in class, because maybe a child would come and ask me about Internet, which is technology, which is part of science and I wouldn’t be informed about it and it’s not nice to always say to a child: “No, I don’t know, no I don’t know . . . ”. There has to be times where you have to be able to offer an explanation. And now with these kids [at Yengeni High] no one can ever ask me about Internet, that I know. I don’t even have to bother reading more about Internet, because I know no one will . . . Jon: I always felt myself my boundaries weren’t being pushed. And I was scared then that my knowledge actually was shrinking . . . Nomzamo: It’s true, it’s true . . . Jon: . . . from early days when I was much more inclined to push my students to push me, then I found myself stopping doing that. And all the while I felt my knowledge base was becoming narrowly channelled. “You just think on a low level and it’s just enough to carry on . . . ”, neatly sums up both Nomzamo’s and Jonathan’s feelings about what it’s like not to be 194

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“challenged” by one’s students. For, as we have experienced in our own practice, without student questioning it is extremely difficult for a teacher to encourage a spirit of inquiry into broader issues in science – and the classroom remains bound by the dull, narrow focus of the formal syllabus. In making this statement we are not suggesting that the students do not have questions, rather we are acknowledging that they have learnt (often through bitter experience) that the classroom is not the place to raise them. As in all these matters, the issues run deep and Nomzamo’s comments reveal just some of the complexities involved. To take just one example, her comment that the students “are quite sympathetic to their teachers” is worthy of closer examination, for it alludes to their acceptance (born once again of past experience) that some of their teachers lack the subject-matter knowledge to support more open inquiry. All of this seems to provide further evidence that there is a complex web of linguistic and socio-linguistic factors at play, not least of which is the “double bind”31 which seems to dominate so much of the student-teacher interactions in Nomzamo’s classroom. Just how limiting this all is can be seen by Nomzamo’s acknowledgement that if she were to teach in another context (say, at OakRidge High), then she “would then be pushed to go all out” and that things would “not just end in class” – not only would she have to be better prepared but she would also have to broaden her own contextual knowledge of off-syllabus science. There is another aspect of questioning or “querying” which was also noticeably absent from Nomzamo’s classroom: at no stage during the trialling exercise was a student observed to point out that Nomzamo had made a mistake in her teaching. While (once again) the students’ reluctance to confront a teacher in this way is understandable, the absence of virtually any kind of “error checking” from the students’ side has, we believe, the most profound impact on a teacher’s knowledge base. We would argue that when “error checking” does not occur (either within or outside of formal instruction), there is a great danger that content and conceptual errors may creep unnoticed into a teacher’s delivery and, unchallenged from the students’ side, may take root and grow. In a context which is predisposed to content-reduced teaching, there is a real risk that such errors become entrenched as significant features of a teacher’s instructional repertoire, with potentially damaging long-term consequences for both teaching and learning in the classroom. Finally, what of Nomzamo’s informal knowledge of science? Looking back over her school years, it does not seem as if she developed any broader interests in science outside of the classroom, which is perhaps not that surprising given the context in which she grew up.32 However, at home she was certainly encouraged to pursue a career “somewhere in the sciences”33 even though this meant that her poor Matric results forced her to settle for what initially had seemed to her as “second best” (i.e., enrolment at Training College). Since she has been teaching, it is important to acknowledge that Nomzamo’s purposeful striving to fulfil her “mission” has always ensured that she sees her role in much broader terms than being a syllabus-bound didact.34 The reader may recall 195

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Nomzamo’s fond memories of the science club she ran at the first two schools at which she taught, and her present involvement in a local Science Expo. In the light of this, perhaps it is not that surprising that Nomzamo’s strong sense of personal identification with science is very much bound up in her teaching of the subject: Jon:

But in the subject, are there any areas which you personally find interesting? It doesn’t have to be in the syllabus . . . I’m saying about science?

(No reply) Jon:

It’s like Andrea [my wife, whom Nomzamo has met on a number of occasions] has suddenly discovered – and she hated science at school – she has suddenly discovered that she likes astronomy. She wants to discover more about the stars and planets, it’s just something which has happened . . . Nomzamo: Is it because of the Mars probe and all that? (Laughs) Jon: I don’t know . . . I suppose it’s like with anybody, it’s just an interest which develops. But is there anything which you like? Nomzamo: But I think maybe the whole thing of teaching the subject, like trying to make it more sensible . . . [emphasis added]. Jon: If you pick up the newspaper and you see stories about science, what kinds of stories interest you? Nomzamo: I do see them a lot . . . like here in the morning I, during the “breakfast club” [a television programme] news, they were saying something about an . . . asteroid, am I saying it right? Ja, an asteroid which they thought would hit the earth in 2025 or whatever, but they have then discovered that it actually won’t but that it will pass the earth at about 940. . . thousand kilometres or whatever. That it is quite an interesting phenomenon, because it will affect everybody. So scientific news is of great interest to me, in fact I just stop doing anything and I suddenly . . . (indistinct), because I’d even watched a movie about asteroids falling to earth, so it immediately – goodness me, I hope (laughs). So, there are a lot of scientific news happening around. Like the Virodene thing35 – the good side of it and the bad side of it . . . Yet whatever her own interests and enthusiasms, the struggle for Nomzamo remains one of finding ways of taking a broader vision of science into the classroom. To do this, she faces the challenge of her students’ expectations of what is worth knowing in the science classroom. This is well illustrated by the following account of an incident in her Grade 11 science class: There were people from the astronomical observatory [who came] to see the Grade 11’s and many [students] saw it as being a bit off line . . . that maybe the geography group should have been here to listen to that talk. But then as they were going along with the lesson I would point out things to them and they 196

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actually saw that it’s still fine. So seeing what the planets are made of, it then comes back to chemistry and so on. So they actually see that it’s not just . . . the planets being there and part of the universe – that’s a geography part; there is also something within the planets which takes it into chemistry. The initial reluctance of some students to view a talk on astronomy as having anything to do with science is perfectly understandable in the light of their previous classroom experiences. And it is a sad reflection on the narrow syllabus-bound focus of most teaching that many students simply have no idea at all that astronomy is a science. This emerged during one of the interviews Jonathan held with the 9E students: Jon: Together: Asanda:

Together: Jon: Together: Phelela: Luleka:

Would you say that studying the stars is science? No . . . it is something else . . . It isn’t science, because it is geography. It’s studying the earth and everything that is in the whole planet. So . . . science doesn’t even deal with that [emphasis added]. Yes . . . [agreeing with Asanda] And rocks? Studying rocks and things like that? Ummm . . . no, it’s that side of geography – rocks. I would say that it kind of relates to science . . . yes. (emphatically) But it isn’t science!

Reflecting on these matters, one cannot fail to appreciate how the restricted nature of her students’ interests (and expectations) plays a key role in limiting Nomzamo’s attempts to extend her teaching beyond the boundaries of the syllabus. It certainly seems to have a broader impact on Nomzamo’s pedagogy, a constraining influence on the development of her own knowledge and contextual understanding of the broader enterprise of science. In all this, one is reminded once more of the pivotal role which students play in determining the nature of classroom interactions.

6.4. CHANGING PRACTICE, CHANGING TIMES

“It is not easy to change, you will always want to go back to your old style of teaching . . . ” How and in what ways was Nomzamo’s pedagogic content knowledge affected by her implementation of the STAP programme in her classroom? Seeking an answer to this question will allow us to explore Nomzamo’s own highly personal experience of change, in particular the ways in which she came to confront, reexamine and re-formulate practices – to merge old with new. In support of Fullan’s (1991) maxim which heads this chapter, we believe that in order to create a sense of change-as-process, Nomzamo’s experiences are best related through a number of narrative accounts. 197

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To start off, we will introduce the reader to what we have termed Nomzamo’s “dilemma of code-switching” and show how, through the STAP programme, she became more aware of her students’ L2 learning problems – which precipitated a rethink in her use of English in the classroom, and led in turn to quite a dramatic shift towards a more mixed-language approach in her teaching. This leads into the second, more extensive account which concerns what we came to think of as Nomzamo’s “dilemma of letting go”. Here her struggle to use the STAP text in a more purposeful way will serve as a vehicle for illustrating once more the complexities of the change process, particularly as Nomzamo came to confront, and then work through, some of the limitations in her own instructional practices. A valuable record of her own impressions of the trialling exercise is provided by Nomzamo’s “report back” at a STAP workshop a few weeks after she had completed teaching the programme. This provides, along with the classroom observations and interviews, a useful framework for analysis and will allow us to focus on some of those aspects of the “dynamics of change” which Nomzamo identified from her own perspective as being of particular significance. “Taking Leave of a Teaching Style” – The Dilemma of Code-Switching REFLECTION “Ooh . . . I have so much taken complete leave of my teaching style! In terms of the language particularly. I now code-switch a lot. I used to use English a lot when I was teaching, because I thought that was the best thing. To my surprise and to my disappointment, I had to . . . I don’t like teaching in Xhosa. But I found that I had to teach in Xhosa in most cases and use English, but then code-switch time and again, because students just do not understand what was going on because of the language problem, which is a huge problem”. As she reflects back over the trialling exercise, Nomzamo identifies her increasing reliance on the students’ primary language as representing one of the most marked shifts in practice she came to experience. Her statement, “I have so much taken leave of my teaching style” leaves little doubt as to the extent and significance of this change.36 In order to appreciate just how fundamental a shift in thinking (and practice) this represents, it is necessary to recall two things: firstly, that Nomzamo’s commitment to teaching in English was very much a cornerstone of her pedagogic practice37 and secondly, that her practice in this regard was quite different from that of most other teachers at Yengeni High.38 Circumstantial evidence presented earlier (in the discussion in Section 4.8) indicates that even though English is officially the language of instruction, it is seldom used in the junior classes at the school.39 Faced with students whose L2 communicative competencies are very low, teachers resort to a mixed-language approach which relies heavily on the students’ primary language; and when English is used it tends to be accompanied by liberal doses of code-switching. It is important to stress again that we are 198

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of the opinion that in this regard the situation in township schools has (if anything) deteriorated in recent years, so much so that even though English is firmly entrenched as the language of the textbook and examination, its use outside of “formal” instruction remains, to all intents and purposes, quite severely limited. Even in Nomzamo’s case, her use of English had its limits: in common with most of her colleagues virtually all of the non-instructional interactions which take place between her and the students were carried out in Xhosa (the primary language of almost all the students at Yengeni High). It was when she came to teaching that Nomzamo switched to English, a practice that she sought (more often than not in vain) to encourage amongst her students as well: I try by all means to teach in English as much as I possibly can. But then in cases where I can see that they . . . they did not [understand], then you know I’ll . . . but I try by all means to encourage them to [speak in Xhosa]. Like in the case where that girl was saying something [in English] and I just couldn’t make sense of what she was saying, then I said, “Say it in Xhosa . . . ”. Ever the pragmatist, Nomzamo had little choice but to accept that if she wanted students to talk out in class, they would have to be allowed to do so in Xhosa. As we have seen in Chapter 4, the STAP programme brought with it the possibility of establishing a new dynamic between Nomzamo and her students, one which was much more supportive of student talk. Yet however hard she tried during the first lessons of the trialling exercise to encourage the students to “open up” in class, the weeks passed with the verbal interactions between Nomzamo and her students stubbornly trapped in the “narrow communication channels” of the past. On one level, the situation was quite understandable – for as explained earlier, the STAP material introduces a whole new set of ground rules for organising classroom talk, with students being expected to engage in language behaviour to which they are clearly not accustomed.40 Coupled with the students’ poor L2 communicative skills, it became evident that it would take time (and a considerable amount of effort and patience on Nomzamo’s part) to get them to accept a different role in the classroom – one in which they felt more comfortable voicing their opinions, asking or answering questions, and participating more openly in class discussions. This seemed to be just one side of the story. Nomzamo’s carefully natured “English only” approach, however well intentioned, was actually exacerbating the problems that she was having in getting the students to talk out in class. In those early days of the programme, it seemed that Nomzamo was often guilty of overestimating her students’ ability to follow her delivery in English. The “silences” that followed her attempts to elicit a response (even encouraging students to answer in Xhosa) were perhaps as much as anything a result of students not understanding either what it was Nomzamo was talking about or asking them to respond to. Clearly, Nomzamo was growing increasingly frustrated with this state of affairs. Things reached a head on the last day of the fifth week of the trialling exercise when, in a lesson with the 9E’s – the class with whom she stuck most 199

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determinedly to her “English only” approach – Nomzamo finally seemed to realise that however hard she tried, the majority of students simply could not follow her explanation in English of the concept of electrical power. In what was clearly a critical incident towards the end of the lesson, Nomzamo paused and then repeated her explanation, this time entirely in Xhosa. This was the first time in 25 observed lessons that Nomzamo resorted to codeswitching in such a coherent and sustained way to get her point across. What brought about this change in approach? Later on the same day, Nomzamo had this to say: Ja, somehow it has to be stressed in mother tongue, because at the end I just switched over to Xhosa and then I could see that they were following. So maybe one needs to be careful about that – think that they are understanding when you say it in English and see them responding. Here Nomzamo is somewhat cautiously acknowledging that an advantage of teaching in Xhosa is that it helps to develop the students’ understanding of the concept of electrical power. Having had the weekend to think things over, it came as no surprise to find that on Monday she used considerably more code-switching in her Grade 9 classes than at any stage in the past. After school, she was asked once more to talk about what seemed to be a quite dramatic shift in practice towards a more mixed-language approach: I think they didn’t understand well, what was going on in the previous lesson. The key thing seems to be the language; it keeps on making a louder sound at the back of my mind, because when I start talking in Xhosa, I get responses. When I speak in English, I don’t get responses. Now what is it that they don’t understand? Is it the question? But when I say it in Xhosa, then they understand the same question, the same question interpreted into Xhosa, so it’s basically the language. It just seems to be coming out more . . . It would seem that Nomzamo’s growing awareness of the broader role which language plays in the classroom – “. . . it keeps on making a louder sound at the back of my mind” as she quite eloquently put it – allowed her to rethink and modify her position on the use of Xhosa in her teaching. She started to face up to the fact that her fairly rigid adherence to an “English only” instructional approach had its limitations, and that Xhosa has a legitimate role to play in supporting the students’ development of their understanding of science. Once she had accepted this, it seemed as if there was no holding Nomzamo back – as each lesson progressed it was fascinating to see how she incorporated more and more code-switching in her presentation. Indeed, as Nomzamo became increasingly dependent on a mixed-language approach in her classroom, her use of Xhosa steadily filtered into virtually all other aspects of her verbal interactions with her students. English explanations were more often than not followed by ones delivered in Xhosa; likewise, readings of the STAP text (either by Nomzamo or the students) were subject to lengthy re-interpretations in the students’ primary language. Class discussions were allowed to take place in Xhosa, and by the end 200

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of the trialling exercise virtually all procedural matters (be they instructions for homework, classwork or whatever) were being handled in Xhosa. Yet even as Nomzamo embraced the use of code-switching in her teaching, this shift in practice was not made without some serious soul-searching. On a number of occasions Nomzamo articulated her discomfort with having abandoned her “English only” practice: Jon:

I’m seeing an increasing amount of code-switching, you are using it ... Nomzamo: Quite a lot! Jon: I see you explaining questions in English and then switching [to Xhosa]. Does it help the students to understand things better? Nomzamo: Maybe, maybe not. I’m not sure if I’m even reinforcing [their understanding], maybe they are hearing it for the first time, because they didn’t bother to listen even (laughing) . . . you are never sure . . . whether . . . I don’t know, but I just don’t like it at all, at all, at all . . . Like it’s understandable in cases, [but] like it shouldn’t be 50/50. Rather . . . 20/80: 20% vernacular, just in those instances . . . not just completely dependent [on teaching in Xhosa]. Jon: How do you feel about using it [Xhosa]? Nomzamo: Umm . . . there’s no choice [emphasis added]. As one reflects further on Nomzamo’s struggle to resolve her “dilemma of codeswitching”, one begins to appreciate the complexity of the issues involved when a teacher tries to change her practice. It can be quite a painful process as one rethinks what one has taught – or not taught – one’s students in the past. This seems to be well illustrated here: once the efficacy of her “English only” approach was called into doubt, Nomzamo was forced to consider that (almost paradoxically) the very strength of her commitment to English had actually been something of a weakness in her teaching, and that for years now she had failed to take advantage of the positive role which the students’ primary language could play in aiding the development of their conceptual understanding in science. In order to appreciate still further just how fundamental a shift in practice this was, we need to acknowledge the deep roots of Nomzamo’s commitment to using English as a medium of instruction in the classroom. Not only was it firmly grounded in her own school experiences41 but she had strong views about its broader educational value. Here she was by no means unaware of the present debates about the use of English in African classrooms, for it was an issue which had begun to raise its head at Yengeni High.42 But perhaps more than this, we would like to also suggest that however selfeffacing Nomzamo might be, her obvious competency in English contributes in no small way to her sense of personal worth as a teacher. This is a topic worthy of much closer examination, for as noted before, one consequence of the crisis in mass-based education in South Africa is the declining standards in L2 competency amongst many African teachers. That Nomzamo speaks such fluent English is a really important (if perhaps unarticulated) source of professional pride. 201

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Because of issues such as these, there is no doubt that “code-switching” will be a change in practice which Nomzamo will continue to question for some time to come. Even so, there is no doubt that this shift in practice impacted positively on her teaching, by enhancing not only her pedagogic content knowledge, but also other aspects of her craft knowledge – such as her general pedagogic knowledge and her knowledge of learners and their characteristics (to use another one of Shulman’s categories). Nomzamo’s Paraphrasing of Text and Her Dilemma of “Letting Go” REFLECTION Amongst the problems which I found was, because of my methodology I tended to paraphrase things for them initially – since I knew that the textbook was quite difficult. Now, even when I was given material [the STAP booklet] which they could interact with, I sort of stuck to my old routine of paraphrasing for them. As a result at times I left out important things which wasn’t supposed to be left out. The strength of the material is it provides reading opportunities. Kids get a chance to read on their own. So this time they had material which they could read in class, silently. There would be silence in class and they would be reading on their own, which wasn’t the case before – I was the one who was talking most of the period, usually. So, at the end of the trialling I could see a change in my teaching style, that there were moments of silence when they would be reading on their own and so on . . . Before proceeding further, we would do well to recall an earlier assertion where it was suggested that teaching and learning in the majority of South African classrooms is an essentially text-bound activity – particularly in content subjects like science, where the textbook in use invariably becomes both the “text and pretext” for most lessons.43 We also argued that poorly written and essentially “unreadable” textbooks are one of the major causes of difficulty in learning science, particularly in L2 contexts like that at Yengeni High. Ironically enough then, what amounts to the primary resource for teaching and learning science remains, at best, an under-utilised resource whose direct role in the classroom is in fact severely limited. This state of affairs was clearly reflected in Nomzamo’s pre-STAP classroom teaching, where she seemed to make little direct use of the textbook. They have textbooks, but I was only using textbooks for homework. I was mainly using the homework section, but the rest of the work I would paraphrase and then give them my own summary on the board – which is why their books had a lot written in them, because it was my paraphrased summaries. So they only used the [text]book for exercises and I would say, okay you will do homework on page whatever. But they didn’t really read the textbook, because they can’t understand it. They would read my summaries and use the book for homework. So they never really got a chance to interact with the textbook. 202

