DEDICATION
6.2 EXTENDED DISCUSSION OF BROAD THEME ONE
The parents’ rhetoric directly linked with teaching and learning centred around some central signifiers, namely: monitoring and evaluation, difficult work, stressful work, laziness and unprofessionalism. These central signifiers can be regarded as the pillars from which different interpretations or meanings can be made (Rear, 2013). It is these meanings (how the concepts are understood by the participants) that give life to the signifiers. The central signifiers, also known as ‘nodal points’ do not hold any rich meaning, but as suggested by Žižek, they have the potential to attract and unify other surrounding signs in any field (Žižek, 1989) through articulation. In essence, without the meanings that parent participants attach to the concepts, the concepts remain meaningless.
When teachers’ work is being monitored and evaluated, it suggests that teachers are being subjected to some form of accountability to and by various stakeholders such as the learners, parents and more specifically the Department of Education. For parents in this study, it appeared that they largely associated monitoring and evaluation with the
Department of Education or the Government (as parents tended to use the two interchangeably) because of it being the employer or the main stakeholder in education (ZP 10/23, BP28). For that reason, some participants felt that the Department of Education has the power and authority to make teachers accountable for their actions in relation to their work (ZP10). In other words, the monitoring of teachers was about ensuring that they are keeping to the rules or expected standards (Wu, 2004). The
‘standards agenda’ supposes a rather hierarchical implementation of, not only subject policies, but national educational policies in general (Hargreaves, 2000; Tuinamuana, 2011). In such instances, teachers merely respond to a regulatory structure or body which is externally positioned to control teachers’ work (George, 2009). For this reason, some teachers are resistant to what seems as forced implementation of policies which puts their work, not only under persistent surveillance, but also makes “greater demands” (Morrow, 2007, p. 11). At the same time, Zenith feels that some teachers are partly to blame for failures of new programmes because they often resist the innovations (ZP23). However, it is not clear whether she was referring to a collective or individual resistance. Whereas a resistance that is collective in nature may occur at a national, provincial, district or even school level depending on the source of the resistance; the individual resistance usually occurs at a classroom level (George, 2009).
Both teacher and parent participants talked about the need to monitor, and to a lesser extent, to evaluate teachers’ work. However, they differed in their reasoning of what constitutes these processes (monitoring and evaluation). On the one hand, parents understood monitoring and evaluation to be the processes that are mostly conducted by structures which are external and independent of teachers or school managers (BP28, ZP10/23) with the purpose of upholding the quality of teaching and professional standards (Ingvarson, 2010). On the other hand, teachers understood monitoring to be both an internal and external process which enforces accountability on their part (Weber, 2005).
The parents’ rhetoric ignored the explicit role that teachers play in monitoring their own work (self-monitoring). It was not surprising because parents’ understanding of teachers’
work seemed to be largely based on hearsay (usually from their children and the media sources), what Amin (2008) refers to as ‘unsolicited knowing’, which is often based on inadequate information. Chains of difference were clearly at play.
Because of the seemingly increased accountability required from teachers, their work was seen by some parent participants as, not only difficult, but also stressful. The difficult nature of teachers’ work mostly emanated from issues that were not even academic, but which were social; for example, learners who were disrespectful (ZP7, BP10), or had psychosocial issues, e.g. drug users (BP10), all of whom were placed under the care of teachers. When learners misbehaved in class, they made it difficult for teachers to provide enabling environment for teaching and learning (Simuforosa & Ngara, 2014). In addition, other issues of ill-discipline (such as drug use) emanated from the community/ies that learners came from and were likely to infiltrate the school premises (Lochan, 2010) and contribute negatively to teachers’ work. Learners who use drugs tend to be disruptive and aggressive to both learners and teachers. With such learners, teachers’ work may become extremely difficult (Surty, 2011) because teachers may be unable to ensure a safe teaching and learning environment for learners and for themselves. Therefore, it is not surprising that the issue of ill-discipline was enumerated by the parent participants as one of the factors that created difficult conditions for teachers to work in.
Perhaps the fact that high school learners are usually in their teen years (+/- 13 to 18-year- olds) or a little beyond (20-year-olds or even above), is indicative of the inherent struggles that learners may have in these critical stages of their lives (Fleming, 2004). Learners or the youth at these stages are known to be at a dilemma of trying to understand and identify themselves in relation to the world. The dilemma is often exacerbated by the parents and teachers who seem to have their own struggles in understanding the learners’ shifting identities as they become adults. This lack of understanding can often lead to teachers being stressed.
