School effectiveness in South Africa

This paper draws on research conducted with schools located within the Johannesburg area of the Gauteng province in South Africa. The findings of two research projects are analyzed in relation to discourses of school effectiveness. The first project was the School Effectiveness in South Africa project (SESA) initiated by Advancing Basic Education and Literacy and some members of the Education Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in 1992. The second project upon which this paper draws is one that was initiated by the Gauteng education Minister, Mrs. Mary Metcalfe,via the establishmentof a Committee for the Culture of Learning and Teaching in 1995. Despite the many differences that characterized these two projects, they both point importantly to ways in which black schooling in South Africa is occurring. They provide empirical evidence of the kinds of forces with which schools contend daily, the nature of actors involved within them, and the differences and similarities among them. We do not, however, claim that the cases we cite are generalizable to all South African schools. We do maintain, however, that the experiences documented in this paper offer us valuable insightsinto the micro-level realities of schools that are consciously and continuously working towards improvements in their educational practices

Economic growth · Literacy · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Collaborative Teaching and Inclusion · Education Systems and Policy · Gender Studies · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

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