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The students who quite openly admitted to not using their books to any great extent corroborate this. The reader may recall Luleka’s emphatic statement, “I don’t even touch a textbook”. It could be argued that as one progresses from one level of schooling to the next, the increasing complexity of texts and the content they carry traps Nomzamo and her students into what is essentially a regressive relationship with the science textbook. Nomzamo’s use of what we call “paraphrasing”, takes both verbal and written forms – it finds expression in her classroom “teacher talk” which is by and large devoted to an exposition of what she has decided is the most important content of the syllabus as it appears in the textbook, and in the chalkboard summary notes which students copy down verbatim into their exercise books. The following incident, during a “pre-STAP” lesson in the 9D class, illustrates her use of context-reduced summary notes and provides some interesting insights into the way Nomzamo goes about her day-to-day teaching. After teaching the students about energy conversions, Nomzamo told the students to prepare for a summary note. As they were busy getting out their notebooks, she slipped out of the classroom and re-appeared a minute or so later with another student’s book in hand. Reading from this book, she then proceeded to write up a neat and concise summary of the main points of the lesson on the chalkboard (see Section 4.10). Later in the day, she had this to say: Nomzamo: . . . like today, I had done that lesson [in the 9D’s] already with one class. Jon: So, that’s what you did today then. You had a notebook from the . . . Nomzamo: Ja, so it is consistent from their notes as well as the work that I give them. Jon: So that’s quite a common thing then? You had given notes to . . . what was that class? Nomzamo: It was 9E . . . they are well ahead. Jon: So you took one of the girl’s books who you know had a very neat handwriting and you copied those notes for the next class. Do you keep notes down anywhere yourself? What do you do? Nomzamo: I don’t have a book particularly for myself, I . . . like I know which student’s book to use, the students who . . . like that particular girl. Then there’s another one in 9F also. Accumulated during the course of the year, these notes serve as a record of what has been taught, and are highly valued as the hard currency of facts which students are expected to learn for the tests and end-of-year exam. [As an aside – but one which provides us with an interesting insight into the administrative functioning of Yengeni High – the students’ summary notes are also used as a yardstick by the “control staff”44 to gauge how much work a teacher is doing in the classroom. At the end of each term, student books are taken in and examined by the Heads of Department (HODs). This practice created an unexpected problem for Nomzamo during the trialling exercise. Since each unit in the STAP programme has its own “Points to Remember”, there are relatively 203

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few opportunities (and less need) for the students to be given extensive summary notes of their own; yet Nomzamo’s HOD (Ms. Soqele) insisted on seeing written evidence of the students’ work in general science! Fortunately, without too much persuading, Nomzamo managed to convince Ms. Soqele that progress had indeed been made.] With such a significant amount of teaching time devoted to re-interpreting the content of the science textbook, it would seem that “paraphrasing the text” can be seen as providing a useful idiom for characterising much of Nomzamo’s classroom practice. Whatever else, this paraphrasing is clearly the most visible expression of Nomzamo’s skill as a science teacher and, in a context dominated by transmission teaching, it is undoubtedly the preferred image of teaching with which all students are familiar and comfortable.45 As such we would argue that it is a key component of her personal professional identity, which is invested with considerable meaning in both her own and her students’ eyes. In this respect, it is perhaps all too easy to forget (or even to dismiss out of hand) the extent to which a teacher’s ability and worth is likely to be judged in terms of his/her ability to “talk the syllabus” in ways which successfully communicate the content which has to be learnt. Spoken of in such terms, her paraphrasing can also be thought of in metaphorical terms as being the main (if not only) conduit through which Nomzamo conveys the message of the text to her students. In the light of this, it was hardly surprising that she adopted a similar approach when first using the STAP text. While the students were certainly encouraged and helped to make use of the text during activities such as the group practical investigations and classwork/homework exercises, besides the cartoons and the summary notes at the end of each unit, very little directed reading took place. Nomzamo continued with her highly selective use of the text, mainly “talking about it” rather than “talking through it”. This is illustrated by the following extract drawn from a journal entry describing work with the 9E’s: After allowing the students a few minutes to work in their groups on the “For Your Notebook” activity on page 7, Nomzamo decided it was time to press on. Once she had got the students’ attention, she started with the second investigation. By way of introduction, Nomzamo began by posing the question, “What happens to the amount of electricity when you have two cells?” Some students called out, “Have more electricity”. Satisfied by this answer she called the class to the front of her laboratory and set up once more with their help and assistance the string model. (Later) After the students had returned to their places, Nomzamo proceeded to tell them about how an ammeter can be used to measure the current strength in an electric circuit. Listening to her talk, it was evident that she was basing her explanation on a page in the STAP text, yet at no stage did she refer directly to the book. While most students sat quietly listening to her speak, every now and

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again a few of them would glance down at their STAP books, although many of them, like the students at the front of the classroom, still had their books open on the previous page. Having finished her explanation and then called for questions (there were none forthcoming), the students were summoned once more to the front for the final demonstration of the day. As before, their books were left at their tables. The only reference to the text was made when she instructed them to “write down the results on a piece of paper” so that they could draw up and complete a table for homework. After watching Nomzamo successfully take a set of three ammeter readings, the students returned again to their places and it was now, for the first time since the “For Your Notebook” activity earlier in the lesson, that Nomzamo directed them to look at their STAP text. As the noise grew outside (signalling the approaching end of the period), students were asked to read out in turn one each of the “Points to Remember” . . . The days passed and one lesson followed another with Nomzamo persisting with her mainly “off text” explanations. Watching her teach, one began to wonder how this “reading impasse” could be broken, so that the potential of the STAP material to function more as a reading text could be fulfilled. Yet with what was clearly such a deeply ingrained practice, it seems unfair to be too critical – for even though (on a rhetorical level at least) Nomzamo was perfectly aware of the various ways in which the STAP material could be used to encourage active student engagement with the text, she could not as yet find ways of translating this into her own teaching. But then how do you make them read a paragraph in a lesson? Do you give them two minutes to read it silently – do they read it at all? Do you read aloud and then explain it on the board? Does a person read the whole paragraph and then you paraphrase the paragraph? If they read the whole paragraph, does it necessarily mean they understood what was said in the previous five sentences, by the time that they get to the tenth sentence? So it does have a lot of complications, in terms of . . . this is why, then, in cases like paragraphs, one sort of tends to paraphrase and then in statements or like, points to remember that can be done by someone reading aloud in the class. But if someone was asked to read a paragraph and you had to explain later on, chances are they have even forgotten what they read. So it will make more sense when explaining then – why not just go straight and paraphrase? So it’s those tensions which you have to put up with and how do you come up with the best way of doing things? And how do you really judge which is the best way? Nomzamo is unsure what to do and is struggling to decide what to do, caught between her desire to find ways to use the text more as intended (i.e., in support of active student reading) and her deep-seated suspicions (born of previous experience) that there is little of any real value in this practice. 205

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Maybe it cuts far deeper than this – that in fact her reluctance to allow students to read on their own is more than a technical issue which can somehow be resolved by a switch in tactics, or a change in approach, but rather that it is, in some quite profound ways, bound up with broader issues of power and control. For however well intentioned (or justified in terms of the students’ poor reading skills) it may be, Nomzamo’s practice of paraphrasing text allows her to retain control over that text, ensuring that the decision about what is to be taught to and consequently learnt by the students remains in her hands. In suggesting this, we are not proposing that Nomzamo’s struggle to encourage student reading represents a deliberate (or conscious) attempt to avoid handing over responsibility to the students; rather, it illustrates the extent to which a seemingly straightforward change in practice is often anything but that, for it invariably has implications for her pedagogy far beyond what was originally either assumed or imagined. The end of term was fast approaching, and while it was not obvious at the time, things were about to come to a head – for Nomzamo stood on the very cusp of change, soon to experience events which we believe had a profound influence on the way she came to use the STAP text. The following narrative account describes a chain of events which more than anything else, created the conditions in which Nomzamo came to resolve her “dilemma of letting go”. Adrift on the Sea of Change The story begins somewhat inauspiciously (given the chaotic state of the school) in the final week of the first term, and focuses on what transpired in two lessons on two consecutive days as Nomzamo taught the 9E’s. Within the first of these lessons there occurred a single factual error during her paraphrasing of one page of text, and what appeared at the time to be a fairly innocuous mistake proved to have repercussions far beyond the lesson concerned. Unnoticed and unspoken about at the time, the same error was repeated two weeks later after the Easter holidays, when she came to teach the same work a second time around, to the 9C’s. In what proved to be a decisive moment, her recognition of this error seemed to precipitate an immediate and quite dramatic shift in the way she came to use the STAP book in her teaching. It was almost as if Nomzamo had discovered the “reading text” in STAP, and her first tentative steps were followed up a few days later when she had the opportunity to teach the lesson for the third consecutive time to another class, the 9D’s. The 9E’s Before continuing, it is important to acknowledge the context within which the following account unfolds – in particular, the extent to which Nomzamo’s response to the STAP programme was being influenced by conditions beyond the classroom door, within the broader confines of the school.46 The reader will recall just how unsettled things were at the end of the first term, with the school never having fully recovered its balance following the COSAS “week of action” and 206

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teaching having all but disintegrated by the end of the final week. As we saw in Chapter 3 (and will be reminded of again below), this did not deter Nomzamo from attending to her scheduled classes, but the growing disorder which swept through the school had a significant impact on her teaching. Coupled to this, Nomzamo had experienced a considerable loss of teaching time over the previous two weeks – for various reasons she had been forced to miss 8 out of 20 of her General Science classes. Clearly, things had not gotten off to a particularly auspicious start, and by the fourth week of the trialling exercise Nomzamo was growing increasingly anxious about her seemingly slow progress through the opening sections of the programme. Yet for all that, there were some positive signs – particularly with the 9E’s, where she had cleared the hurdle of the first three units without too much difficulty. With this class at least, Nomzamo felt confident enough to try out completing a unit of the programme in a single lesson and in so doing pick up some sorely needed momentum ahead of the holidays. The following accounts of events on two consecutive days reveal something of what transpired: At the beginning of the lesson it’s so noisy outside that Nomzamo has to shout to have any chance of being heard. The class itself is being unruly and she struggles to get them to settle down. After introducing the unit, Nomzamo writes up on the board: “Activity – with a partner” and draws up a table with headings taken from the STAP text. She then requests that each group come up with the name of a different appliance and to say whether the appliance works off the mains supply and/or batteries; and what different energy changes take place in the appliance while it is in operation. Nomzamo allows no more than a minute or so for discussion before she starts asking for feedback from the different groups. During the feedback the class remains rowdy and most students are simply not concentrating on the task on hand. Undeterred, Nomzamo pushes on. As she reads through the STAP text, the students grow quiet for the first time in the lesson. Next she launches into an explanation of the difference between efficient and inefficient lights (i.e., fluorescent lamp vs. incandescent bulb) – although given the speed of her delivery, it is difficult to gauge to what extent the majority of the students are following her “paraphrased” explanation. As before, it seems that quite a few of the students are quietly reading (or at least looking) at their STAP books as she talks. Potential problems with “off-text” delivery like this spring to mind – in addition to being dominated almost entirely by teacher talk, it can so easily lead to inaccuracies creeping into the teaching. This happens. At one point, Nomzamo says that there is no wasted energy in a fluorescent lamp. This of course contradicts not only what is written in the text, but also what is depicted in the supporting energy diagram (she should have pointed out

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that there is a lot less wasted heat energy compared to the ordinary incandescent light bulb). Yet at no stage does a student either question or query what she has just said. It takes Nomzamo no more than 20 minutes to cover a substantial amount of text and with only about 15 minutes left, she moves on to the “Efficiency and design” exercise. At first she decides to get the students to talk together in their groups, but conscious of the time constraints, she changes her mind and instead runs the activity as a whole-class discussion. For the next ten minutes she struggles to get the students to contribute (the noise outside seems if anything to grow as break-time approaches). Relief comes when the siren goes off, signalling the start of lunch. The lesson ends abruptly, without any opportunity for rounding off or summarising what has been covered in the period. Walking back to the staff room at the end of the lesson, I sense that Nomzamo is also aware that perhaps things had gone a bit too fast . . . The following day finds Nomzamo once again “swimming against the tide” and having to cope with an increasingly disrupted school: . . . trying to teach in the rowdiest part of the school and she tries in vain to shut herself and the students off from the cacophony enveloping the classrooms around her; yet things are so disruptive that there is once again (like yesterday) a strong undercurrent of restlessness in the normally industrious 9E class. Many students are distracted and struggle to pay attention. As Nomzamo explains to me afterwards, the chaos outside puts her in two minds about what to do today. She decides to use the opportunity to go through the homework, Review Questions from units 3 and 4, only to find that there are still 30 minutes of the lesson remaining once she has finished this task. Nomzamo decides to push on into unit 5, and proceeds without much in the way of an introduction with Investigation 1: “What does watt mean?” As with the previous unit, she pushes quickly through this investigation and the following section on “power (watts)”. Watching the class, I can sense that in pushing so fast she is leaving some (if not most) of the kids behind. Again, Nomzamo talks her way through this work, with little direct reference to the text. This results (either by accident or design) in some quite crucial things getting left out – the concept of “power rating” for one, and the lead-in introduction to the unit being another casualty of the speed at which she goes through the material. Nomzamo’s extensive reliance on teacher talk was easily justified by her need to cover more ground, and her teaching style up until then (i.e., pre-STAP) had always relied heavily on her skills at re-interpreting/paraphrasing text; it was something which she clearly found quite easy to do. So for two days in a row, Nomzamo was able to meet her stated intention of completing a unit in a single lesson. 208

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Yet at what cost? As noted in the above accounts, crucial elements of the text were omitted and errors were made (such as the incorrect explanation of efficiency in fluorescent lights), and both lessons were delivered at a pace which at times clearly left the students floundering in her wake. In addition there was the further complication that at this stage of the trialling exercise Nomzamo was still sticking firmly to her “English only” approach (particularly with the 9E’s); so not only were the lessons “awash with words” (so to speak), but they were delivered in a language that the students struggled to understand. How did Nomzamo feel about these two lessons? In an interview later that day she had the opportunity to talk at length about what had happened. Jon:

I’m interested in how you felt that you had approached the last two lessons with the 9E’s.

(Nomzamo paused to think) Nomzamo: Seeing the amount of time I took with unit three, I felt that I need to pick up [the pace], or else . . . one will just be drowned into the whole thing [the STAP programme]. And, it’s much easier to test things with the 9E’s and see what possibilities are there. Now I wanted to push unit four in a period when I didn’t even start on time . . . simply means that it can be done in a period. Except that once again, maybe in trying to push things, you don’t give them enough time for discussion in their groups – that’s the danger of it. But at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a discussion has to occur in groups of six all the time. Like in investigation of unit four where we did this as a class, it’s okay, I believe, that they got a chance to talk about this as a class and look at the development [of the kettle]. But again, one would argue that in a class situation where you have fifty . . . therefore if ten people are talking you might be tempted to think that everyone is on board with the discussion . . . which, if it is broken down into smaller groups you have more people being involved in the discussion. Yes, that can be argued out, but again you have to think about what do you want to achieve and how much time do you have to achieve it. So . . . Jon: But looking at today? Nomzamo: (Laughs) Today was a . . . different story altogether! Jon: What happened today? Nomzamo: I intended doing the whole unit [five] and finishing it off once more, because it’s not a long unit and it would have gone quite smoothly. And I was going to mark the thing at the end. But then realising the noise that was occurring around, I felt that . . . my voice just wouldn’t compete with the noise going on. And that is when I then decided, okay let me just start with the homework. Now, in going over [to the 9E’s] it was only then that I realised that man, there’s a lot of chaos outside. So I then decided, okay, let me just mark – perhaps people 209

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will then take their classes and then things will subside and then I’ll happily get on to unit five. But seeing what happened is the noise was just getting louder and louder. That is why at that point I felt maybe . . . I was wondering if I would be able to do it at all. And then the noise got better and then I started on it. So obviously then I wouldn’t go much far because I had thought of just marking the work, so I took more time in that marking part . . . of which I feel unit five can be done in a period in a normal situation. Jon: Do you think the kids were “flowing with you” as you put it? Nomzamo: I think so, also simply because we have done work, energy and power in the previous chapter of their textbooks. So . . . ja. From what Nomzamo says here, we hear again how her anxiety about falling behind, in being “drowned into the whole thing” as she put it, served as a powerful incentive fuelling her decision to “push through” the STAP work. Things are made easier with the 9E’s because they are the one class with which she feels she can “test things with . . . and see what possibilities are there”. This illustrates the important role which the smaller, more motivated 9E class played in helping Nomzamo frame47 the “problems of practice” throughout the trialling exercise. It was very much the class in which she had the freedom to “tinker” with her practice (to use Huberman’s, 1992 expression). In arguing the advantages and disadvantages of group versus whole-class discussions, Nomzamo seems well aware of the implications of whatever choice she makes. Her pragmatic response is made easier by her overriding concern for time: “You have to think about what do you want to achieve and how much time do you have to achieve it”. Given the prevailing conditions at the school, Nomzamo needs no reminding of the extent to which time-in-class is a commodity in short supply at Yengeni High. The incidents recounted above are a sobering reminder of the difficulties Nomzamo faced, and illustrate the extent to which her instructional choices were determined not by pedagogic considerations but rather by a need to salvage what she could from a lesson which was (in this instance) in danger of being swept away from under her feet. Having survived two lessons in such adverse conditions, it is not that surprising that Nomzamo came across as being quite positive about what had taken place: “I feel unit five can be done in a period in a normal situation” as she put it – a remark which shows just how hard it is for a teacher to evaluate the “effectiveness” (or otherwise) of her actions, particularly when functioning in such difficult conditions. This is not to say that Nomzamo was unaware of the price she had to pay for teaching in this way – she was well aware that haste was achieved by an almost complete departure from “the STAP approach”48 which she was so committed to using in her classroom. Jon:

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four and five, and you can sense that it is quite easy to do, so it’s easy to push through it. But I think actually what I saw happening yesterday and today is that you fell into the trap of . . . Nomzamo: . . . of teaching [i.e., talking too much]. Jon: Well, it came to me very clearly today – it was like watching you teach the way I saw you teach before you started the STAP material. You know what you want to say, and you are confident in the approach and style which you adopt with the kids, but you . . . Nomzamo: . . . move away from STAP. Having talked her way in such emphatic fashion through two lessons, Nomzamo is able to countenance the opinion that a lesson dominated by so much teachertalk is a “move away from STAP”, but she struggles to accept a questioning of the efficacy of this approach; to her mind things went well. The stark contrast between the teacher’s perspective and that of someone observing the classroom emerged during discussions on these two lessons. Nomzamo felt that the students were “flowing with her”, whereas Jonathan’s impressions were anything but that: Jon:

The way you pushed before is that you know that you can teach quickly and you thought that most of them will pick it up. But there the word is you teach; perhaps the challenge with the 9E’s is let them learn. And the challenge is how do you . . . Nomzamo: . . . make them learn. Jon: Yes, and how do you adjust your teaching to make them take more responsibility for their own learning? With such concerns in mind, the first term at Yengeni High drew to its untidy close. And although Nomzamo’s “dilemma of letting go” had still to be resolved, it is possible to appreciate in hindsight just how important a juncture in the trialling exercise these two days would prove to be. The 9C’s The scene shifts. It is now the first period of the second day of the new term and Nomzamo is busy teaching the 9C’s the same unit she had finished with the 9E’s at the end of the previous term. The following account picks up on events about fifteen minutes into the lesson when . . . Nomzamo moves on to the next part of the unit, which introduces the students to the notions of efficient and inefficient appliances. As with the 9E’s, she goes “off text” almost immediately, and her explanation is a combination of the main text and the side bar ’Did You Know’ which deals with energy diagrams. She turns to the blackboard and starts drawing the energy diagrams. The students are sitting looking puzzled and lost, struggling to follow what she is talking about. Nomzamo’s explanation grows increasingly muddled and some

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errors once more begin to creep into her delivery. Again, she refers to fluorescent lamps as follows: “They do not waste energy as heat, they only give useful energy”. She proceeds to follow up this statement with a drawing on the chalkboard of a single-arrow energy diagram (showing electrical energy being converted only into light energy). After completing this single-arrow drawing on the board, Nomzamo hesitates for a moment and then takes a couple of paces over to the table where her STAP book lies open. How will she respond when see notices her mistake? It doesn’t take long! Bending over her book, she reads for a few seconds and then begins to laugh softly to herself. She throws me a glance (I am careful to respond with what I hope is an appropriate sympathetic smile and a shrug), and upon regaining her composure, launches into an alternative explanation. The following extract of the lesson transcript covers this crucial passage of events: Nomzamo: In the fluorescent light all the energy is just changed into . . . ? Students: (Chanting with her) Light energy. Nomzamo: . . . light energy. We do not get heat energy in this one. So it would just be electrical energy (talking as she draws a singlearrow energy diagram on the board) . . . into light energy. So this one (referring to the energy diagram she has just drawn for the fluorescent light) is even more efficient than the top one (motions to energy diagram of inefficient light). Nomzamo walks back to the desk and looks at the STAP book. She pauses for a moment and then, laughs softly to herself. Turning to the class, she says in a rising voice: Nomzamo: Okay . . . in actual fact you will find that there is very little energy that is wasted in this one [motions again to the single arrow energy diagram] but most of the energy is changed into light energy. If you look at your diagram on page 17 – “Did you Know” about efficiency, there it says . . . you are showing that the energy changes from electrical to wasted energy as well as useful energy, light energy. In the top one, if you look at the diagram in the book, how is the top arrow . . . that is curving outside – it is bigger than the arrow that is going . . . ? Students: (Calling out) Straight. Nomzamo: . . . straight. So that one is a diagram showing an appliance which is more efficient. And the one below, there you find, which one (arrow) is bigger . . . ? Students: Bottom. Nomzamo: The bottom one, the straight one which is for the useful energy, and the top . . . the one which is sort of going outside is the . . . ? Students: . . . wasted energy.

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Nomzamo: . . . wasted energy. And how is it compared to the useful energy? Is it bigger or smaller . . . ? Students: Smaller. Nomzamo: Smaller. Therefore that appliance – is it more efficient or less efficient? Students: More efficient. Nomzamo: More efficient. And the top one is less efficient, okay? That is the one for fluorescent light which is (she goes to the board and points to the top one, the diagram for an efficient light). We take this one to be any other appliance [?] because although they give a lot of . . . they change most of the electrical energy into light energy. There is very little wasted energy, very little indeed. After finishing her explanation the students are told once more to look at their STAP books, and Nomzamo then asks a student to read out aloud through the section at the top of the next page. As Nomzamo sought to correct her mistake by focusing both her own and her students’ attention back on the STAP text, she began (almost by default?) a process of engagement with the text in a way that she had found so difficult to initiate in the past. In retrospect, this was clearly a critical incident, similar to the one which led to her shift towards code-switching. The following day, after listening to the tape recording of this part of the lesson, Nomzamo had this to say: Nomzamo: It’s a case of . . . I took it that I’ve done this unit before, so I didn’t bother to go down to the nitty-gritty’s of it once more. (Later) So it’s a typical case of taking things for granted and saying, “Okay, I’ve done this before and you don’t actually look at the finer details of things”. Jon: What was the thing which made you realise that you had made a mistake? Nomzamo: It was going back here [pointing to the text on page 17]. I suddenly realised when I wanted them to read through here. I immediately saw this diagram [the energy diagram for the fluorescent light] and then it is only after seeing this diagram that I immediately sent my eyes across and I saw that. And that is why I actually laughed at myself because I realised what mistake I had made! Jon: I’m interested to hear how you think this experience may influence how you teach this work next time round. Nomzamo: The way I look at things is, in 9E I didn’t make this mistake, simply because I refreshed it up in my mind before I went there – and now it’s happened in the 9C’s obviously it’s going to stay in my mind [i.e., the mistake]. If I follow the same pattern which I was doing things I will definitely not make that same mistake, because I realised 213

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immediately as I was doing it. So it’s not a question of changing just because of this mistake. It would be a question of changing because I want to try out a different style of teaching the lesson. That Nomzamo has become defensive about her actions is understandable – she believes that the mistake about energy efficiency crept into her teaching because she had not gone into the “nitty gritty’s” sufficiently well before the lesson. In fact, she is admitting that she had not spent much time at all preparing for this lesson – having taught this unit before (to the 9E’s), she felt that there was little need to do this a second time around. As we have seen, Nomzamo is incorrect in thinking that she had not made the same mistake in the 9E’s. Given the generally shambolic state of teaching at the end of the term it is perhaps not at all surprising that she does not recall all that clearly what transpired in a lesson nearly two weeks before; however, the fact remains that the mistake was made and it may well be that it was not picked up the first time around because at no stage in that lesson with the 9E’s did Nomzamo actually refer to the relevant page during her teaching. It was only here, with the 9C’s, that she actually looked at the STAP text and recognised her mistake and began to use the text in repairing the damage. Her honesty in this regard also reveals some of Nomzamo’s attitudes to (amongst other things) lesson preparation: as she put it, “. . . I’ve done this before and you don’t actually look at the finer details of things”. This in turn raises other issues which lie uncomfortably close to the heart of her pedagogy, and which may even be at odds with the image she holds of herself as a committed and hardworking professional – admitting to not preparing for a lesson is not something she is comfortable doing . . . Returning to the discussion about the previous day’s lesson with the 9C’s, Nomzamo was still articulating her misgivings about allowing students to read the STAP book: But again Jon, it’s a matter of . . . I know what the ideal situation would be. The ideal situation would be for them to read things through for themselves. But the question is, they would be sitting there reading, you can never be sure that they are really reading, right? And also, if they were to read everything on their own before I would explain, that would probably take four periods per unit! It would take even longer, so it’s a question of deciding “what goes where”. Ja, in terms of the time you have available, and in terms of trying to stress points and making sure that everyone is at that point, in terms of their understanding. So, it’s a matter of juggling up things. While it seems that in principle at least, Nomzamo is now more able to accept that students are allowed to read on their own, it remains in her eyes “the ideal situation”. On a practical level, she is still struggling to figure out what to do and how to manage the extra time it would take them “. . . to read everything on their own before I would explain” [our emphasis now]. In (over)stating it in this way Nomzamo is surely also signalling just how unsure she still is about accommodating this approach to reading in her teaching. Deciding “what goes where” (i.e., 214

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which instructional strategy is best suited for a specific activity/part of the text) and “how to juggle things up” remain something she has still to figure out. Before moving on to the last lesson in this account, it should be noted just how significant these first few days of the term were proving to be – not only had there been this lesson in 9C, but the following day saw the critical incident in the 9E class which was described in the previous section as providing the breakthrough in the “log-jam” surrounding Nomzamo’s dilemma of code-switching. The 9D’s A weekend has passed, and Monday morning sees Nomzamo preparing to teach unit 4 to the 9D’s. Once again, Jonathan’s journal entry serves as a useful starting point for considering events during the lesson: The first period after break, and the chance to see Nomzamo tackle this particular section for the third time. By now we’ve actually talked quite a lot about the different approaches one can adopt to teaching this work – I was keen to see what she made of it this time around . . . By the time Nomzamo starts teaching, approximately 46 students have turned up for class. After assigning them homework from the previous unit, she introduces the students to unit 4. As in the other classes, she organises her introduction around the collage provided in the STAP text, and proceeds to run the first activity in the same way as she had with the previous two classes. While she writes up the responses from the different groups, there is quite a lot of talking going on, although it does seem that most of it is essentially “on or around task” – they seem to be arguing/commenting about each others’ answers. As noted in the previous class, there is also considerably more code-switching in her delivery. What follows is a really fine piece of teaching! Her explanation of the difference between efficiency and inefficiency is excellently crafted. What sets it apart from the way she had explained things in the previous lessons was in her use of the text. This time Nomzamo starts off by placing two drawings on the board (representing a round bulb and a fluorescent tube) and without writing or saying anything else she directs the kids to read for themselves. She admonishes them to read on their own, and there is soon dead silence for the first time in the lesson. Looking around the class, it really does seem that most of the students are focused on trying to read the specified text. After a few minutes Nomzamo tries to draw out of them an explanation of what they have read, although they struggle as always to express themselves in English. Once they have run out of things to say, Nomzamo starts her own explanation on the board and only then by way of summary, draws the two energy diagrams from the “Did You Know?” side box. Even though the siren goes at a most inopportune time and forces her to rush the last part of her explanation, one senses that more students in this class went away with at least some understanding of the difference between an efficient and inefficient appliance . . . 215

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What seems significant about this lesson is that for the first time, Nomzamo directed the students to read the text, and critically, that they were encouraged to do this before she started teaching them about energy efficiency. This approach clearly represents a real point of departure from her previous practice, which was based so heavily on her re-interpretation of text. The following day, she talked about what certainly appeared to be a “sea of change” in her approach to using the text in her teaching: Nomzamo: Ja . . . I am feeling the change, the shift. Of which I’m . . . I dunno, I’m not very . . . I’m still not convinced . . . How do I put it? Jon: The right way for you? Nomzamo: Not the right way as such . . . it feels strange in a sense . . . like having to read out something word for word in a way, and . . . I dunno, it’s . . . I’m trying to fit into it but it’s still not, I’m not impressed by it! (Laughs.) Jon: But perhaps it’s worth looking at. I don’t believe it’s an “either, or” situation, it’s a mix. Some things you do one way, some things you do another. With this eventful lesson so close at hand, it is not at all surprising that Nomzamo is quite wary of committing herself to the new approach, even though (as noted before) on a rhetorical level at least she has had no difficulty in accepting that the STAP text is best used as an active rather than as a passive resource, and needed no reminding that a lot of careful thought had gone into developing just such a text: Nomzamo: Ja, ja . . . I’m very much aware of that and not to say that I’m doubting [the value of the text]. I know it’s good stuff. But you know what feels odd sometimes [i.e., reading the text], it’s fine with the “Points to Remember”, fine with the summaries . . . but with paragraphs! (Laughs) Jon: But you suddenly shifted yesterday, and for the first time said to the kids, “Read”. For the first time since you have used the programme, you said to the kids, “Read quietly”, and they did just that. And then you did something else different: you asked the kids about what they had read, to check to see that they understood it. That was great! The point is that the text is being used. In the light of all that has gone before, there seems little doubt that this lesson represented the substantive breakthrough in the way in which Nomzamo not only thought, but also, critically, had come to act about the STAP text. This move would have profound implications, not only here but for the broader use of textbooks in her teaching. It is important to acknowledge that once more (as with the breakthrough in code-switching), Nomzamo faces enormous challenges – there is much she has to learn, and her first steps as a reading teacher will be tentative and uncertain, filled with no small degree of yearning for the practices of the past. The image which 216

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Nomzamo evokes is of someone who has crossed a threshold, unsure as yet as to where this shift in practice will take her and how it will impact upon her broader pedagogy. Yet as Nomzamo gained confidence in the weeks that followed her pedagogic content knowledge gradually expanded to incorporate a wider variety of reading strategies. A lesson might find students reading on their own, and/or Nomzamo reading through parts of the text with them. And perhaps most importantly of all, at times she might even use her tried and tested practice of paraphrasing the text – an old, familiar practice takes its place not in opposition to, but alongside, the new. At this stage, it would be fitting to allow Nomzamo a further opportunity to express in her own words the meanings she now is able to attach to the use of reading in the classroom: Being able to use the text the way it is intended to and seeing that when you are teaching it’s not just you [the teacher] who has to read things, paraphrase for them [the students]. Sometimes they have to be given text which they can read and make sense on their own and you help them in making sense of what the text says. But the important thing which I have liked with STAP is the fact that kids be given a time to read things in class because our kids don’t read. And that is why if we give them a book they are scared to read that book because they are not given a chance to read in class and to talk about what they have read in class. It’s us teachers who are always paraphrasing, perhaps except for English where they have comprehension tests and so on. But in most of the subjects, we paraphrase for them so they don’t ever get a chance to read, and this is probably why they have such poor reading skills. So that is the most thing that I have liked with STAP, they have been given a chance to read on their own – they have tried to make sense of what they have been reading with the help of the teacher. Perhaps most telling of all is the last sentence, in which Nomzamo reveals just how far she has travelled from her earlier position: “. . . they have tried to make sense of what they have been reading, with the help of the teacher” [our emphasis now]. This statement reflects a (potentially) fundamental realignment in the way Nomzamo is starting to reconceptualise her role as a teacher as being one in which she is supportive, rather than directive, of student learning. Before leaving this point we would also like to suggest that Nomzamo’s experiences during this time highlight the pivotal role which carefully thought-through curriculum materials can play in aiding a teacher’s attempts to use text more directly in her teaching.49 Here again, this is not to underestimate the difficulties a teacher faces – not only from her own practice, but also just as critically from the students’ side; for as was discussed in Chapter 4, students become “locked out” of text because of their weak L2 abilities even when the text is written at a level they should be able to comprehend. As noted earlier, Nomzamo’s struggle to resolve the two dilemmas (of “codeswitching” and of “letting go”) reached a head at virtually the same time – indeed, 217

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the shift towards student reading in the 9D’s occurred on the very same day as Nomzamo’s first deliberate use of code-switching in the trialling exercise. This seems no mere coincidence but rather suggests an inter-connectedness between different elements in Nomzamo’s pedagogic content knowledge and, by inference, in her belief system about teaching (for as the reader may recall, her paraphrasing of text was certainly one of the most visible expressions of her allegiance to an “English-only” approach). We would like to suggest, too, that what happened is that the log-jam in both dilemmas simultaneously began to “loosen up” as Nomzamo became increasingly aware of the limitations inherent in both approaches. Once more, the role of the STAP material cannot be underestimated: as Nomzamo sought to implement the programme she was continually being challenged to shift away from an overreliance on didactic teaching (as reflected in her paraphrasing of text) towards approaches which were much more supportive of active student participation. It was as if her gaze was being inexorably drawn more towards the students and their learning, and this was reflected in her growing awareness of the barriers which the students had to overcome, particularly as they struggled to cope with the additional demands (and burden) of learning through the medium of a second language. As before, it is interesting to hear how Nomzamo expresses her feelings on these matters, and her comments are once again drawn from the “report back” session she gave at a STAP workshop: REFLECTION What happened is, initially when I was using the textbook, I would paraphrase for them and they wouldn’t really get a lot of time to interact with the book or me in class. So I would assume that they were with me, which means the truth is – I lost them, much earlier on. But I just wasn’t aware, so the STAP material then made me aware of the problems they were having. Then it is only then that I started code-switching, which means that had I not used this [STAP booklet] I would still be thinking that they were understanding, because here they are given the time to discuss, to talk to me and say whatever it is that they are supposed to be discussing. Then it is during those discussions that I picked up that somewhere along the line they were not with me. Learning to Live with the STAP Text We present the accounts just described as evidence in support of our contention that the STAP material provides a kind of “cognitive jolt” which challenges a teacher to rethink, often in quite uncompromising ways, the nature of her everyday practice. The descriptions also illustrate how the STAP programme can provide numerous opportunities for a teacher to “tinker with her practice”, in ways which allow her at least the opportunity to begin translating these newfound understandings into action. This process is well captured by the following example. 218

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We are again with the 9E’s, in the fifth week of the second term – one month after the events recounted before – and Nomzamo is busy with a lesson in which the students will investigate an electrical short circuit and the workings of a simple fuse. What follows is a full account of what transpired on that day: Today Nomzamo has some visitors – two teachers from Orchestra High, who will soon be using the STAP material, have come along to observe how things work. To make it easier for everyone to move around, the lesson with the 9E’s is held in the laboratory. After a review of the previous period’s work, Nomzamo tells the students that they will have 10 minutes for Investigation 1 and instructs them to come across and pick up their kits. The class responds quickly enough and before long there is a comfortable babble of voices as the students began pulling out and fiddling with pieces of apparatus. Nomzamo quickly realises that she will have to impose some kind of structure on the investigation and orders them to concentrate first on reading through the instructions. The noise level abates as the students settle into reading (or at least looking at!) the text. After leaving them alone for a minute or so, Nomzamo reads aloud the first instruction (“Take the piece of twin flex wire . . . ”). The students take this as a signal that they can begin the investigation and soon both Nomzamo and I have our hands full helping them. Moving from group to group, we encounter some familiar problems – some students really struggle to set up their circuits, and then there’s the perennial problem of students skipping the text altogether and trying instead just to follow the diagram. After about ten minutes, Nomzamo calls the class to attention and she begins to pull things together. In what is a nice touch, she puts a drawing of the circuit on the chalkboard and encourages a student to come up and indicate in red chalk, the path which electricity follows. She then goes through the “Group Discussion” questions and follows it up with a reading of the supporting text at the bottom of the page. It seems as if most students have cottoned on to what a short circuit is by the time she has finished speaking. Two students are then instructed to read out the cartoon introduction to Investigation 2. This time, Nomzamo specifically instructs the groups to read through the instructions before starting to connect up the circuit. Having collected their small piece of steel wool, the room is soon filled with loud exclamations and excited talk as the “fuses” burn-up in the circuit. Some groups do however continue to struggle with their circuits – for instance, a number persist in connecting the cells together incorrectly. As noted before, all too easily some students tend to give up when they come across something that they can’t work out. At times like this, one is reminded that the 9E class is anything but a homogeneous group of students. The more active involvement of a vocal minority tends to mask the fact that quite a few are really struggling to keep up.

