Background information about the two clusters, how they are structured and how they operate was included in order to provide more information about what clusters are (see appendix I). Secada and Adajian (1997, p. 193) (as cited in Jita and Ndlalane, 2009, p.
59) defined clusters as a ―form of professional community that provides a context within which members can come together and understand their practices. A cluster consists of teachers who all teach the same subject. These teachers get together at specific times of the year and they do a number of activities that have been specified to them by the subject advisor. A subject advisor is a subject specialist, who has acquired depth knowledge of the content and pedagogy of the subject. The subject advisor is expected to monitor and
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support the effective implementation of the curriculum and improve learner performance.
Responsibilities of subject advisors include: providing and sourcing relevant teaching and learning material, supporting teachers in effectively implementing the curriculum in the classrooms, strengthening teachers content knowledge, support teachers in organizing relevant co-curricular activities and moderating school based assessment including Annual National Assessment (Department of Basic Education, Guidelines on the Organisation, Roles and Responsibilities of Education Districts, 2011).
I studied two clusters from uMgungundlovu District, which has four circuits, which are in turn divided into wards. Each ward is led by a Superintendent Education Manager (SEM).
The SEM deals directly with school related matters and the school principal‘s report directly to the SEM. When the subject advisors are allocating schools into cluster groups, the ideal situation is that the schools are grouped according to the wards that they belong to. However, this is not always feasible because a school may belong to a certain ward, but be far apart from other schools within the same ward. To make this more practical, the subject advisor then groups schools according to their geographical location and not necessarily into their wards. A cluster group can therefore consist of schools from ward A and ward B.
According to the subject advisor of EFAL UMgungundlovu district, it is not compulsory for every 1FET (Further Education and Training) teacher to attend cluster meetings, but it is compulsory for every school to be represented in a cluster group. A school can have only one teacher attending the cluster meetings to represent the school and to ensure that their learners work can be moderate and be in line with the rest of the schools in the district. The schools will remain in their allocated cluster groups, regardless of which teacher is representing the school. One will stay in their cluster group unless the subject
1Further Education and Training (FET) - refers to grades ten to grade twelve in high school.
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advisor restructures the cluster groups or if a particular school has asked to be allocated to another group due to certain reasons.
The two clusters I studied consists of teachers from ten different schools, the schools belong to different wards but they are grouped together because of their geographical location as well as the number of schools that teach 2English First Additional Language (EFAL) in the same geographical area. It is not always easy to say how many teachers will belong to the same cluster group because the clusters consists of a different number schools and each school has a different number of teachers who teach English First Additional Language per grade and per phase. I referred to the two clusters as cluster A and cluster B. Cluster A has only four teachers, while cluster B ranges between twelve and fifteen teachers.
4.2.2 Cluster A
This cluster group consisted of four members who came from four different schools (see Appendix I). Three of these schools were situated in the city of Pietermaritzburg and one was situated in 3Sinentsika Township less than ten kilometres away from the Central Business District (CBD). This township school consisted of learners who mostly come from middle to low income families. Sinentsika High School was an under resourced school, that did not even have a playground where learners can sit during break. Another school in this cluster was an ex Model- C school, 4Constantia High School. The majority of teachers and learners were still white and Afrikaans speaking. It was a well-resourced
2English First Additional Language is the language learnt in addition to the learner’s home language. Also known as EFAL
3Sinentsika Township: A pseudonym used for the name of a place.
4Constantia High School: A pseudonym used for the name of a school.
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school, with a hall, play grounds, school bus, sports equipment, swimming pool, to mention a few. The third school was Vunimfundo, a privately owned high school. It was situated a few metres from Pietermaritzburg CBD. This school was populated by learners who came from different backgrounds; it also operated as a finishing school whereby learners who have failed grade twelve or those who want to improve their subjects can attend. There were no play grounds in this school, it had no space, and even the staffroom was a small room where teachers have little space to do anything. The last school is also a private school5Nozizwe High School. It is situated in the CBD. It is also privately owned.
Like Vunimfundo High School, it also consisted of learners who were repeating grade twelve, and learners who were in grade eight up to grade twelve. It also did not have enough space around it. There were no playground for the learners to sit during breaks, no sport equipment, and no swimming pool, to mention a few. The teaching experience of the teachers in this cluster ranges between four to thirty two years. All of the teachers had acquired degrees, and one of them did not have teachers‘ qualifications. Three of the teachers were post level one teachers, one was a former school principal who had retired but went back to teach at the private school, the fourth teacher was a Head of Department, and was employed by the school governing body (SGB). The teachers in this cluster only had one teacher per school attending the cluster meetings. The cluster meetings were held at one of the schools in town, but this was not a permanent setting, the venue was agreed upon based on its accessibility for all teachers in the group.
5Nozizwe High School: A pseudonym given for the name of a school.
86 4.2.3 Cluster B
This cluster group consisted of about fifteen members, (see Appendix I). I only managed to interview ten teachers in this cluster. Two of the teachers were not comfortable with being participants of the study, while the other three teachers were occupied with other activities and could not be available for the interviews. These teachers came from ten different schools, one of these schools was in an area called
6Sunshine and the rest of the schools were situated in 7Siyavuya Township and its surrounding residential areas. Some of these schools have been around since the seventies and the eighties and have played a significant role in the education of some of the people in high governmental positions in our province today. Teachers in these schools were faced with a lot of challenges such as overcrowded classes, lack of resources, substance abuse, poverty, teenage pregnancy and a very evident impact of HIV/AIDS in their learners‘ lives. These schools were under resourced as a result of the inequities of the previous government system.
In this cluster group, all the grade ten to twelve teachers were members of the cluster group. The teachers did not all attend the meetings at once, sometimes only teachers in grade ten attended, sometimes only grade eleven and twelve attended the meeting.
However it was mostly grade twelve teachers whose attendance in clusters was always imperative as they were working towards submitting learners‘ marks which will go towards their continuous assessment which are used in conjunction with their final exams at the end of the year.
6Sunshine: A pseudonym used for the name of the place.
7Siyavuya Township: A pseudonym used for the name of the place.
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The cluster meetings were held at any of the chosen schools in 8Siyavuya Township.
This was not a permanent setting, but the venue was agreed upon based on its accessibility for all teachers in the group. The teaching experience of the teachers I interviewed in this cluster ranges between eight to thirty one years. Three of the teachers had a Diploma in Education, one had a certificate and six of them had bachelors‘ degrees. All of the teachers I interviewed were 9post level one educators.
Nine of the teachers interviewed in this study came from five different schools situated in Siyavuya Township and one came from a school in Sunshine. The schools in Siyavuya Township were mainly situated in the same neighbourhood. The schools were all situated not more than five kilometres from each other. They were all experiencing the same challenges and were catering for learners from the same neighbourhood. However, the teacher from Sunshine was experiencing a slightly different background. Sunshine is a semi-rural area about 20 kilometres South of Pietermaritzburg. Unlike the schools in Siyavuya Township, Sunshine had been infested with gang rivalry and this had been affecting the learners at school as some of them had been stabbed and killed (News 24, 24/10/2012) and DoE (2013).
In the section below, I presented data collected from interviews, observations of the cluster meetings and document analysis, in answering the three research questions of the study. The information below is presented according to each research question
8Siyavuya Township: A pseudonym for the name of the place.
9Post level one teachers are entry level teachers, teachers who are not in management.
88 Key Research Question 1
4.3 What activities do English First Additional Language teachers participate in in