THE EMERGENCE OF TEACHER IDENTITIES: DEFINING A PROJECT
5.2 INTRODUCING THE FOUR TEACHERS
Four teachers participated in my study: Nokhaya, Veliswa, Beauty and Nomsa. Nokhaya and Veliswa, the two oldest participants, were teaching Grade 3 at Sontonga Primary School while Beauty and Nomsa were teaching Grade 3 at Phambili Public School. Both schools are situated in Lwandle Township33 and represent two o f the three primary schools in the township. Tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 provide general information relating to each o f the four teachers.
Table 5.1: General information on the four teachers
Schools Names Age
(in 2012)
Gender Home Language
Sontonga Public School
Nokhaya 55 years Female isiXhosa
Veliswa 52 years Female isiXhosa
Phambili Public School
Beauty 50 years Female isiXhosa
Nomsa 39 years Female isiXhosa
Nokhaya was the oldest at 55 years o f age, followed by Veliswa who was 52 and Beauty who was 50. Nomsa, the youngest o f the four teachers, was 39 years old when I met her in 2012. In some respects these four teachers are representative, in age, o f the South African teaching population. While the average age o f the labour force in South Africa is decreasing, the average age o f teachers has been increasing (Crouch, 2003) with the majority o f teachers are between the ages o f 40-49 (CDE, 2015). Furthermore, the feminised nature o f the profession, particularly in the FP, is a stark reality in South Africa, with about 20% more women than men employed in the sector in general (Crouch, 2003). In the late 1980s when Veliswa started teaching, 75% o f primary school teachers were female (Kotecha, 1994). It is thus not surprising that all four teachers are women. isiXhosa is the first language o f all four o f the teachers and the language in which they teach.
33 I provide a sense of the context of Lwandle Township in Chapter Six when I explore the structural emergent properties (SEP) conditioning the manner in which teachers express their roles as teachers (i.e. their teacher identities).
Table 5.2 refers to the teachers’ qualifications. While Nokhaya completed a two year Primary Teachers’ Certificate (PTC)34 in 1978, she upgraded35 her qualification to a four year Bachelor o f Education (BEd) at the University o f Fort Hare from 2000 to 2003. Veliswa’s initial teacher’s qualification was a Junior Primary Teachers’ Diploma (JPTD) which she did at Cape College. She upgraded her qualification to an Advanced Certificate in Education (Foundation and Intermediate Phase) (ACE) in 2008 and 2009, which according to the National Qualifications Framework was on the same level as the BEd. Nom sa’s highest qualification is the same as Veliswa’s. She also completed an ACE in 2009, but hers focused on the FP. Her initial qualification was a National Professional Diploma in Education (NPDE) which she obtained at Algoa College in 1999. Beauty’s initial qualification was a Junior Primary Teachers’ Diploma (JPTD) which, like Veliswa, she completed at Cape College in 1992. Later she upgraded her qualification with a Further Diploma in Education (FDE) in Leadership and Management, which was equivalent in level to the ACE that Veliswa and Nomsa completed.
Table 5.2: Qualifications o f the teachers Schools Names Highest professional
qualification
Phase specialisations in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Sontonga
Public School
Nokhaya Bachelor of Education Primary36 Veliswa Advanced Certificate in
Education (Foundation &
Intermediate Phase)
Junior Primary
Phambili Public School
Beauty Further Diploma in Education Junior Primary Nomsa Advanced Certificate in
Education (FP)
Foundation Phase
Table 5.3 highlights the number o f years the four teachers have been teaching. In this table, the number o f years is disaggregated according to years o f teaching experience, years o f teaching in the FP and years o f teaching in Grade 3. It is not uncommon in South Africa, particularly in
34 The nomenclature of teaching qualifications, and expectations in terms of length of study in South Africa changed during the time that the four teachers’ participating in my research studied. Nokhaya did a PTC, a two year qualification that prepared prospective teachers to teach in the entire primary school. Veliswa and Beauty both did the Junior Primary Teachers’ Diploma, a three year qualification that equipped prospective teachers to teach Junior Primary (Grades 1-3). Nomsa did a National Teachers’ Diploma in Education, which was also a three year qualification equivalent to the qualification of Veliswa and Beauty. All teachers, post 1994, were required to upgrade their qualifications.
35 Post 1994, teachers who did not have a four year qualification were expected to ‘upgrade’ their qualifications.
36 The nomenclature used to describe the different phases of primary education has also changed. Pre-1994, Substandard A-Standard 1 (Grade 1-3) were referred to as Junior Primary and Standard 2-5 (Grade 4-7) were Senior Primary. Post-1994, Grade R-3 are regarded as Foundation Phase, Grade 4-6 are the Intermediate Phase, and Grade 7, which is the last year of primary school in South Africa, is the first year of the Senior Phase (Grade 7-9).
black schools37 38, for teachers to teach in a phase that is different from that which they trained to teach in (Centre for Development and Enterprise, 2015). It should be noted that all the children in the schools where these teachers’ teach are black.
Table 5.3: Number o f years o f teaching experience38 (Teacher Questionnaires, 2012)
Schools Names Years of
teaching experience
Years of teaching experience in FP
Years of experience teaching grade 3
Sontonga Public School
Nokhaya + 25 years 0 - 5 years 0 - 5 years Veliswa + 25 years 21 - 25 years 0 - 5 years Phambili
Public School
Beauty 16 - 20 years 16 - 20 years39 11 - 15 years Nomsa 10 - 15 years 6 - 10 years 0 - 5 years
Both Nokhaya and Veliswa had over 25 years o f teaching experience. While most o f these years for Veliswa were in the FP, Nokhaya moved to the FP more recently. At the time I met Nokhaya she had been in the FP for 18 months. Both Nokhaya and Veliswa had relatively little experience teaching Grade 3 learners. Nomsa, like Nokhaya and Veliswa, also had less than 5 years’ experience teaching Grade 3, but she, compared with the other three teachers, was still relatively young, having taught for 12 years. Beauty had taught for 19 years when I met her;
all o f those years in the same school. All the teachers had taught in phases that differed to the ones they were trained for, except for Nokhaya, whose initial qualification focused on teaching the entire primary school (i.e. both Foundation and Intermediate Phase).
Having provided a quick introduction to the four teachers I now draw on the empirical data from the life history interviews, to examine how these four research participants made teaching their ultimate concern. In other words, I examine the decision-making process to making teaching their career choice.
37 Despite the numerous changes in education since 1994, the majority of schools in South Africa are still not racially integrated.
38 This was drawn on questionnaire data from the EU: SFTE project which asked teachers to ‘tick’ a band of years of experience rather than to say the exact number of years that each teacher has taught in Grade 3.