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Fortunately, in most of the groups the steel wool burns spectacularly well, and it is a satisfied class which listens to Nomzamo go through the Group Discussion questions. While the students quite readily called out their observations, the sticking point comes when they are asked to offer some explanation for why they think the fuse wire gets hot and then melts. Sensing their confusion, Nomzamo instructs the students to read through the section of explanatory text on “Electric fuses”. As they settle down, she quite firmly instructs them to “Read, read, read . . . don’t look at me!” After a couple of minutes, Nomzamo switches into Xhosa to explain how a fuse works and also the concept of fuse rating. And as she remarks to me afterwards, things were clearer to the students once she had code-switched. Moving on into the section: “What fuse should you use?” she begins to read out aloud from the text. At this point the siren rings, and Nomzamo tells the students to carry on reading the rest of the page and to complete the table for homework. Before releasing the students, she goes through the first two examples on the table speaking rapidly in Xhosa. Seeing as Nomzamo is free in the next period, once the students had packed up and left we spend a few minutes chatting together over cool drink and cake. The Orchestra High teachers sound as if they have really enjoyed themselves and they have some really complimentary things to say to Nomzamo about the lesson she has just given. From her response, I can see that this made her feel really good (which is great!). Much can be read into this account of a single lesson. When it comes to the twin concerns of “language and text” Nomzamo displays a greater flexibility in the way in which she now uses the STAP material in her teaching. And her more effective use of code-switching reflects, too, a heightened awareness of the problems the students are having (on both a linguistic and conceptual level) with the ideas being presented in this unit. Armed with a more extensive repertoire of instructional practices, Nomzamo is able to leave behind the mainly one-dimensional didactic approaches which typified her pre-STAP teaching. She is thus in a much better position to fulfil her own expectations with respect to implementing the STAP programme. Together with her students, she is now able to enjoy richer, more varied general science lessons – and perhaps most significantly of all, the focus which was so firmly fixed on her own teaching is now starting to shift towards the students and their learning. 6.5. IN COLLABORATION

One of the most significant insights to emerge from the trialling exercise was a realisation that the collaborative partnership between Jonathan and Nomzamo played a pivotal role in helping Nomzamo to reflect on her teaching and to begin contemplating changes in her practice. Together they experienced firsthand how collaboration can promote stronger and deeper forms of reflection.50 In the words of Fullan and Hargreaves (1992): 220

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Our own experience is partial. Deeper reflection requires other eyes, other perspectives as well as our own. Part of the power of collaboration is the way it can bring other perspectives to bear on our own work. (p. 91) Indeed, in many respects we believe that their conversations were the critical factor that assisted Nomzamo in making sense of how she could incorporate change into her existing framework of beliefs and practices about teaching and learning. While it is pure conjecture on our part, we believe that without Jonathan’s involvement it is quite conceivable that changes, such as the resolution of her dilemma “of letting go” described above, may well have not taken place – at least not in the constructive way they did. Furthermore, given the immediacy of classroom life (particularly in the conditions of constraint under which Nomzamo functions), Nomzamo and Jonathan’s collaboration was able to encourage the “reflective conversation”, which in turn created opportunities for Nomzamo to step back from the “stream of experience” which was her everyday teaching, to reflect on her practice and contemplate change. Finally, in evoking an image of change as being a deeply personal process which is difficult, unpredictable and fraught with insecurities (on an affective level), there were a number of incidents which confirmed just how much Nomzamo relied on Jonathan’s support and encouragement to weather (as it were) the challenges of change. In this regard, their experiences mirror those of numerous other collaborative partnerships:51 they found that time, trust, courage and communication emerged as powerful factors underpinning their work together. Of these, trust emerged as being perhaps the decisive factor – for there is no doubt that it was the bedrock upon which their collaborative relationship was built. Wilson et al.’s (1993) comments on courage echo our appreciation of Nomzamo’s bravery in allowing us access to her classroom, particularly at a time when she was battling to make sense of change: It takes courage and energy to take the chances this work has entailed. This is difficult enough to do alone in a closed-door classroom, but in a collaboration one must do it in front of others – knowing that they are watching you sometimes flounder, wondering how they are thinking about that, trusting that they will treat you gently in the aftermath . . . it takes courage to take chances: to try new things, to veer from the familiar, to examine one’s practice. Examining one’s own teaching can be difficult, for it calls into question choices one makes daily, as well as choices made in the past. (p. 110) Through all this we began to realise, as others have done before, the value of collaboration as a context for joining teacher learning with learning about teaching,52 and in particular, the crucial role which conversation (i.e., reflective dialogue) can play in support of a teacher’s efforts to bring about changes in her existing practices. Since it is difficult for a teacher to diagnose her own weakness, conversation can provide the opportunity to analyse one’s teaching, reflect on one’s practice, 221

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and contemplate change. Ball and Rundquist (1993) sum it up well when they say: Conversation is central to understanding our work . . . [It] is also represented symbolically in the reciprocity of exchange in our work together. Our work is constructive – building new ideas about teaching, students, content, and about the study of teaching – and we contribute different kinds of things to the undertaking. (p. 40) Even though they belong to different cultures and class, and differ in terms of socio-economic background, Nomzamo and Jonathan had much to share – particularly on a professional level, where their common background of having taught in township schools was a powerful source of shared experience, as was their close involvement in the STAP programme. Another key insight to emerge concerns the issue of support. Based on Jonathan’s experiences of working alongside Nomzamo, we concur with Hunsaker and Johnston (1992) that long-term support and encouragement are critical if change is to be sustained. Like the three teachers reported on in Johnston’s (1994) study, Nomzamo found the process empowering, but stressful and risky and at times felt overwhelmed, discouraged and even defeated by her attempts to change her practice. The importance which she herself attached to Jonathan’s supportive role emerges in the following comment she made at the STAP “report back” workshop: One thing which I saw very clearly out of this trial was teacher support is so crucial – in the sense that after a lesson you might think that you have done a great lesson, and you feel great about yourself! But then when you sit down and reflect about what has gone on in the lesson, you then realise that I wasn’t really hitting the mark, I wasn’t really . . . I left out some things which show the strengths of the material. And you feel . . . like I would do a lesson at first and do my paraphrasing and so on with them and give them time to do work on their own, and maybe didn’t give them time to read that on their own, before I gave them my views on the thing. And it is only after reflecting with Jon that I realised that I was really . . . I wasn’t using the material for what it is intended. So it is quite important that one gets . . . even if it is someone within the school who one can talk to after a lesson, just to have someone to bounce your ideas on . . . And it is also nice to have someone sit in your lesson because when you are teaching sometimes you do things unconsciously, you just do them and it’s only afterwards when you think about them that you start to realise that okay, maybe I could have done it differently and that kind of a thing. So teacher support is quite important. From what Nomzamo has said here, we are left in no doubt of the importance which she attaches to her conversations with Jonathan, and of the important role they played in helping her become aware of and examine the knowledge she uses in support of her teaching decisions.53 As she puts it, “it is only after reflecting with Jon . . . ” that she is in a position to do just this. 222

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6.6. SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ON NOMZAMO’S EXPERIENCES OF CHANGE

Change is a journey, not a blueprint – change is non-linear, loaded with uncertainty and sometimes perverse. (Fullan, 1993, p. 24) The metaphor of change as being a journey into the partially known or unknown is often used in the literature. It is a particularly useful one here, because it suggests that change is not a static process but one which takes place over time, and involves a degree of personal choice on the part of the teacher, “. . . between a path to be taken and others to be passed by” as Hargreaves (1994) puts it. That it is a process of dynamic complexity has also been noted by many researchers54; in the words of Nias et al.: . . . above all, teachers must immerse themselves in the mysteries, and highs and lows of the dynamic complexity in the change process – how conflict is inevitable, how vision comes later . . . how arbitrary disturbances in the environment are par for the course, how you never arrive, and how sometimes things get worse despite your best efforts. (p. 81) As Nomzamo came herself to experience, change is also difficult and unpredictable and fraught with insecurities.55 It also requires no small degree of risktaking, and can be extremely stressful – as Block (1987, p. 191, quoted in Fullan, 1993) quite eloquently puts it, “. . . those issues that create stress for us give us clues about the uncooked seed within us that needs attention”. Uncovering and attending to “the uncooked seed within us” evokes in turn an image of change as being a deeply personal process56; one which may present at times a fundamental challenge to a teacher’s self-image. As Dadds (1993) reminds us: As we study our teaching, we are studying the images we hold of ourselves as teachers. Where these established self-images are challenged, questioned and perhaps threatened in the learning process we may experience feelings of instability, anxiety, negativity, even depression. This is especially so if the “self” we come to see in self-study is not the “self” we think we are, or the “self” we would like to be. Thinking about our work . . . can thus be a highly charged emotional experience, one from which we may be tempted to retreat, thus endangering further learning. (p. 287) Reflecting on her experiences during the trialling exercise, Nomzamo expressed many of these concerns: . . . change is not comfortable, it’s never been comfortable! And its quite . . . (hesitates) and it doesn’t occur overnight and you don’t just change completely at once, it’s gradual. So gradually I was changing. Now in a way it does feel a bit intimidating in the sense that you kind of say: I thought I was doing this right! And suddenly you realise no, you aren’t really doing things right or the way they were intended to be. You are going to have to stop doing things in such a way. And then you have to look at your methods and actually look at it critically, 223

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and if you start looking at yourself critically it’s not a very nice thing to do; but at the end of it all, if you realise that it’s for building you professionally and personally, you accept that it’s the process that you go through – that is, if you know that the intention of the whole thing is to build you professionally. Here again we are reminded of Nomzamo’s powerful desire to embrace change, and it is here that she shares many of the attitudes which Nias et al., (1992) identified as characterising teachers who want to improve their practice. Indeed, Nomzamo’s personal commitment to learning is a powerful source of intrinsic motivation which lies at the very heart of her identity as a teacher; as we have seen in Chapter 5, her career has been characterised by a continual seeking out of opportunities to “better herself” within a broader “community of learners” (be it SEP, the Mathematics Project or now STAP). In this we would like to concur with others57 who suggest that the significance of this “vital ingredient” (i.e., her personal commitment to learning) cannot be underestimated. The strength of this commitment can be judged by the fact that even though Nomzamo had to function in highly constrained circumstances, in which her actions in the classroom are often determined by factors outside of her control, she nevertheless holds fast to her belief that it is possible to improve her practice. Coupled to this, Nomzamo’s willingness to be self-critical is another positive attitude which allows her to accept that however painful change might be, it is a necessary part of the process of “building [yourself] professionally” (as she puts it). And finally, like the teachers in Nias et al.’s (1992, p. 73) study, “she was willing to learn what had to be learned in order to be able to do what needed or had to be done”. In this respect, we believe that it is important that Nomzamo’s need “to be told what to do”, is not trivialised in any way but is accepted as a further expression of her desire to “better herself” which in turn is a powerful reason for trialling the STAP material. As she once put it: . . . the professional development that I thought I would gain through being involved in the STAP project – that was the main, main thing. So I wanted my mistakes to be pointed out, so that I can work on them and then build myself professionally. Yet as we have seen, this process of building herself professionally forced Nomzamo to confront, during the course of the trialling exercise, some of the things she had known and done confidently in the past – so much so that even where (given her close association with the STAP project) she anticipated changes, she could still be taken by surprise both by the demands of the programme and her responses to them. This is a further reminder that the relationship between a teacher’s conceptions of teaching and her practice is more complex than simply causal. As Nomzamo came to realise, there was much that she had to learn and unlearn during this process: “I thought I was doing this right! And suddenly you realise no, you aren’t really doing things right or the way they were intended to be. You are going to have to stop doing things in such a way”. Cohen 224

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and Barnes (1993) regard “unlearning” as a difficult and little-explored feature of learning, which arises in part because teachers are forced to become novices again after many years of thinking that they have become accomplished professionals. To further complicate matters, Ball and Rundquist (1993) remind us that the personal resources demanded by changes in practice are often substantial, never more so than when the innovation itself is premised on a different set of assumptions about how teaching and learning should be undertaken and structured in the classroom. The STAP programme falls into this category, because the activity-based nature of the material lends itself to “coaching and conducting” rather than didactically “telling knowledge” to the students. To do this effectively, Nomzamo had to find ways of being less prominent in the work of her class, which was no simple matter since she had taught for so long in a teacher-centred way. Nomzamo’s early reluctance to encourage more active student reading of the text is a good example of where she struggled to play a less prominent role in the classroom. In these matters, Cohen and Barnes’ (1993) comment seems particularly appropriate: . . . when such teaching works, it greatly enriches instruction; but whether it works or not, it greatly complicates instruction . . . The social organization of classrooms grows much more lively and rich, but teachers’ intellectual and managerial responsibilities grow as well. (p. 243) As Nomzamo found out, teaching of this sort is difficult – more complex and demanding than simply memorising. It is also inherently more uncertain – because instruction is less predictable when students are asked to discuss and debate their ideas than when they memorise facts in isolated silence and disgorge them in recitation. Teaching in this way is also risky – when teachers construct classroom work so that it turns on extensive student participation, they enhance their dependence on students, which in turn means they have to accept greater vulnerability towards students than if they taught them in a more closed and traditional manner. As we saw in Chapter 4, the students themselves also have to adapt to new ways of learning. Perhaps most importantly of all, teachers have to revise their conception of learning – to accept that they must treat learning as an active process of constructing ideas rather than a passive process of absorbing information; that learning sometimes flourishes better in groups than alone; and that in order to learn, teachers have to sometimes unlearn much deeply held knowledge and many fond beliefs.58 This is an important point to make, for much of Nomzamo’s pedagogic knowledge is nested in a belief system which has developed over a lifetime of experience both in and out of the classroom.59 With her knowledge being constructed through personal and practical experience, it seems reasonable to suggest that new ways of knowing can only emerge from the reconstruction of old ways of knowing and teaching.60 In this chapter we have had the opportunity of considering what happened as Nomzamo struggled to do just that, and to appreciate the difficulties she 225

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faced as she attempted to construct what Louden (1991) refers to as a “new horizon of understanding”. The challenge for Nomzamo lay in finding ways of incorporating change into her existing framework of beliefs and practices about teaching and learning. As she tried to find her way from familiar practices to new ones, Nomzamo cobbled new ideas on to familiar ones, resulting in – as Cohen (1990) quite elegantly put it – a mélange of novel and traditional approaches to instruction. The following comment by Noss and Hoyles (1993) seems to capture Nomzamo’s experiences in this regard: The challenge for teachers faced with an innovation is to work to clarify a new (not necessarily disjointed) set of ideas and practices whose interactions with existing practice are not at all evident from the outset, but emerge in the course of the innovation. (p. 214) Thought of in such terms, it is possible to conceptualise the growth of a teacher’s knowledge as being a gradual and hesitant process which develops from a steady expanding of horizons of understanding, rather than in sudden leaps of insight61 as a teacher tinkers and experiments with her classroom practices. This conceptualisation fits well with a craft concept of teaching. This then provides another important tool for making sense of Nomzamo’s experiences during the STAP trialling exercise. Consider, for example, the way she came to resolve her dilemmas of “code-switching” and “letting go”. Each case was presented in a way which suggests that change was seemingly triggered by a quite specific critical incident which in turn led to a dramatic shift in practice; however, a closer reading of events reveals that in each case the “breakthrough” was actually preceded by a (lengthy) period in which Nomzamo struggled to accept an alternative way of teaching. It would seem that it was only once Nomzamo had reached a certain critical level of awareness of the issues and possibilities that she was able to open up a new horizon of understanding. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the way in which she came to a new understanding of the broader role of language in her classroom. Her comment that “it keeps on making a louder sound at the back of my mind” [our emphasis now], seems to neatly capture a sense of how this awareness permeated her consciousness. When the realisation could be no longer ignored, she was forced to consider the limitations in her previous (in this case, her “English-only”) approach, which in turn created the conditions out of which a new practice could evolve. Even then, as we have seen, the new awakening was followed by a settling-in period in which Nomzamo remained unsure and unsteady in her new practice, unconvinced as yet of its true worth. As she took the “fumbling first steps down an unfamiliar path” (Wilson et al., 1993), she was inclined to look back with some regret at the well-worn path of familiar practice. In all this, we need to remind ourselves that Nomzamo’s teaching practice (like that of any other teacher) is firmly embedded in context; that her “reason in action” (Sockett, 1987) is both practical and context-bound and reflects her response to the many conflicting demands which she faces in her day-to-day teaching. Here, too, we cannot fail to appreciate the complex interactions which occur between 226

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Nomzamo and the context within which she operates, and the extent to which the multiple layers of context affect the ways she thinks and crafts her practice. This point bears much closer examination given the circumstances under which Nomzamo operates – where, as has been emphasized throughout this book, teaching is severely constrained by a plethora of contextual factors (related to school, colleagues and the students) and where, perhaps most tragically of all, a breakdown in the culture of teaching and learning has seen the emergence of patterns of practice amongst both teachers and students which are profoundly unsupportive of a teacher’s attempts to bring about innovation and change in her classroom. As we watch Nomzamo grapple with the challenges of implementing the STAP programme, we can appreciate anew just how damaging teaching in a context like Yengeni High can be even for someone as resilient as she is, and to marvel at her persistence and courage in the face of these conditions. Reflecting on Nomzamo’s experiences while grappling with the challenge of implementing the STAP programme, one begins to appreciate how an ordinary teacher’s work becomes extraordinary by virtue of the social and historical context in which she and her work are embedded. In saying this we are in no way seeking to romanticise Nomzamo’s teaching, or in any way to ignore the limitations in her practice (which, as we have seen, were at times exposed, sometimes quite cruelly, during the trialling exercise). Rather, we seek no more than to retain a perspective on Nomzamo’s agency, which not only illustrates how she tackles the considerable challenges she encounters in her day-to-day teaching in a profoundly unsupportive environment, but also allows us to appreciate the resilience, persistence and courage she shows in the face of these conditions.

