fUNDED BY THE BRITISH ACADEMY; NEWTON FELLOWSHIP
Overview of study
Twenty-one years into democracy in South Africa, access to quality education still eludes those who cannot afford to pay for it. The socio-economic adversities facing communities in which schools are situated play a large role in their dysfunction. Yet, within such communities there is a wealth of human resources that can add real value to the quality of teaching and learning. This project developed community members as teaching assistants to work hand in hand with teachers to develop a culturally and contextually relevant programme to empower parents/guardians to partner with the school in the education of their children. An action research approach ensured the participation of all stakeholders in the design, implementation and evaluation of the programme. The development of such a programme helped to improve parental involvement, as well as equip unemployed community members with skills that improved their chance of formal employment and enhanced personal development.
Main aims of study and attainment thereof
This was an action research project, therefore the main aims were on 3 levels:
i) To contribute to knowledge about parental involvement in schools through the development of a locally relevant training programme (theoretical level). The programme was developed from September 2015 to March 2017 through a series of workshops run by the project leader on a bi-monthly baasis, with the co-applicant co-facilitating on two occasions. In between, the local participants met on a weekly basis to design the content of the programme. This process has been researched and four articles have been written (see Appendix 1), two already published and two in process. On a local level the participants are sharing their knowledge via the parental programme (ongoing) and various community dissemination events.
ii) To equip participants with specific skills and knowledge to improve their practice as teaching assistants and long-term facilitators of the programme (practical level).We did this through our workshops with the participants to help them design research strategies to inform their design of the parenting manual and programme; the co-applicant workshopped them on mathematical literacy; we brought in local experts to workshop them on computer skills, facilitation skills and literacy training, as well as a psychologist who worked with them on personal development and helped them to design a similar section for the manual.
iii) To change mind-sets of the community, school and university about the need to harness the wealth of knowledge available in the community to improve the quality of education (emancipatory level). This included freeing thinking from the mental shackles imposed by years of colonialised education and apartheid development: the research findings (see Appendix 1) indicate a tremendous amount of personal growth among the participants, and also the parents to whom they presented the programme; the teachers have also learnt much about the value of using a teaching assistant in the classroom; the participants have reported learning many skills that have helped them to improve as teaching assistants and facilitators of this programme and that have opened up doors for other employment opportunities (e.g. one is now employed by a project at NMU; another one is working in an office). In order to recognise the learning of the participants, they simultaneously followed pathways of learning and development which were then certified by the Global University of Lifelong Learning (see Appendix 2 and http://www.gullonline.org/case-studies/community/south-africa/index.html ; http://www.gullonline.org/news/2016/83-end-year-highlights/index.html ). In 2017 the community participants graduated in a public ceremony in the community which also doubled as a community dissemination event.
As university researchers, we have gained much knowledge about the process of community engagement and parental involvement in education that we are busy disseminating via scholarly articles. We are happy that we have met the original aims of the project, and perhaps surpassed them. The major benefits have been the growth in the participants and their ability to engage parents in the education of their children. The school has benefited from the development of their volunteers and the acquisition of various assets which the project allowed.
There has thus been demonstrable mutual benefit to the external non-academic constituency (community) and the academic enterprise. This is a unique project which has not been done at any other school before and thus the findings are ground-breaking. The normal problems of working in a pressurised and time-constrained context of a school were overcome by good communication between academic and community members and the development of creative problem-solving.
There is also tangible evidence of shared planning and decision-making practices. This project has helped develop my capacity, as the project leader, in terms of gaining expertise in managing a research project which is situated some 1200km from the university in which I work. I have had to hone my communication skills to be able to operate at the level of the project managing team. I have also had to learn to exercise patience and trust – I could have solved many of the issues myself by intervening, but by remaining true to the intent to make this a participatory project, in the end the participants learnt so much more (as documented in Article 3 in particular). Article 1 provides evidence of how we ensured the power relations were levelled in the project to allow for maximum participation by community members. Even the budget was discussed in a democratic way, and the project team at the school determined how they would best spend the money and what expertise they needed to buy in to develop skills. Two community participants were tasked with setting up and managing the budget, which was a huge learning curve for them since it is not easy to meet the stringent requirements of the university! They worked together with the Faculty of Education finance officer. The school was able to purchase stationery, paper and equipment which will enable them to keep the programme going after the funding ended.