Parents in this study understand the stressful nature of teachers’ work to often result from the factors that are out of the teacher/s’ control; for example, overcrowding (ZP21, BP26) and non-involvement of parents in their children’s education (SP5). Their concern for teacher-learner ratio emanated from the idea that it becomes stressful and impossible for teachers to control learners in overcrowded classrooms as also indicated by Mokhele (2006). Barbara assumes that when teachers teach in overcrowded classes, the repercussions are often, not only frustrating for teachers (BP26); who often cannot attend to diverse learners’ needs, but also detrimental for the learners when for example, teachers are unable to give meaningful feedback on learners’ work timeously (Mestry & Khumalo,
2012). These participants observed that not receiving the right kind of assistance or guidance (from teachers) may be due to the lack of appropriate infrastructure (Oghuvbu, 2007), like the situation occasioned by overcrowded classrooms. This lack of infrastructure, coupled with other factors, impede on academic advancement of learners (ZP21). Sharon seemed to indicate that some parents add to the stressful work of teachers by not being actively involved in the learning of their children (SP5). Seemingly, Sharon’s articulation does not refer to the surveillance kind of parental involvement (which is known to have rather detrimental effects), but to the supportive kind of parent involvement (Arnold, 2011), which is likely to yield positive academic achievement.
The persistent stressful nature of teachers’ work leads teachers to find various ways to lessen the burdensome work. Parents usually get to know from their children that some teachers tend to absent themselves from classroom during teaching and learning time (SP27, BP19). It was observed that others lacked commitment to do their work (ZP2, BP12). Most of the information that parents get to know about teachers is the information volunteered by their children about teachers. Although parents recognised the difficult and stressful nature of teachers’ work, they nevertheless still expected teachers to perform at their best when interacting with learners in class. However, various factors were seen to contribute to teacher absenteeism (which is seen to be often linked to laziness by the parents), such as stress and burnout (Fisher, 2011), high teacher-learner ratios (Rockoff, Jacob, Kane & Staiger, 2011) or lack of professional competence (Musyoki, 2015). These factors, most likely, emanated from personal, structural (school) or environmental (community) issues which impacted on teachers’ work and their performance. But, because parents are not at school, they get informed about what happens in school by their children; either voluntarily or when asked specific questions about their schooling. Often, this information is hardly verified for its truth or untruth, but is usually taken at face value as the truth about teachers.
Amongst other things, the laziness of teachers that the parents referred to also contributed to the unprofessional behaviours displayed by some teachers (SP18/20). Perhaps the parents’ rhetoric on teacher professionalism which was largely negative, was based on their experiences (with teachers) which may not have been good (SP18). However, not all teachers were unprofessional in their work, some teachers are good at what they do
and they are dedicated to their work, as suggested by the teacher participants (see the sub- theme on the rhetoric of dedication / caring – see pages 102-104).
Overall, whilst the parents’ rhetoric acknowledged the demanding work that teachers engage in, it also equally highlighted the unhappiness or negativity that parents level on some teachers’ behaviour and work ethic. In some instances, the parents were not able to distinguish between the Department of Education and the government, they conflated them all together as failing to monitor teachers. This conflation of the Department of Education (which is only a subset of the government) and the Government which is the State is not surprising because the department is located in Government. The Government was macro, the Department of Education was meso and the school monitoring, micro.
The fact that these three levels were all conflated together was not surprising because the parents’ rhetoric ignored the role of the school management (which is an immediate structure within the school) in the monitoring of teachers’ work.
There is a lot of criticism about the lack of professionalism. It is manifest in teachers who have intimate relationships with learners or teachers who engage in unbecoming behaviour in front of, or together with learners. These are some of the aspects that were seen by the parent participants as problematic and often led to issues of ill-discipline where teachers seem to have lost control and are unable to manage the learners’ behaviour in class. It was almost as if parents only saw teachers as teachers, while teachers saw themselves as professionals who also had a private life. What teachers do not realise is the right space in which they can express these things. Such things (intimate relationships) cannot be expressed in the same space where teachers do their work, it should be outside of the work space. So, often those teachers who engage in these acts are not differentiating the space which dictates which identity comes out, whether it is the professional or the social. But parents seem to be able to see it clearly that this space (the school) is only for the professional. Theme two is discussed below.
6.3 THE RHETORIC OF GOODNESS, PASSION AND EXPERTISE AS