NOTES 1 Pope (1993, p. 22). 2 Lieberman and Miller (1991). 3 Ernest (1989) and Shuell (1990). 4 Calderhead (1988). 5 As Sockett (1987) puts it, “that which is unarticulated (and perhaps unarticulable) by the knower,

to be of sufficient complexity to resist statement in propositional form as rules of performance, to find expression in the knower’s performance without a self-conscious awareness, but, nevertheless, to be describable and observable by others”. (p. 214). 6 Briscoe (1991), Elbaz (1983, 1991), Lyons et al. (1997) to name but a few. 7 He suggests that the knowledge base of teaching includes the following categories: (i) Content knowledge: knowledge which includes not only an understanding of the facts and concepts of a discipline, but also an understanding of the methods and rules that guide study in the discipline. (ii) General pedagogic knowledge: broad principles and strategies of classroom management and organisation that transcend subject matter. (iii) Curriculum knowledge: the materials and programmes that serve as “tools of the trade”. (iv) Pedagogic content knowledge: that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers – their own special form of professional knowledge. (v) Knowledge of learners and their characteristics: what is elsewhere referred to as “pedagogical learner knowledge” (see Grimmet and MacKinnon, 1992). (vi) Knowledge of educational contexts.

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CHAPTER 6 (vii) Knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values, and their philosophical and historical grounds. 8 For instance, it has been the topic of a theme issue of the Journal of Teacher Education; see Ashton, P.T. (1990). Theme: Pedagogical content knowledge. Journal of Teacher Education, 41(3). 9 Shulman (1986) suggests that transformation occurs as the teacher critically reflects on and interprets the subject matter; finds multiple ways to represent the information as analogies, metaphors, examples, problems, demonstrations, or classroom activities; adapts the material to students’ developmental levels and abilities, gender, prior knowledge, and misconceptions; and finally tailors the material to those specific individual or groups of students to whom the information will be taught (see also Wilson et al., 1987). 10 Van Driel et al. (1998). 11 Cochran (1992). 12 Van Driel et al. (1998). 13 Ball and Rundquist (1993), Brickhouse (1990) and Carter (1992). 14 See, for example, Appleton and Asoko (1996), Lee (1995) and Tobin and Garnett (1988). 15 Duschl (1983) and Pomeroy (1993). 16 Gess-Newsome and Lederman (1993) and Stofflett and Stoddart (1994). 17 Abd-El-Khalick and BouJaoude (1997). 18 Ball and Feiman-Nemser (1988) and Lee (1995). 19 This was graphically illustrated by data gathered during the trialling exercise and reported on in Chapter 3. 20 Over a two-week period, a quarter of class time with the 9D’s was lost, mainly because the students continually arrived late for class (see Section 3.7). 21 Besides the check on students’ books (described later in this chapter) and in the somewhat cursory “rubber stamping” of exams (but rarely tests) by her HOD, at the time of the trialling exercise Nomzamo was under virtually no pressure at all to display evidence of her preparation, planning or record-keeping. 22 As implied by its name, this was an official green-coloured Lever arch file supplied to every probationary teacher by the Education Department. 23 In two of Nomzamo’s Grade 9 classes, one-quarter of all lessons were lost due to teacher nonattendance (see Section 3.8). 24 As she remarked, “Yes, I’m seeing that people are just leaving things to be done then at school time”. 25 The effect this has on school functionality is well illustrated by events at the school during the last week of the first term, when teachers remained ensconced in the staff room working on the report cards even when the students had returned to class (see Section 3.12). A further (more damaging) example is the staff’s insistence that end-of-year exams be scheduled in such a way that teachers have sufficient time to complete their marking during school hours. This means that the exams have to start way before the end of term – with the result that, once more, instructional time “leaks away”. However poorly this reflects on teachers’ commitment to their jobs, one has to concede that in some respects teachers are doing no more than reacting to the inordinately high marking loads which many of them carry because of the large number of students in each class. Consider, say, an English language teacher with five Grade 9 classes: each of her students will write three papers – an essay and letter; a literature paper; and a general language paper – which results (at a conservative estimate) in up to 3 × 5 × 50 = 750 scripts! Even allowing for the essay-and-letter exercise being set earlier (sometimes at the end of the previous term), the marking load is, to say the least, excessive. No wonder, then, that teachers pressure the principal to start the exams early. 26 Nomzamo has been assigned 37 of 54 periods to teach, which means that she has 17 free periods in a nine-day cycle. A close look at her timetable reveals that there is no day in which she has to teach all six periods; indeed, it is only on three days in a cycle that she has to teach 5 of the 6 periods, while on four days she has 4 of the 6 periods, and on two days she is free half of the periods. She has no teaching obligations in the last period on 6 of 9 days and on four occasions she has two free periods in a row. On three days, these double periods fall in the last two periods of the school day, which means that she has more than an hour and a half to herself.

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ADRIFT ON THE SEA OF CHANGE . . . 27 Although written more than 35 years ago, the following comment holds true to this day: “The requirements of the matriculation [examinations] has taken complete control. Teaching has become geared to results, non-examinable and extra-curricular material being neglected” (Colussi, 1969, p. 62). [Colussi, M.G. (1969). Aims and evaluation in science teaching. Unpublished B.Ed. Dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.] 28 It is impossible to substantiate this statement in anything other than the most general terms – although there are a number of critiques of teacher colleges which suggest that the level of training at most of these colleges is poor, with insufficient teaching practice, inadequately qualified lecturing staff, and badly equipped laboratories and libraries. See, for example:

– Hofmeyer, J., Jaff, R. and Rice, M. (1994). Teacher supply, utilisation and development in Gauteng: A policy study. Edupol. Johannesburg: The Urban Foundation. – Salmon, C.M.R. and Woods, C.A. (1991). Colleges of education: Challenging the cliché. Education Research Unit. Durban: University of Natal. 29 In a “craft” sense, this is a presence felt but almost impossible to measure. 30 Increasingly these days, the goals of school science education are defined in terms of the devel-

opment of scientific literacy. But what does this mean in terms of teachers? How often do we stop and consider the extent to which they are themselves scientifically literate? This seems to us to be a little-explored area of teacher development work, not only in South Africa but elsewhere in the world as well. 31 See Section 4.6. 32 However, for a short while in Grade 11 (less than six months), Nomzamo did have an American teacher who it appears did try to broaden his students’ interests in science. As she once told Jonathan, “He was an astronaut or an astronomer; I don’t know what is the difference between the two. In the evenings he would take us and look at the stars and so on and so on . . . So it was really . . . I think maybe because we were in a boarding school, so the teacher could easily get us during study time at night and explain whatever he saw interesting outside”. 33 As we heard in Chapter 5, while still a schoolgirl Nomzamo had only the vague idea of following a career somewhere in the medical field (perhaps as a doctor) – a dream shared by many of her fellow African students whose subject choice included mathematics and science. A powerful motivating factor for students choosing medicine as their ideal career path is its high status, which offers an immediate escape from the poverty trap in which most Africans are caught. With open access to careers in post-apartheid South Africa, academically high achieving students are increasingly articulating a desire to follow a broader range of careers, often in the field of commerce; this emerged quite clearly amongst the group of 9E’s whom Jonathan interviewed: not one of them had any intention of following a career in a science-related field. 34 It is worth recalling the way she spoke about her “mission”: “I will have done a good job if I could make kids realise that science is not for the highly gifted, but it is for the hardworking. And then I sort of took on that mission that I want to make kids like science as a teacher. And I want to try and simplify it to them as much as possible, to make them understand it more. So hopefully . . . I will have more students taking science afterwards, so I should make an impact on the way in which they look at science”. 35 Virodene was a controversial AIDS cure which was much in the news at the time of the trialling exercise. 36 It was also clearly one of the most enduring changes: chance visits to her classroom long after the STAP trialling exercise was completed revealed the extent to which her instructional practices have now been dominated by code-switching. 37 Classroom observations, both prior to and during the early days of the STAP trialling exercise, certainly confirmed this fact, although it must be said that Nomzamo’s use of English was to some extent dependent upon the class she was teaching – with the (less able) 9C’s she resorted to some code-switching, while with the 9E’s she spoke almost entirely in English. 38 The exceptions were the handful of “coloured” teachers on the staff whose primary language was Afrikaans. In effect, no one on the staff had English as their primary language. 39 This situation is typical for many (if not the majority) of other African schools in this country, a point made earlier (see Section 4.8).

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CHAPTER 6 40 See Section 4.9. 41 Indeed, the reader will recall that Nomzamo had stated quite emphatically that during her time at

Illovo Seminary she had never been taught science, or any other content subject for that matter, in an African language (be it either Zulu or Xhosa). 42 In a discussion on the extent to which English was actually being used in many classrooms at Yengeni High, Nomzamo expressed her views about what she called “the move toward the vernacular”: Nomzamo: Jon: Nomzamo:

Jon: Nomzamo: Jon: Nomzamo:

. . . and it’s even worse with this change, with this change of vernacular teaching. It’s . . . it’s coming in slowly and it looks like it’s coming in heavy. What do you mean? There’s this whole move towards vernacular, teaching in vernacular, teaching in mother tongue – there’s a great move towards that and it seems to be coming with great force. And . . . in so much that . . . okay, people have different opinions about this. But we have a case here where a teacher set a history paper in Xhosa and English – each question was repeated twice. And a child could answer in either language. What standard was that? Grade 11. And they were answering in Xhosa . . . What did people feel? How did you feel about that? Some people were against it, saying that next year these kids will have to do everything in English – what good is this going to do them? And he states his point of view, and he’s actually saying, “Guys, this is getting stronger, it’s not just me, there’s a whole [movement] . . . ” I think there was a conference at UWC about it . . . (indistinct). (A little later) The thing is, where is the cut-off point? What happens afterwards, what happens in the workplace?

43 See Section 4.10. 44 The term “control staff” is widely used by teachers at Yengeni High in a non-derogatory way to

describe the principal, his two deputies and the team of HODs at the school. 45 Once again, the issue of student expectations (and agendas) emerges as a significant factor which may determine a teacher’s actions. 46 This is consistent with the position presented in Chapter 3, where it was argued that the school exerts an overriding influence on Nomzamo’s teaching. 47 Frame is used here in the Schönian sense (see Schön, 1983). 48 The “STAP approach” is described in Section 2.7. 49 This point has been made in research papers which report on earlier STAP trialling exercises. See for example, Clark (1998) and Gray (1999a). 50 Schön (1983). 51 As in Wilson et al. (1993). 52 See, for example, Ball and Rundquist (1993), Briscoe (1991, 1996) and Campbell (1988). 53 For a similar finding, see Briscoe (1991, 1996). 54 See, for example, Johnston (1994) and Webb (1997). 55 Hunsaker and Johnston (1992). 56 This point is made by Briscoe (1996) amongst others. 57 See, for example, Fullan (1993) and McRobbie and Tobin (1995). 58 Cohen and Barnes (1993). 59 Briscoe (1991) and Clermont et al. (1994). 60 Louden and Wallace (1994). 61 Wallace and Louden (1992).

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THE CONTINUING DILEMMA OF CONTINUING CHANGE 7.1. INTRODUCTION

With the winter holidays fast approaching, Nomzamo hastened to finish teaching the final units of the STAP booklet, and in the growing disorder which heralded yet another chaotic close of term, the trialling exercise came to an end. Having undergone what was clearly a profound learning experience, what happened after this, when Nomzamo returned to school after the holidays, and moved on with her students to the next topic in the science syllabus? How, and in what ways, was she able to carry forward her newfound knowledge and experience (in particular, her more extensive repertoire of instructional practices) into her “post-STAP” teaching? While these are questions that belong to another story, it seems important that we take the opportunity not only to cast our eyes back over the trialling exercise but also to gaze forward, to draw what conclusions we can from our collaboration, and in so doing to bring this story to a close.

7.2. “REALITY CHECK”

The whole question of what would happen once Nomzamo had finished the STAP programme first emerged as an issue in the third month of the trialling exercise, with the advent of a series of semi-structured interviews with her Grade 9 students. As we have seen in previous chapters, their comments make interesting reading, and (given her involvement in the project’s previous work) Nomzamo was well aware that her students’ insights and perspectives could provide her with some invaluable feedback on her own classroom practice.1 Keen to hear what her students had to say, Nomzamo readily agreed to translate and transcribe the first four interviews.2 Besides confirming that they had really enjoyed participating in the STAP programme, the students were also very affirming of the way Nomzamo taught and (in particular) treated them. As Luleka put it, “It is right the way she teaches us . . . because she does not harass us, other teachers . . . she is kind to us”. Even Asanda acknowledged that he “like[d] the way she teaches” – praise indeed from someone who could be quite cynical about his teachers’ behaviour.3 It is ironic that Nomzamo’s consistently high level of classroom attendance provokes the following response from them:

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Interviewer4: You like a lot of things – you like her; you are used to her but is there something that you feel you do not like about her? Luleka: She always comes to class. She never misses her period. When it is her period, she waits at the door to chase away the teacher who was in before her.5 Interviewer: But she keeps you busy! Nolisapho: . . . after that, if the bell rings, she will continue and I would feel, “Yho, hayi! I am now fed up”. There are days when I wish not to have science lessons. She always attends her periods. She never misses her periods and when she is in class, she will only leave when the next teacher comes. If the next teacher does not come, she will not leave us. Phelo: It is only the next teacher who chases her out of class. She never leaves on her own will. Nomzamo knows her students well enough to take this as something of a backhanded compliment, yet it is worth mentioning for other reasons as well: on the one hand it can be taken as confirmation that consistently high classroom attendance is indeed a cornerstone of her own practice, and on the other hand it also reminds us (once again) how in this respect her actions are quite different to that of many of her colleagues at Yengeni High.6 When we spoke after she had completed the first two interview transcripts, it seemed that Nomzamo was quite positive about what the students had to say about her teaching, and that she had indeed gained some useful insights which she could take back into the classroom: Now I know how they feel. Now when I go to class, I go with an even more conscious mind than before. I’m happy to know; because it makes me to . . . it’s a good thing that I know. Ja, I think it’s a good thing that I know. [emphasis added] Yet the way she put this (“Ja, I think it’s a good thing that I know” [our emphasis]) indicated that there was something else bothering her, that there was something on her mind: But now you know, I’m caught in a dilemma Jon – What’s next for me? Where do I go from here? I’ve always been . . . over the weekend I was just thinking to myself: where do I go from here? From what the kids have said in the tapes [interviews] – that they like this kind of work – what next then, if this [STAP] is finished? How do I keep the momentum going that they have picked up with STAP, now that I have to go back to the [text]book again? For Nomzamo, her students’ comments were proving something of a “doubleedged sword”: the obvious satisfaction and personal affirmation she received from hearing of their enjoyment of the STAP programme, was tempered by a growing anxiety for the future. What was she to do next? How could she “keep the momentum going” and crucially, how were the students going to respond to her next term when they would have to “go back to the book” (as she put it)? For it seems 232

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that she specifically interpreted their comments about their dislike of the science textbook as implying that they now had expectations of how (and with what) she would teach the following sections of the syllabus. Perhaps it was comments like the following which set her thinking about the future in this way: Interviewer: Can I ask, since in the STAP book you dealt with electricity only, now that the book is finished, how would you like to be taught now? Nolisapho: I wish we could get another STAP book, from June to December! Phelo: I wish we could start another STAP book. Asanda: Even next year... STAP is interesting, very interesting. Nolisapho: It is better than the textbook; it arouses your interest and makes you keen to read. The textbook, Yho! Whereas Nomzamo chose to couch her concerns in terms of the students and their needs and expectations, her talk of “going back to the book” seemed as much as anything else, a sign of her growing anxiety about what was going to happen to her own practice when she completed the STAP programme. And while it remained unarticulated as such, it certainly seemed that what she really feared was having to abandon the gains she had made in her own pedagogy, and in so doing return to her “old ways” and the enforced monotony of textbook-bound teaching. Nomzamo was asked to try and articulate what it was she thought she needed in order to avoid sliding back into the practices of the past: I need the material – groups are there, so it’s a matter of . . . the material that will be suitable for continuing. And now if, okay I will not have the time to write down everything for each lesson. And the photocopying facilities for giving them papers, like paragraphs written down and you know, that kind of a thing. It then gets to a point where it’s impossible in terms of resources to continue. But then does it mean that . . . you just leave it there and . . . [emphasis added] Before commenting on what she has said, it seems important to acknowledge the context within which these remarks were being made – for the conversation took place at a time when the trialling exercise was in full swing and Nomzamo, having weathered the critical incidents in her own practice, gave every impression that she was really enjoying her teaching of the STAP programme. Indeed, it certainly seemed as if she was at the very apogee (as it were) of her experience of personal change. Why then did she react this way? Perhaps what happened is this: the transcription of the student interviews caused her to look up and contemplate the future, and in so doing she experienced a kind of “reality check” which forced her to “see again” just how much the conditions of constraint which characterise her day-to-day teaching at the school, preclude the kind of material-intensive teaching she had come to appreciate (and begun to more effectively use) during the STAP trialling exercise.7 What could be done? Certainly, in the absence of any further STAP-like curriculum package,8 it was inevitable that Nomzamo would “go back to the book”, 233

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but this did not necessarily mean that she had to give up on the hard-earned gains in terms of her own pedagogy. Mindful of the self-doubt that was creeping into her thinking, here and in subsequent conversations together, Jonathan tried to emphasize what he believed were the positives from the trialling exercise – for clearly, both she and the students had changed (and grown) from their collective experience of working through the STAP programme. As noted earlier, many of the students were enjoying their science lessons and this was clearly reflected in improved levels of engagement in the different classes – Nomzamo refers to this as the “momentum they had picked up”.9 The greater emphasis on group work was also helping the students to take more responsibility for their own learning, and the shift towards a structured programme of group rather than individual homework tasks ensured that work was actually getting done and handed in.10 When it came to such things as reading, the students displayed a willingness to try and engage in the text if given the opportunity and support to do so. And while more open participation and involvement in whole-class discussions were still a problem, there were signs that some contextually based activities could trigger them to “open up”, especially when encouraged to express themselves in Xhosa. All in all, we agreed that there was a greater sense of purposefulness amongst the students. When it came to her own practice, Nomzamo was reminded just how much “progress” (in her own terms) she had made in her teaching – for having resolved the dilemmas of “code-switching” and “letting go” she had made significant breakthroughs which had allowed her to leave behind the mainly one-dimensional didactic approaches which typified her pre-STAP teaching. But most importantly of all, she was reminded that it was not just because of her more adept use of the STAP material, but because of her heightened awareness of the linguistic and conceptual difficulties that the students faced in science. Consequently, her teaching had become a lot more flexible, and together with her students she was now able to enjoy richer, more varied science lessons. So even though she might be restricted again to the textbook, her newfound skills and experience made this a challenge to be met, rather than an obstacle which could not be overcome. Over the next two weeks, the issue of how she could “liven up her teaching of the concept of pressure” (the next topic she was to teach) cropped up a couple of times, and Jonathan took the opportunity to share with her some ideas and material drawn from his own work, which – while by no means as extensive (or coherent) as the STAP programme – did at least include examples of group activities and practical work which Nomzamo could use to supplement her existing repertoire of ideas. Yet as Jonathan and Nomzamo talked, she continued to voice her concern about not having materials with which she could carry on a STAP-like programme; irrespective of what anyone said, for her they were the key. So without a highly structured programme upon which to rely, in the months to come Nomzamo was about to be thrown back on her own resources – a situation which would test what was possible, not only in terms of her own inclination and motiva234

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tion, but also within the constraints operating in both her professional and private life. From the way Nomzamo presented things, it was almost as if she was preparing herself in advance for the worst.

7.3. COMING DOWN TO EARTH

The first mention of her “post-STAP” teaching was during an interview in the second week of the third term, and Nomzamo had this to say as part of a general comment on her experiences during the trialling exercise: I gained a lot in terms of . . . (hesitates) professionally in the sense that . . . method wise. As I said to you the other time, I wouldn’t like to do things exactly the way that I did things before. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable, it doesn’t make me feel good because I’ve tasted what . . . the STAP methodology that I’ve grown to appreciate and like more. And that’s why even now with this “Pressure” stuff, I’m still comfortable going through with it in the sense that it’s not like going back exactly to do things like I did them before. So it’s bringing again a bit of that element which I thought STAP was bringing in, but the question is, how do I sustain that? Of course there are other implications and complications around that. Nomzamo and Jonathan were talking in her free period at the end of an exhausting school day in which the students had been unduly restless, distracted and difficult to teach. She had left the last class (the 9D’s), nursing a hoarse voice from having to shout so much. For all that, her introductory lesson to the concept of pressure seemed to have gone off reasonably well. Nomzamo had been quite careful to allow the students (those who were listening, that is) time to grapple with the basic concept of pressure, and had been particularly encouraging of their attempts to make sense of it using their own words in their own language – all facilitated by Nomzamo using a great deal of code-switching. The initial stage of the (post-STAP) transition was proving less daunting, then, than she had originally feared – hence her comment about being “comfortable” with this “pressure stuff” (i.e. material). One senses her feeling of relief about not having to go back to doing things the way she had before. This seems to have been a short-lived respite, however, as revealed by her comments one month later at the STAP workshop where she gave her report-back on the trialling exercise to fellow members of the project: Now my last comment is . . . I was, after going through such a wonderful . . . what can I say? being changed over to . . . Ja, transition. I suddenly had to go back to my old self ! Because I still have another . . . (indistinct) of Pressure to move on with, so I felt that I was disappointing my students in the sense that they have been through this nice thing and suddenly I have to now, because of lack of material and everything, I have to suddenly go back to my old self and 235

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start teaching again instead of doing the role which I used to do before. So, that’s all . . . From the way she expresses herself here, it seems that her worst fears have indeed been realised and that what she had anticipated happening has taken place – she has gone back to her “old self” and in so doing has failed her students and, by inference, herself. It is significant that once again it is the availability (or lack thereof) of “material” (i.e. STAP-like resources), which Nomzamo blames for her slipping back into her old ways of teaching. The weeks passed and towards the end of the third term she spoke again about her classroom teaching: Nomzamo: The thing is now; with the exams it has really drifted us apart because I haven’t been seeing them for most of the time.11 But . . . yes, there has been a change. And as it is now even the groups are no longer . . . what I’ve noticed is that most of the classes, they have done away with the groups. It’s back to the old style [of sitting in rows]. I don’t know why the teachers decided to change the desk arrangement. Jon: But the one thing which you were a bit anxious about – the children would have expectations. Has that been a problem or not really? Nomzamo: Not a visible problem . . . but, I can see that there is a shift in the whole way things are happening now. They are no longer active, as they were during the trial. They have gone back to that passiveness that they had been before. There isn’t much discussion going on in class, so I’m back to teaching again. Back to that “question and answer” kind of a thing. It’s more of teaching now, that whole facilitator role I was playing is gone. Jon: Why do you think that’s happened? Nomzamo: Because of unavailability of material which promote[s] that in class. So now I’ve actually gone back . . . Less than a week later, Nomzamo had the opportunity to expand on this and seeing it was the last time that she spoke about these matters, she is quoted in full. Nomzamo: In terms of what I’m doing now . . . the thing is, what is happening now because I do not have the materials, I’ve gone back to my old teaching style. Which means that some activities have been cut off, like there aren’t any more group discussions where they could share ideas. And . . . it’s the group discussions mainly, as a result they have gone back to that system of keeping quiet and sitting there and listening to what you have to say and it’s like they have gone back to where we started, before the whole STAP thing again. And there’s even a change in the atmosphere in the class, it’s no longer those lively classrooms where kids were engaging in things. They don’t get a chance of reading text on their own and sharing it with their [neighbours]. Because even if there were enough textbooks, it wouldn’t work because of the way that the textbooks are. So, the 236

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Jon:

Nomzamo:

Jon:

Nomzamo:

Jon: Nomzamo: Jon: Nomzamo:

Jon: Nomzamo:

whole atmosphere in the classroom has changed and I can feel the change. And it’s not a nice change, because suddenly the classroom has become dull again, unless . . . okay, one very lively lessons were those of pressure where they were measuring things, so that was like a continuation of STAP because the classrooms were lively again. But now, I’m into chemistry and . . . oh . . . there isn’t fun surely. I’m now doing demonstrations, like it’s back to square one . . . But why has it gone back to the old way? You’ve been through the STAP experience, you’ve been able to see how it’s had an impact on your kids, and you’ve seen the impact on yourself . . . I think the main thing Jon is the materials, I do not have the right materials to move on with the way I’ve been doing. I’m now stuck again with the same textbook which I was using, which they cannot read on their own, so I have to start paraphrasing again, I have to start writing summaries on the board for them because if I don’t have those summaries they are never going to read their books; they don’t even have the books. So, there is no way I can really say – I can move on without the resources that I need in order to be able continue the way I was doing. Because in terms of the groups, the groups are still there but what are they going to do in their groups? What materials are they going to use for the class to become lively again? But can I challenge you about something? In a way then the STAP process has failed you, in that it hasn’t given you the tools enough to allow you to take it further? Not really Jon, the STAP process has equipped me with the writing skills, given time and support it’s not to say that one can never develop a chemistry section which would be similar, or which would follow the way that STAP is doing things. It’s not impossible, it’s definitely possible. But it’s just that up to this point this is how far STAP has done. But in terms of equipping me with skills, I believe I do have the skills to sit down and plan out something, but it is just that I do not have the time to sit down and start trying a chemistry section which would follow STAP. Why is it that you say that you don’t have the time in Grade 9? Time to work on those things? Ja. Definitely the Matrics, I’ve got the Matrics to . . . and of course other things, like the Expo thing which I have to [organise] . . . so in the afternoons I’m kind of meeting this one and that one [different people]. So, it’s a very busy time, particularly at this moment. What else ties your hands? I don’t have time at home at all . . . 237

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There is much to be read from Nomzamo’s comments. Although almost paradoxically, on the face of it there is little ambiguity at all in the way she chooses to express herself. Here again, as in earlier conversations, it is clear that more than anything else, it is the absence of “material” which she evokes as a justificatory script to explain her actions. Nomzamo states quite emphatically (perhaps almost defiantly?) that “because I do not have the materials, I’ve gone back to my old style of teaching”. She is stuck with the textbook, and the all too familiar dependency relationship which automatically kicks in: because the students (those who have a copy, that is) cannot read their science textbooks on their own, Nomzamo feels she has no choice but to interpret it for them. “Paraphrasing the text” becomes once again the main form of discourse in her classroom, and it is supported by chalkboard summaries which reclaim their place as the provider of the “hard currency of facts” which students will learn for tests and exams. Her voice once more dominates each lesson and the students are back in their passive shells – as Nomzamo remarks it “has become dull again” and it seems that the double bind has snapped shut on both teaching and learning in her classroom. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Nomzamo’s response is the way she presents things in such absolute terms: “either I have the material which will allow me to teach differently, or I don’t and therefore I can’t”, is what she seems to be saying. And in the light of her earlier anxiety about what would happen once she had finished the programme, her post-STAP experience has become then something of a self-fulfilling prophecy – as she predicted, she has indeed slipped back into her old style of teaching. It is as if “the material” (i.e. a STAPlike package) is both lock and key, without which nothing can be done. “What materials are they [the student groups] going to use for the class to become lively again?” she asks. Such a response begs any number of questions. For instance, accepting that she does indeed have writing skills,12 why is it then that she is unable to adapt the science textbook for her own purposes, and produce (even on a limited basis) her own material for use in support of either group or individual activities? Or more to the point, why is she unable to draw on her more extensive repertoire of instructional practices to at least broaden her textbook-bound teaching? Surely she doesn’t need “material” to encourage group work? What is stopping her from taking a textbook activity and giving it to the students to work on together, either as a class or homework exercise? When (gently) challenged about these issues, Nomzamo refers to the conflicting pressures on her time which prevent her from responding differently: “I believe I do have the skills to sit down and plan out something, but it is just that I do not have the time to sit down and start trying a chemistry section which would follow STAP” is how she justifies her actions. It is a position from which she will not waver or budge. Presented in this way, it is also a position against which it is difficult to argue; for as we have been at pains to acknowledge in previous chapters, the amount of time and effort which Nomzamo can devote to (say) lesson preparation in Grade 9 is severely limited. As the reader will recall, she is also responsible for 238

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teaching physical science for Grades 11 and 12. However essential a part of her job teaching-preparation is, it must still compete with all the other demands she faces in her day-to-day teaching. Reflecting once more on the conditions under which Nomzamo works (particularly the enormous numbers of students with whom she must deal), one is reminded of just how much she spends her time “juggling burning swords” (to use Louden’s expression once more). Upon reflection, it may well be that – setting apart for a moment Nomzamo’s strong personal identification with the project – one of the most tangible attractions of the STAP programme is its “plug and play” capability (to use a piece of computer jargon). For while there is little doubt that the programme increases the complexity of teaching at the point of delivery, it nonetheless offers a virtually all-inclusive package of “ready-to-use” material which can be taught with often relatively little preparation. Perhaps this goes some way in explaining why it is that Nomzamo kept on emphasizing the importance of having “the material”. Yet for all that, at the risk of over-simplifying what is clearly a highly complex issue, we would like to propose that there is also a quite straightforward explanation which helps explain Nomzamo’s post-STAP actions in Grade 9. Stated simply, it is this: Nomzamo has had enough, and whether or not she is willing to concede it as such, she in fact feels that in having focused for almost two terms so intensely on implementing the STAP programme, she has in effect “done her bit” for her Grade 9 classes, and she is therefore now perfectly justified in turning her attention elsewhere, both to her other students and other commitments. In some ways, this stance does seem to emerge in the above conversation: when asked to explain the time constraints under which she operates, Nomzamo acknowledges that her first priority is now to her Matric students, where the only tangible within-school accountability pressure becomes her growing concern as the end-of-year Matric exams draw near. Even though she has had to bear year after year of disappointment, it is important for her own sense of personal worth that she still tries “by all means” (as she is wont to put it) to prepare her students for these exams.13 And lest we forget, her own experiences as a student were particularly negative in this regard – no doubt a further powerful incentive for her to try and do her best for her students. Coupled to this, Nomzamo will always invest time and effort in whatever outside project she is presently involved, for it seems that the “psychic rewards of teaching” (Lortie, 1975) which are central to sustaining Nomzamo’s sense of self, her sense of value and worth as a teacher, are found outside of the classroom. Now, in the second half of the school year, with the STAP trialling exercise behind her, a considerable amount of Nomzamo’s free time is being taken up with a new venture: the organisation of the first science Expo to be held in the local townships.

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7.4. THE CONTINUING DILEMMA OF CONTINUING CHANGE

As is evident from the above account, the immediate post-STAP period was a difficult time for Nomzamo; there is little doubt that a failure to sustain changes in her pedagogic practice left her feeling disappointed and discouraged. Yet whatever Nomzamo thought (or articulated) at the time, she was not unmarked by her experiences during the trialling exercise. Far from it. Indeed, here it is important not to take Nomzamo’s words at face value, because in so doing one runs the risk of underestimating the impact of such an experience on a teacher. For its significance cannot just be measured by shifts or gains in pedagogy, but more importantly on a deeply personal level – in terms of the effect it has on her sense of self-worth and dignity, her professional pride and identity. Whether it was the affirmation that came from outside (such as from the Orchestra High teachers who watched her at work with the 9E’s), or the satisfaction she gained from reading her students’ comments about her teaching, there is little doubt that the trialling exercise was a constructive and formative experience. Furthermore, at any time in the weeks and months that followed, a visit to Nomzamo’s classroom would reveal evidence of the “STAP approach” which she felt she had lost. Her classroom was no longer dominated by an Englishonly approach and she now appeared to employ code-switching effortlessly in all aspects of her teaching. The students (particularly in the higher classes) could often be found working together either in pairs or in groups, and more than once, the students in the class were observed sitting quietly reading their textbooks. What was evident to an observer, but perhaps difficult for Nomzamo to see for herself, was the extent to which changes had indeed been incorporated into her existing framework of beliefs and practices about teaching and learning. While some of these changes – such as her more deliberate use of code-switching – represented a visible shift in practice, others – such as a more effective use of text – may indeed have become submerged in the morass of the situational constraints in which Nomzamo operates. In any event, how does one judge innovative progress? As noted by Cohen (1990), changes that seem large to teachers who are in the midst of struggles to accommodate new ideas may often seem modest or invisible to observers. Perhaps the reverse can also be true; as Webb (1997) reminds us, even small shifts in what teachers do are significant in the context of the large, inert systems in which they work – and inert is certainly an apt description of a context like Yengeni High. In these matters, Wilson et al.’s (1993) tribute to two teachers “at-change” seems a fitting way to celebrate Nomzamo’s efforts during the STAP trialling exercise: Our experiences have taught us much about what we now call the ‘order of magnitude’ question in learning. The changes Miller and Yerkes have experienced in their teaching and thinking seem enormous to them, yet those changes are as much in their minds and hearts as they are in their practice. Miller and Yerkes can see how their interactions and talk with students has [sic] changed in subtle and less subtle ways. But an outsider might see little that seemed new. 240

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Yet perhaps this it the way that permanent, important change starts. Our learning is in our roots, in the very ways that we see and understand and think about our responsibilities as teachers and our relationships with students. We do not, however, feel like seedlings or fragile flowers easily uprooted with a single sweep of the hand. We feel more like those weeds one battles with on spring days whose roots run deep and long, weeds that keep returning no matter how many times they are uprooted. Likewise, the changes we have made will not go away, as Miller and Yerkes have both said, ‘The problem is, you can’t go back’. (p. 122) Finally, this seems to be a suitable place to raise what we have come to think of as the continuing dilemma of continuing change – which forms part of the wider debate around how teachers can be effectively supported in their ongoing endeavours to change their practice, to “build themselves professionally” as Nomzamo would put it. We want to suggest the following: that Nomzamo is probably no different from many other teachers. On the one hand there is no doubt that she requires longterm support and encouragement if her attempts to bring about changes in her pedagogic practice are to be successful; yet on the other hand, these attempts are something which she cannot (and should not be expected to) sustain at a high level of intensity for extended periods of time. As we speculated earlier, we believe that Nomzamo not only left the trialling exercise feeling that she had done enough by her Grade 9’s, but that she’d also had enough – and that her experiences over a 14-week period had left her emotionally drained and in need of a break. This points towards what seems to us to be one of the real advantages of a programme such as STAP, for it is a package of alternative curriculum materials which provides opportunities for a teacher to tinker with her practice in a substantial but not overwhelming way – to put it crudely, it offers a teacher a “bite-size chunk of change”. And while it is no more than pure conjecture, we believe that if Nomzamo had been asked to implement a programme which took in a whole year’s work, she would not have been able to sustain her level of engagement as well as she did, and it may well have proved a less satisfactory learning experience. We would do well to remember that whereas change is certainly not an event, it is also not a seamless process.

NOTES 1 Two research papers (Clark, 1997, 1998) draw specifically on findings from student interviews from previous STAP trialling exercises. 2 These interviews (two each in 9E and 9C) were undertaken in Xhosa by two of the student science teachers, who were, the reader may recall, busy with their practicum at the school. 3 In later interviews, Asanda came across as being a lot less forgiving of some of his teachers’ behaviour. In Chapter 4, Asanda is one of the students whose passive behaviour in class was discussed in relation to his negative experiences of corporal punishment at primary school. 4 One of the student teachers – also see Note 2.

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CHAPTER 7 5 As it is used colloquially, “to chase” does not necessarily have the same negative connotations as it does in English, although (as implied here) it certainly does mean “to move on”! 6 That the students remarked upon her classroom attendance in this way is surely a further indictment of the actions of some of her fellow teachers. In Chapter 3, much was made of the negative impact which teachers’ non-attendance has on learning at the school. 7 The reader may recall from the description of Yengeni High in Chapter 2 that all printing for the more than 1,800 students at the school had to be done on a single Xerox machine. Faced with a continual shortage of ink and paper, the teachers’ use of this facility was restricted mainly to printing copies of tests and exams. Teachers were actively discouraged from using the old photocopier in the principal’s office for anything other than very small quantities of printing (15 copies was the rule at the time of the trialling exercise). As most classes had over 60 students in them, the photocopier was consequently almost never used for producing material for the students. 8 At the time there was simply nothing like it readily available in South Africa. 9 Nomzamo was particularly impressed with the improvement in the 9C class, particularly as it was the one class (as we saw in Chapter 2) with which she had problems. 10 Co-operative group work certainly appears to be closer to traditional modes of learning, which may explain (in our experience) why it is that African students quite readily form out-of-class “study groups”, that will meet to work through class assignments, study together for tests, etc. 11 As a Matric teacher, Nomzamo had to help out with invigilation duties during the Grade 12 June and September examinations. While the rest of the school continued with “normal” classes, virtually all invigilation was assigned to Matric subject teachers, irrespective of whether or not they had other classes to attend to. The principal could rarely persuade any of the other teachers who might have free periods to help out. As the exams were usually run from 9.00 a.m. to 12.00 p.m., this meant that during each two-week exam period, Nomzamo was continually missing out on her Grade 9 and 11 classes, unless she could persuade one of her colleagues/friends to take over her invigilation duties, or if their period fell after lunch. Even then, Nomzamo, like the other Matric teachers, insisted upon taking an hour’s lunch break following their invigilation duties, which meant periods four and sometimes five were lost. The ‘cost’ of the Matric exams was consequently felt throughout the school. And it seems somewhat ironic that the Matric teachers, who were certainly amongst the more motivated on the staff, were the ones whose absence from their other teaching responsibilities was legitimised during the Matric exams by the failure of the school authorities to draw in other teachers to help. 12 Of the teachers involved in the development of the STAP material, Nomzamo was one of the most enthusiastic writers. It also seems to be something for which she has a genuine aptitude, as is revealed by her subsequent involvement as a co-writer in a series of educational textbooks. 13 There is little chance that more than one or two of her Grade 12’s will perform with anything approaching distinction in these exams.

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SOME INSIGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STUDY 8.1. IN SUMMARY

Our study has much to say about a teacher’s attempts to manage change in her science classroom. For a start, as we consider Nomzamo’s experiences we are reminded just how much a teacher’s practice can be influenced by the circumstances within which she works. For it is in the dusty courtyards, bustling corridors and over-crowded classrooms of Yengeni High that we find convincing evidence pointing to the powerful determining role which context plays in shaping a teacher’s pedagogy. This first emerged as a major theme in Chapter 3, when we considered the impact of school functioning on Nomzamo’s daily practice. It was here that we presented evidence to show that Yengeni High experiences a relatively high level of disorganisation – so much so, that in terms of overall functioning the school can be characterised as being something of a bureaucratic façade. To our mind, one of the most obvious indicators of its dysfunctionality is reflected in the essentially brittle nature of schooling, where throughout the trialling exercise, classroom teaching remained under threat – be it from a politically motivated disruption, a shortened school day or even a heavy shower of rain. As a consequence, instructional time remains a commodity in short supply at the school. Here the facts speak for themselves: during the 14-week STAP trialling exercise, teaching on just under one third of school days was disrupted in one way or another, causing Nomzamo to suffer the direct loss of a significant amount of her general science periods. The impact was also felt in less obvious but perhaps ultimately more damaging ways – the extent to which “time leakage” acted as a further drain on teaching time was illustrated by events over a two-week period of “normal schooling” with the 7D’s, in which the students lost out on a further quarter of their time-in-class in general science. The more indirect impact of the discontinuous nature of schooling on Nomzamo’s daily teaching was explored in Chapter 6, in a discussion of some of the more long-term influences this has on the growth and development of her general pedagogic knowledge. Here we concluded that a tendency to function on a day-to-day basis forms an invaluable part of a teacher’s repertoire of coping strategies which allows her to deal with the indeterminate nature of schooling. Consequently, skills which, in a more functional setting, may form a “takenfor-granted” part of any teacher’s practice get “lost” in this context. On a more general level, we argued that the fairly limited organisational skills of a teacher like Nomzamo are a manifestation of a broader problem and can be traced to the lack of administrative accountability which still characterises teaching at the

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school. (This links back to issues raised in Chapter 3, where the crisis of authority at Yengeni High was seen to impact negatively on the overall functioning of the school.) While her years of experience have taught her to cope quite skilfully with the constraints and challenges of teaching at Yengeni High, the trialling of the STAP material nonetheless brought Nomzamo face to face with some of the contradictions of working in this context. She found herself having to implement a programme which demanded from her a far more coherent approach than the kind to which she had previously been accustomed. The issues (as always) are complex and multifaceted; however, in seeking to make sense of the situation, we sought an analysis which acknowledged that the institutional identity of Yengeni High is steeped in the political crisis and conflict which has marred township schooling for the past 25 years. In this respect, we believe that this study reveals just how much the effects of the troubled past remain deeply etched in the present-day landscape of the school. While it was inevitable that a focus on what amounts to school ineffectiveness paints a fairly bleak picture of daily life at the school, we have tried (particularly in Chapter 3) to acknowledge that the school is attempting to function more effectively. Evoking the image of “two schools in one”, more than anything else, seems to send a clear message that re-establishing authority structures is, as in all matters which involve change, a process and not an event. Following from this, a not unexpected finding to emerge was a confirmation of the extent to which Nomzamo’s actions were heavily influenced by the institutional practices and working relationships of the community of teachers with whom she shares the staffroom. The documented loss of teaching time due to some teachers’ non-attendance in class is a case in point, revealing in quite emphatic terms the lack of commitment to teaching on the part of some of her colleagues. The extent to which the occupational culture of teaching, as a whole, could impact negatively on her practice, is illustrated in quite dramatic fashion by events towards the end of the first term where Nomzamo was virtually alone in her resolve to attend to her classes. In our analysis of Nomzamo’s situation at Yengeni High, we concluded that without the benefit of a collaborative, supportive group of fellow teachers, Nomzamo functions as a constrained individual within what could be characterised as a balkanised school community (both are constructs popularised in the writings of Andy Hargreaves). While acknowledging that she has considerable freedom to bring innovation and change into her classroom, we argued that, in effect, this is a kind of false freedom – for the commitment and motivation of an individual teacher is at times placed under enormous strain by the actions of her fellow teachers. All of which points towards what seems to be one of the paradoxes of teaching in a school like Yengeni High – for while there is no doubt that conditions favour what can only be described as (rampant) individualism, this situation does not necessarily translate into support for a teacher like Nomzamo who is striving to express her individuality. This is not to suggest that Nomzamo’s commitment to teaching is not respected (and admired) by many of her colleagues. Rather, she is free to do what 244

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she wants as long as she “keeps it in her classroom” and in no way threatens or confronts the carefully maintained status quo of teaching at the school. Here again, this is complex ground which defies simple analysis. These issues are raised again in Chapter 6, where we suggest that the cumulative effect of having worked for years under conditions of “crisis, conflict and constraint” has had a truly profound impact on the way many township teachers (particularly those of Nomzamo’s generation) have come to conceptualise and enact their professional roles. Reflecting further on these matters, we believe we still lack an appreciation of the extent to which the relationships between teachers and students; students and learning; and teachers and teaching have been severely disrupted and distorted by the experiences of these times. Furthermore, when it comes to the whole question of teacher professionalism, it seems obvious that the more highly charged the debate becomes in South Africa, the more likely it will be clouded by (what must surely be) the mistaken assumption that there is a single, all-encompassing concept of “the professional teacher”, which can be applied in all educational contexts in this country. In this regard, we concur with Davies (1993) that we would do well to develop local concepts of professionalism – to allow us to extend our understanding of how the occupational culture of teaching at the school level may aid or hinder the implementation of innovation and change. Chapter 4 began with the observation that students are the most salient and powerful context of teaching – something that Nomzamo needs no reminding of since on some days up to 300 children pass through her door. The constraints on practice imposed by having to teach so many students are considerable (at times, overwhelming), particularly as students are grouped together in such large, mixedability classes. In such circumstances, implementing a programme like STAP, with its emphasis on student activities and collaborative group work, presented Nomzamo with a host of challenges. As experiences during the trialling exercise revealed, there is clearly a profound disjuncture between the high-rhetoric of student-centred learning and the realities of a township secondary school classroom. For example, as Nomzamo found, the close monitoring of the individual performance of hundreds of children, who display such varying degrees of ability and enthusiasm for their schoolwork, was a well-nigh impossible task; not only in terms of volume of marking but, more critically, because of the complex organisational demands needed to keep track of this work. To function effectively in such circumstances clearly demands a high level of skilful practice. The STAP programme created opportunities for Nomzamo to explore ways of teaching which were far more supportive of active student participation and inquiry. As the weeks passed, it became evident that the students were being asked to change their practice and adapt to new ways of learning. Delving into the roots of the students’ present-day behaviour was undertaken from a position, which acknowledges the complex socio-cultural and linguistic milieu in which Nomzamo’s classroom is embedded. We concluded that the experiences over years of schooling had conditioned the students to accept for 245

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themselves an essentially passive role, and that this was partly in line with deeply rooted cultural expectations of how they ought to behave in their role as learners. In support of this argument we sought to link our observations and interpretation of Nomzamo’s classroom to that of research from both South Africa and elsewhere in Africa. What we called her “dilemma of not-knowing” was presented as playing a key role in shaping the nature of both private and public interactions between Nomzamo and her students. We argued that some students become quite adept at wearing a “cloak of anonymity”; so much so that the “art of hiding”, as an anonymous face among one’s fellow students, is a skill long practised and carefully nurtured by no small number of students in her classes. Here we evoked an image of Nomzamo’s classroom as being like a stage hung with “curtain walls of silence”. The challenge she faced was to persuade students who are bound by scripts of non-participation and failure to come out of the shadows and play a more active role in their own learning. We suggested that one way to make sense of the situation was to conceptualise the existing patterns of (both teaching and learning) practice is as a “double bind” which mediates against more open student engagement in the classroom; and that this is a Gordian knot of considerable proportions. Given the strong claims which were made in support of student passivity, one of the most intriguing aspects of the trialling exercise were those occasions when an activity in the STAP programme triggered a larger number of students to “talk out”. Two such activities are discussed in some detail, where it was concluded that creating opportunities for students to tap into their “life-world knowing” has immense potential for unlocking the “student voice”. This study also provides convincing evidence which suggests that having to learn through the medium of a second language exerts a major (in some ways overriding) influence on classroom practice, as was revealed in numerous ways during the trialling exercise. For instance, Nomzamo’s attempts to encourage the students to talk out in class led her to introduce into her classroom language behaviour markedly different from traditional interaction patterns. Not only did the students’ limited L2 skills constrain their ability to “talk science”, but it trapped them into narrow channels of communication in which (for example) Nomzamo could do little more than ask questions at a low level of complexity, in keeping with their low level of English proficiency. As we went on to interpret it, students – who had been socialised into an essentially passive role, who were burdened by poor L2 communicative skills, and were confronted by a different set of “ground rules” for language behaviour – quite understandably struggled to take advantage of the opportunities for more active, verbal engagement offered by the STAP programme. Another major set of language-related constraints can be linked directly to the students’ weak L2 reading skills. Even though considerable effort had gone into developing a more “readable” STAP book which was sensitive to the language needs of L2 users, on numerous occasions during the trialling exercise students came up against the almost invisible barrier of their weak reading skills, with the 246

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result that they became “locked out” of the text, confirming some of Jonathan’s earlier research (Clark, 1993, 1998). A further negative consequence of this is that students became trapped into a continuing dependency relationship with their teacher; with the result that Nomzamo continually found herself having to intervene at a time when she was trying hard to encourage the students to work on their own. Burdened by weak L2 reading skills, many students also struggled to make sense of questions written at a higher level of language complexity, which in turn affected their ability to correctly interpret class and homework assignments, and (as we saw) answer questions in a test. The standard of the students’ written work was also a reflection of their poor L2 competencies. Examples drawn from a cross-section of their exercise books revealed the extent to which students’ limited vocabulary and poor grasp of syntax resulted in highly fragmented sets of incomplete notes and half-finished exercises. All of these findings underline the critical role played by instruction. One cannot assume that students will be able to organise their work in a coherent way unless actively supported (and encouraged) by their teacher – a daunting task in large, mixed-ability classes. In summing up Chapter 4, we suggested that a useful way of conceptualising the introduction of innovation into a classroom is in terms of a dual process which simultaneously involves both teacher and students; for as Nomzamo struggled to shift her own practice, she was faced with the challenge of encouraging and supporting her students to do the same. Chapter 5 provided a biographical sketch of Nomzamo’s life and work. With her own educational experiences, firstly as a student and then as a teacher having straddled the period following the Soweto Uprising of 1976, her story provides a valuable personalised account of the turbulent, final days of apartheid education and its aftermath. Through these pages, Nomzamo swims into focus as a teacher with a resilient, well-developed professional notion of self, grounded in her strong sense of personal identification with the subject that she teaches – “science has become my life, really . . . ”, as she once put it. With a specific focus on those aspects of her career and life history which she articulates as having played (or playing) a significant role in influencing her work as a science teacher, we were able to explore the way her professional identity has formed, developed and been sustained over the years she has spent in the classroom. One of the most significant insights to emerge from this aspect of Nomzamo’s story is the extent to which her professional worth and identity are bound up in her involvement in outside collaborative ventures such as SEP, the Mathematics Project and STAP. Besides contributing in significant ways to her professional growth as a teacher, her collaboration with others created opportunities for Nomzamo to locate herself within a broader community of practice. And with an external locus of attention, she is able to weather the disappointments of her own classroom and face the debilitating conditions of a dysfunctional township school. 247

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Indeed, we believe a useful way of conceptualising much of Nomzamo’s practice is in terms of the dynamic tension which exists between what have often been two conflicting sets of influences: on the one hand, the constraining tendencies inherent in the teaching contexts in which she has worked and on the other, the sustaining possibilities which have arisen out of her ongoing involvement in projects such as STAP. From the focus on “school, staff, students and self”, our attention shifted directly onto Nomzamo’s practice, and her response to the range of problems and challenges she faced as an inevitable consequence of introducing the STAP programme into her classroom. What emerged from a consideration of Nomzamo’s general pedagogic knowledge was an understanding of the various ways in which this aspect of her craft knowledge is shaped (and even warped) by the various “constraints on practice” which she experiences in the normal course of her teaching. Some of these were just mentioned; where it was suggested that Nomzamo’s general pedagogical skills have developed in response to the disrupted conditions which typify Yengeni High. As we considered her struggle to cope with all the demands on Nomzamo’s time, we came to appreciate how the greatest constraints lay within the classroom, where in addition to the normal demands of teaching she had to cope with the psychological and emotional burden of being responsible for more than 300 children. This could be an almost overwhelming experience, particularly during periods when normal schooling was disrupted. In such circumstances, an ability to disengage seems perhaps to be a teacher’s most vital coping strategy of all. However, functioning in this way could at times be at odds with the studentcentred emphasis promoted by the STAP programme. For as soon as Nomzamo came to raise the level of student engagement (say in terms of classwork or homework) she found herself burdened not only with a load of potentially un-markable work, but also with the corresponding organisational demands, with which she had neither the experience nor inclination to cope. Here, too, we interpreted her “paralysis of numbers” as being a complex (and pragmatic) response to the improbable demands she faces from the large, mixedability groups that she teaches. In all this, we found ourselves in agreement with Sanders et al. (1993) who suggested that a teacher’s general pedagogic knowledge is forged in context and functions as a framework for teaching that is filled in, and enhanced by, other aspects of teacher practice. While the examination of Nomzamo’s subject-matter knowledge was less conclusive and decidedly more speculative in nature, we took the opportunity to raise some concerns and issues which have an important bearing on work in in-service education and training (INSET). In the discussion we drew two distinctions: firstly, between the formal “syllabus-bound” knowledge which Nomzamo uses in her daily practice and the broader, more informal knowledge and understanding of the subject which she carries with her into the classroom; and secondly, between

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the influence which her experiences inside and outside the classroom have had on the growth and development of her subject-matter knowledge. We concluded that Nomzamo’s participation in a variety of outside activities (ranging from one-off workshops to lengthy collaborative ventures such as STAP) had benefited her formal knowledge of the subject, but what remained unanswerable was the extent to which this involvement led to the broadening of what we termed her contextual understanding of science. Here it was argued that a potential shortcoming in much INSET work (in South Africa at least) is that because of its preoccupation with concerns of content and methodology, it makes false assumptions or excludes altogether from consideration the level of teachers’ background knowledge. We went on to argue that it is this “other knowledge”, rather than any amount of syllabus-bound content knowledge, that gives a critical depth to a teacher’s understanding (and appreciation) of the subject; without it she may fail to encourage more open inquiry in the classroom. As was the case with her general pedagogic knowledge, we suggested that Nomzamo’s experiences in the classroom have been anything but conducive to the growth and development of her subject-matter knowledge. Of the different factors which were raised, the lack of student questioning and the absence of “error-checking”, were highlighted as being rarely acknowledged but nonetheless powerful constraining influences. Finally, the restricted nature of her students’ interests (and expectations) were also seen to play a key role in limiting not only Nomzamo’s attempts to extend her teaching beyond the boundaries of the restricted content of the official syllabus, but also as a constraining influence on the growth and development of her knowledge and contextual understanding of the broader enterprise of science. All of these serve as a powerful reminder that the students play a pivotal role in determining the nature of classroom interactions. The third and most extensive focus of Chapter 6 involved, in some detail, a number of specific examples of where Nomzamo came to confront and then work through limitations in her own instructional practices. This allowed us to explore in what ways her pedagogic content knowledge was affected by her implementation of the STAP programme, and in so doing to consider some important aspects of Nomzamo’s personal experience of change. To create a sense of “change-as-process”, we related Nomzamo’s experiences through a number of narrative accounts. The first dealt with her dilemma of codeswitching, which described how through the STAP programme she became more aware of her students’ L2 problems. This precipitated a reconsideration of her use of English in the classroom and in turn led to a quite dramatic shift towards a more mixed-language approach in her teaching. This account revealed some of the complexities of the issues involved when a teacher tries to change her practice and how painful a process it can be; for once the efficacy of her “English only” approach had been called into doubt, Nomzamo was drawn to rethink what she had taught (and not taught) her students over the years. Almost paradoxically, then, the very strength of her commitment to English had actually been at the same time something of a weakness in her teaching, for she had failed to take 249

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advantage of the positive role which the students’ primary language can play in aiding the development of their understanding in science. We then provided an extended narrative which explored Nomzamo’s resolution of her “dilemma of letting go”. It documented the process whereby she came to use the STAP text in a more purposeful way in her teaching and paid particular attention to the chain of events which led up to what was in effect a quite dramatic shift in practice. Considered together, we believe there is much to be learnt from these two accounts. For a start, they furnish evidence which shows how the innovative STAP material provided a kind of “cognitive jolt” which forces a teacher to rethink, often in quite uncompromising ways the nature of her everyday practice. As Nomzamo went about implementing the STAP programme, she was being continually challenged to shift away from an over-reliance on didactic teaching (as reflected in her “paraphrasing of text”) towards approaches which were more supportive of active student participation. She was, as it were, being drawn to change. The second account in particular, illustrates just how important it was that Nomzamo had the opportunity to repeat the same lesson in four different classes – for this allowed her to “tinker” with her practice and in so doing experiment with ways of translating her new-found understandings into action. In this instance it gave her the space (as it were) to “feel” her way into her new role as a reading teacher. These breakthroughs (in terms of her use of language and text) were translated into some positive gains in her general pedagogic knowledge. Nomzamo began to display a much greater flexibility in the way she used the STAP material in her teaching, and her more effective use of code-switching reflected a heightened awareness of the linguistic and conceptual problems which students experience in their study of science. Armed with a more extensive repertoire of instructional practices, Nomzamo was also able to leave behind the mainly one-dimensional didactic approaches which typified her pre-STAP teaching. Not only did this allow her to meet her own expectations with respect to implementing the programme, but also to enjoy richer, more varied science lessons together with her students. And perhaps most significantly of all, the focus which had in the past been so firmly fixed on her own teaching, started to shift towards the students and their learning. This case study of a “teacher at work” highlights the various ways in which a teacher’s knowledge is both practical and context-bound, has developed over a lifetime of experience (both in and outside the classroom), and reflects in turn her response to the many conflicting demands she faces in her day-to-day teaching. Watching Nomzamo grapple with the challenges of implementing the STAP programme, one came to appreciate the complex interactions in which the multiple layers of context affect the ways she thinks and comes to create her practice. While the accounts of how Nomzamo resolved her dilemmas of “codeswitching” and “letting go” were presented in a way which suggested that change was triggered by a quite specific critical incident, a closer examination of events reveals that in each case the “breakthrough” was actually preceded by a period in which she struggled to accept an alternative way of teaching. This confirms 250

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that changing practice is a process of gradual reformulation and elaboration of a teacher’s established knowledge and patterns of practice, a steady expanding of horizons of understanding (as Wallace and Louden, 1992, would have it). As many others have done before us, we have found it useful to consider change as a journey. As Nomzamo found out, the personal resources demanded by this journey are substantial, particularly as the STAP programme was premised on a different set of assumptions (to the other initiatives she had been involved in) about how teaching and learning should be structured. As she sought to bring about changes in her pedagogic practices, Nomzamo had to unlearn some deeply held knowledge and many fond beliefs (such as the value of paraphrasing and the use of an “English only” approach in her teaching), all of which added up to a deeply personal process which was difficult, unpredictable and fraught with insecurities, presenting her at times with a fundamental challenge to her self-image. The extent to which the collaborative partnership between Nomzamo and Jonathan played a crucial role in helping her weather the challenges of change emerged as one of the most significant findings of this study. In retrospect, it may well be that their dialogue was the factor which helped Nomzamo to make sense of how she could incorporate change into her existing framework of beliefs and practices about teaching and learning. Without Jonathan’s presence some changes, such as her resolution of her dilemma of letting go, would not have taken place in the constructive way that they did. Their experiences in this regard mirror those of numerous other collaborative partnerships reported in the literature and underscore just how valuable a context collaboration provides for joining teacher-learning with learning about teaching. In Chapter 7, we went “beyond” STAP to consider what happened to Nomzamo when she turned to teaching the rest of the general science syllabus. Even though she articulated a deep sense of disappointment and resignation at what she believed was her inability to sustain changes in her pedagogy, and quite emphatically stated that she had gone back to her “old style of teaching”; we suggested that one should not underestimate the positive impact which the trialling of the STAP programme had on Nomzamo – not only in terms of shifts or gains in her pedagogy, but more importantly on a personal level, where her sense of self-worth and dignity, and her professional pride and identity, were enhanced by her attempts to bring an innovation like STAP into her classroom. In any event, Nomzamo has indeed incorporated changes into her existing framework of beliefs and practices about teaching and learning – for instance, her more deliberate use of code-switching clearly represented a quite visible shift in practice. That she returned to “paraphrasing the text” (and all that implies) was taken as no more than a reminder of the extent to which situational constraints (i.e., the context) can exert an overriding influence on practice. This led us to consider what we have called the continuing dilemma of continuing change. While accepting that Nomzamo’s attempts to “build herself professionally” require long-term support and encouragement, we suggested that the trialling exercise showed the value of providing a teacher with a “bite-size 251

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chunk of change” – and that this can be done through packages of alternative curriculum materials (such as STAP) which encourage a teacher to tinker with her practice in a substantial but not overwhelming way. Through all this, we concluded that while change is certainly not an event, it is also not a seamless process.

8.2. SOME INSIGHTS AND SOME THOUGHTS ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STUDY

While this study focuses on a single science teacher, working in the narrow confines of a South African township secondary school, we believe it provides insights into the change process that are of value far beyond this context. In closing, then, we wish to share some of these insights, and in particular focus on some of the implications we believe this study holds for teacher development work at times of curriculum innovation and change. 1. Context plays a powerful determining role in shaping a teacher’s pedagogy. In itself, to suggest that teaching (and learning) is context-dependent may seem a rather obvious statement to make; however, when the context is an over-crowded, under-resourced and dysfunctional township school like Yengeni High, the consequences are far-reaching indeed. In this case study, we have seen how a teacher’s practice can be constrained by the circumstances within which she works. As the reader will no doubt agree, the challenges Nomzamo faced on a day-to-day basis from a combination of school-based factors (such as the disrupted, discontinuous nature of schooling), and the demands of having to cope with hundreds of children in large, mixed-ability groupings, seemed at times to be almost overwhelming. The context, one might say, is everything. 2. Deeply ingrained practices of teaching and learning are potential inhibitors of change. Nomzamo, like her colleagues, bears the scars of having worked for years under conditions of “crisis, conflict and constraint”; conditions which we have argued, have had a profound influence on the way many teachers have come to conceptualise and enact their professional roles. The legacy of the “withered notions of legitimate authority, order and accountability” (as Paterson and Fataar, 1998, p. 2, put it) still pervades township schools like Yengeni High, and this case study seems to provide convincing evidence to support the claim that deeply ingrained practices of teaching and learning are (often quite inadvertently) potential inhibitors of change. Just how pervasive such influences can be, is reflected in the students’ struggle to break free from scripts of non-participation and failure; in the prevailing occupational culture of teaching at the school; and in Nomzamo’s own pedagogy. Reflecting further on these matters, this study throws into sharp relief 252

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what is perhaps one of the most tragic (and enduring) legacies of apartheid education – namely, the extent to which a “crisis of low expectations” characterises the way both teachers and students respond to schooling. In raising these concerns, we have sought to show that issues run deep, defy glib analysis and are, once again, inextricably context-bound. The issue of professionalism (and in particular the way teachers interpret a notion of professional task) is a case in point, and is, as we have noted on a number of occasions, something to which we should pay much closer attention. 3. There is a profound disjuncture between the “high” rhetoric of studentcentred learning and the reality of a township classroom. This was demonstrated in a number of different ways during the trialling exercise. For example, the close monitoring of the individual performance of hundreds of children who display such varying degrees of ability and enthusiasm for their schoolwork is clearly an almost impossible task. Furthermore, any shift from existing assessment practices places what become increasingly complex organisational demands on a teacher, which in turn requires an increasingly higher level of skilful practice. In these and other matters, one is drawn to consider the implications of this case study for the present wave of reform initiatives in South Africa – particularly when it comes to the implementation of C2005 at the secondary school level, where the majority of teachers are, like Nomzamo, subject specialists responsible for considerable numbers of students in what are often large, mixed-ability groupings. Indeed, based on the balance of evidence presented here, it seems to confirm that the existing environment in the majority of schools – schools like Yengeni High – directly militates against the successful implementation of an outcomes-based education (OBE) curriculum. This said, we still find ourselves in agreement with Le Grange (1999), who argues that as a curriculum model, OBE is likely to remain with us for a long time to come. Therefore, Nomzamo’s experiences of trying out an innovation that in many ways was far less “radical” than those envisaged by the OBE model, provide what we believe is an important “reality check” which underscores the formidable challenges South Africans face if they wish to develop a language of probability for what can be realistically achieved (and sustained) within existing resource constraints. In this respect, some of the insights gleaned from this case study should be of specific assistance to those involved in teacher development work, in particular those whose concerns are rooted in the realities of practice (rather than with the rhetoric of change). Lest we forget: Nomzamo is a teacher who willingly embraced change; had been intimately involved in all aspects of the development of the curriculum materials she used in her classroom; felt a sense of ownership over them; and was afforded (through Jonathan’s presence) considerable support and encouragement. 253

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What lessons can be drawn then for externally imposed curriculum change, which is expected to succeed with what (at this stage at least) appears to be a fairly limited amount of teacher support and development? 4. Students play a key determining role mediating a teacher’s attempts to bring about innovation and change in the classroom. For us, this is an essential insight which continues to be under-represented in the literature on educational change, no more so than in South Africa, where there is a virtual absence of any reference at all to the role students play at times of innovation and change. We hope that the emphasis afforded to the students in this case study will encourage others to examine more closely the students’ role in the dynamics of change, particularly in the L2 context of township schooling – where, we have sought to argue, there is a complex web of linguistic and sociolinguistic factors at play. Our suggestion that an approach needs to be adopted which acknowledges the essential duality of change (which simultaneously involves both students and their teacher) also has major implications for the way innovation is brought into the classroom. 5. In all this, “change is a process, not an event”. This, too, is perhaps a seemingly obvious statement to make, but one which seems so frequently to be ignored when the political imperatives behind curriculumreform initiatives invariably demand immediate, and measurable, results. This case study confirms that there are no “quick fixes” – whether this concerns change at the level of the individual teacher, the students, the staff, or indeed the school as a whole. In this respect, Nomzamo’s experiences of grappling with change serve to remind us that we should not underestimate how difficult it is for any teacher to learn new skills and behaviour (and unlearn old ones); and that the personal costs of leaving the well-worn path of familiar practice are high and the results often uncertain. Particularly in a setting where the “power of context” has the capacity to stymie any teacher’s attempts to change her practice (irrespective of however willing or able she might be), change is no seamless process. Reflecting further on these matters, Huberman’s (1992) “craft” model for teacher development proves most appealing. For as he suggests, perhaps the best scenario for expanding and improving teachers’ instructional repertoires is to encourage and support them in their “tinkering” in the classroom. Being able to try out the STAP programme in four classes was a distinct advantage, because it provided an opportunity for Nomzamo to “practice” in ways which allowed her to gradually contrive a new pedagogy (as was evidenced in the narrative account of her “dilemma of letting go”.) Again, all of this has some quite profound implications for the ways in which a new curriculum is introduced – as with the implementation of C2005 in South Africa, which requires of a teacher significant (i.e., macro-) changes to both her 254

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pedagogy and classroom practices. Particularly as it seems almost axiomatic that the further removed from a teacher’s experience are the assumptions underpinning the intended change in practice, the more support the teacher will require – a conundrum indeed. If nothing else, as we have suggested already, a more lateral approach to INSET needs to be adopted, one which extends beyond “traditional” (i.e. existing) content and methodological concerns, to help develop (in a sensitive and non-judgemental way) what we have called a teacher’s deeper, contextual understanding of the subject. Furthermore, as we have had reason to consider from our story, because the relationship between teachers’ conceptions and their actions is neither direct nor simple, INSET delivery has to be extended into the classroom – which by necessity implies a degree of “chalkface-based” support and guidance. This implies that in order to bring about meaningful change requires an approach that is premised on long-term support and involvement. 6. The value of collaboration cannot be underestimated. Nomzamo and Jonathan’s collaboration further illustrates the immense potential which such partnerships have for joining teacher learning with learning about teaching. In particular, the emancipatory potential which such collaborative work holds for the teacher cannot be underestimated, for we believe that there is little doubt that their “reflective conversations” created valuable opportunities for Nomzamo to step back from her everyday teaching, to reflect on her practice and contemplate change. However, given the resource constraints under which many teachers function in South Africa, such a dialogue is hardly a model for broader teacher development. Fortunately, within Nomzamo’s own story (in her continued seeking out of opportunities to work with others), there is evidence of the immense value which can accrue from a teacher’s ongoing participation in a broader “community of practice”. And while within-school collaboration will often be quite limited in a subject like science because of the small number of subject specialists working together, we believe that there is great potential in establishing between-school “communities of practice”. Such “teacher-driven” groups would provide a site around which, amongst other things, INSET work can be structured. 7. Suitable curriculum materials are an important agent of change. Materials have an important role to play as an agent of change. Yet as we have seen in this case study, in isolation they are not enough. To add to our previous point, the support and encouragement which Jonathan was able to offer Nomzamo clearly played an absolutely vital role in helping her make sense of how she could use the STAP programme in her classroom. Even though she had been so closely involved in developing the programme, her struggle to implement it surely 255

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provides a caution against believing that materials per se should be able to bring about significant shifts in teachers’ pedagogy. Nevertheless, the extent to which Nomzamo came to rely so heavily on material – the reader will recall how she blamed a lack of suitable STAP-like resources on her return to her “old ways of teaching” – highlights just how important an all-inclusive package of ready-to-use material can be. In these matters, we would also suggest that this case study should be read as a cautionary tale by those who advocate a model of curriculum development in which all teachers are regarded as being “curriculum and materials developers” – something which is certainly part of the current rhetoric of OBE in South Africa and which needs to be quite firmly challenged. Here is an instance of someone who has participated in a process which has sought to empower her with precisely these skills, yet who, for a variety of reasons (justified mainly in terms of the conditions of constraint under which she functions), is not in a position to use them to develop her own materials. For all that, we remain of the opinion that packages of curriculum material (such as those produced by STAP), which draw extensively on knowing, and indepth understanding of, classroom experiences of practicing teachers, and whose ongoing development is rooted in classroom-based trialling exercises such as that undertaken by Nomzamo, can be employed as a compelling empowerment for teachers to not only rethink their practice, but critically, to also rework their practice.

8.3. IN CLOSING

We have all moved on, yet the memories of Nomzamo and the Grade 9’s remain. Many are recalled with pleasure: the relaxed buzz of engagement as students work happily together in their groups; a warm sunny afternoon with the 9E’s, the class bent over their books reading in untroubled silence; an eager class at the beginning of a lesson, sitting expectantly with their STAP booklets open in their hands; and the lively, chaotic class discussions about “lightning” – fifty-odd students, on the edge of their seats, alive to a lesson. Other memories are of course less pleasant: the 9F’s in their prefab classroom after rain; a student’s torn and threadbare jersey, a reminder of the poverty and squalor of the township; the students on their “bad days” slumped in distracted and impenetrable silence, the “curtain walls” drawn heavily between themselves and their teacher; and the sense of helplessness that descends when Nomzamo strains to hold a class together as another current of non-teaching sweeps through the school. Yet in all of this, the most powerful image of all is that of a striving, purposeful teacher, undaunted by the conditions within which she works, struggling against the odds to bring change into her classroom. It is this story that we have sought to celebrate in the pages of this book.

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For a “taste” of the complexity of events that underpin the dysfunctionality at township schools even today, this Appendix documents events over a six month period in 1988 at a typical township school at the height of the struggle against Apartheid. Tensions Build Up JANUARY– APRIL Sporadic incidents of unrest/class boycotts and stay-aways. A three-day stay-away of teachers in protest at the dismissal and suspension of local teachers. APRIL 28

Meeting of SRC representatives and teacher-liaison committee. Specific demands: Call for release of detained student; stop corporal punishment; no police on school grounds; no locking of school gates. General demands: reinstatement of suspended teachers; accommodation of students from beginning of year.

MAY 5

Further meeting of SRC representatives and teacher-liaison committee. Previous demands reiterated. Teachers called on to send representatives to join PTSA meeting to be held on 6 May in Guguletu. Staff meeting report back. Principal rules no teacher to have any involvement in PTSA or to be involved in any meetings aimed at confrontation with DET.

MAY 10

Third meeting of SRC representatives and teacher-liaison committee. Students informed of principal’s rulings. Students repeat demand for release of detained student prior to June exams. Four students held in security police raid of Injongo Action Committee meeting. Pamphlets calling on students to support Injongo Primary school distributed at school.

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Confrontation and Conflict MAY 11

Students called out of class by SRC representatives to attend massmeeting protesting detention of students. SRC sends delegation to principal calling on him to help secure release of detained students. Students leave school after meeting. Rumours spread of three-day class boycott to run from Monday 16 to Wednesday 18 May (students to come to school but to refuse to go to class).

MAY 16

Although students were informed at assembly that four detained students were released on previous Friday (13 May), many still refuse to attend classes. Confusion sets in as some students decide that they will attend classes, and after a few hours, everybody goes home.

MAY 17

Students addressed at assembly by senior school inspector. Asked to voice grievances and then to return to classes in an orderly manner. Call ignored by most students present who gather to discuss events. One matric class request their teachers to carry on with normal teaching. Confrontation develops between this class and a large group of students who disrupt their lesson, forcing them to leave their classroom. Meeting between Matrics and SRC representatives held. Matrics, in the face of considerable intimidation, refuse to heed SRC call for class boycott and to join the rest of the student body in unified action. Majority of students leave school premises. Parents informed by circular that June exams will start on May 23. News reaches staff of redetention of SRC chairperson by security police early that morning.

MAY 18–19 Students come to school without books. Refuse to attend classes. Students gather to hold mass meeting and leave school early. Police presence outside school. MAY 20

Same as previous two days. School “officially” closes early to prepare for exams which are due to start on the following Monday. SRC reiterate demand for release of detained student leader before June exams will go ahead. Police presence continues outside school.

MAY 23

Exams start. Some students go to exam venues. After the handing out of exam scripts, SRC representatives call students out of classrooms. Mass meeting once again held in school grounds. Students told by principal to either write exams or leave school. Police enter school premises and disperse students with tear gas and baton charge.

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MAY 24

Students informed at assembly that exams will not continue and normal classes will resume. Students continue to refuse to attend classes. Once again ordered home, and once again police disperse students.

MAY 25

Many students come to school without books. Meeting called by SRC representatives. Students dispersed by police. Matric students attend classes. SRC representatives address staff meeting over present crisis in school. Call for students and teachers to work together. Teachers accused of collaborating with the principal.

MAY 26

Students come to school, this time they have brought their books with them. They are called out of class to discuss meeting held with teachers on previous day. Dispersed by police. Matric classes begin writing exams in afternoon.

MAY 27

Fewer students attend school. Those with books begin to attend classes, those without books gather in empty classrooms. No police presence for the first time in eight days. Matric classes begin writing exam. Group of students gather and attempt to disrupt exam, bricks thrown through classroom windows. Fighting breaks out amongst students. Police arrive and disperse those students without books.

MAY 29

A meeting is called between parents and teachers, attended by approximately 150 parents. Results in call for students to return peacefully to school and to begin attending classes in a normal manner. Decision taken to have a second attempt at writing June exams.

JUNE 1

Students come to school with books, attend classes and no meetings are held. Police presence remains outside school.

JUNE 2

Decision to begin exams on following day communicated to students. Normal classes continue.

JUNE 3–10 June exams written by majority (but not all) students. JUNE 10

SRC chairperson released from detention. School closes for winter vacation.

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