DEDICATION
4.2 Part Two: Research Methodology and Data Generation
4.2.3 The Participants
Presentation of the participants starts off with teachers, followed by parents.
4.2.3.1 Background of Participants
This section presents short, abbreviated biographies of participants as per their own descriptions during the one-on-one interviews, and the information they provided after they had engaged in focus groups as a reflection on their participation in the research process. These biographies are presented as mere descriptions with no intention to analyse the data. The purpose of these biographies is to introduce the participants as persons (human) and not just objects that were studied; thereby allowing the reader to make connections with the different participants’ articulations presented as data excerpts in the analysis chapters. For ethical reasons, participants were given pseudonyms in order to protect them from being easily identified. Careful consideration was taken in choosing pseudonyms that were culturally unidentifiable. The five teacher participants’
pseudonyms (in no particular order) are Faith, Noah, Kadesh, Mercy and Grace.
Faith: Faith identified herself as a female high school teacher between 40-50 years of age. As a matriculant, she was not sure what she wanted to study at tertiary level as a career. She therefore, she took a gap year7 after her matriculation. She claimed that she did not choose teaching as a career but instead teaching chose her, because in the year following her gap year, she was taken by her mum (who was also a teacher) to one of the teachers’ colleges and that is how she got into studying to become a teacher. Because teaching was not her choice, she did not have any expectations when she started her college studies. She completed her three-year course in teacher training with a Secondary Teachers’ Diploma. Because she was the youngest at her home, there was no pressure for her to start working right away. She then registered at a university and pursued a Bachelor of Arts before starting work as a teacher. Whilst practising as a teacher, she enrolled and studied part-time in numerous courses and had since obtained a Bachelor of Technology in Business Administration.
7 A year-break taken by a student between secondary schooling and higher education. During this time, the student tends to be travelling or working before continuing with their studies (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
Her twenty-one-year teaching experience had exposed her to teaching, not only her major subjects (isiZulu Home Language and English First Additional8 Language), but also other subjects which she had no pedagogical content knowledge for, for example ‘Introduction to Criminology’. At the time of the research, she was teaching isiZulu Home Language to Grade 10 learners but she explained that she was capable of teaching this subject across all grades (8-10). She noted with concern, the decline in education in her country, and emphasised that her greatest wish was to see learners being taught reading and writing skills from the primary school level, since at high school level the emphasis is on concept analysis rather than on the phonics.
Her interest in academic literacy seemed to bring some misery to her teaching career as she witnessed children leaving school with minimal grammatical knowledge and unable to read and write academically. She believed that this minimal knowledge had profound effects on throughput rate at tertiary institutions since students may would not be able to decipher academic jargon when they did not understand the syntax behind the language itself.
Noah: The participant is a male high school teacher who falls in the 40-50 age category.
He was trained as a teacher at a College of Education where he obtained a Secondary Education Diploma (STD) majoring in IsiZulu (Home Language) and Biblical Studies.
He studied through distance learning for his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education (Honours) at a certain university. He further obtained a Master of Public Administration degree from another university. Because of the interesting findings of his study, the supervisor encouraged him to write a journal article which they co-authored and it was published in the Public Administration Journal.
At the time of this study, this participant had been permanently employed by the Department of Basic Education, and had served for twenty-four years and six months.
During this time, he had taught a range of subjects such as IsiZulu (Home Language), Afrikaans and Business Economics. Afrikaans and Business Studies were not his major
8 English used as an additional or second language; which is secondary to the mother tongue or home language (www.thefreedictionary.com).
subjects in his teacher education. His areas of interest included monitoring and evaluation, performance management, and service delivery.
It was interesting to note that Noah did not initially have his heart set out for teaching as he explained that it was just one of those courses he applied for. He explained that he had applied in various institutions and was accepted in the teaching sector. He emphasised that it was not a calling but it was just one of those things that he had to make a living out of, so that life could go on.
Kadesh: This participant is a male high school teacher who was in the 20-30 age category. When he started high school, Kadesh did not know what he wanted to study as a career, up until in his matric year when he got an inspiration from his registration teacher9 who commended him for his good values and morals and encouraged him to consider teaching as a career. He studied for a Bachelor of Education degree at a certain university, majoring in English, Accounting and Economic Management Sciences (EMS). He later persuaded his Bachelor of Education (Honours) in the discipline of Education Leadership and Management, at the same university.
His teaching career started when he was still a student teacher and was noticed by the principal of the school he was doing his Practice Teaching at. The principal and the Head of Department (HoD) were impressed by his work ethic and they promised to create or reserve a teaching post for him when he had finished his degree. However, a teaching post was created prematurely whilst Kadesh was still studying as a final year student.
Because of the lasting impression he had left at that school, and because of the confidence the school management team had on Kadesh’s work, they considered him for the job. His teaching timetable was adjusted in order to accommodate his university timetable so that he could still attend his lectures. After he had graduated, he was then employed on a permanent basis.
At the time of research Kadesh had three years teaching experience, teaching Business Studies in Grades 10-12, Accounting in Grade 10 and EMS in Grades 8 and 9. Although
9 A teacher that is responsible for checking a register (roll call) for a specific class, keeping records of all learners who are absent or present on a daily basis. In some schools, this teacher is referred to as a
‘class teacher’. In South African schools, this checking is done twice a day; in the morning before the lessons start and in the afternoon, usually ten minutes before the end of school day.
he did not major in Business Studies at university, he was teaching it successfully and had produced ten distinctions in 2013.
He described his interest as being focused on academics. His passion in academics emanated from his belief that the academic field allowed one to advance in life. His interest in academic work is also shown through his interaction with the learners whom he encourages to work very hard in their academics. He had also taken the extra responsibility of conducting extra lessons after school to assist learners who were not doing well academically. His vision was to become an excellent teacher in the whole district and be honoured for his hard work. He believed that a teacher is a person who should provide direction to a learner’s life.
Apart from the academic life, Kadesh had also developed an interest in sports. He was involved in the coaching of volleyball and basketball and wanted to expand his experiences in this field as well.
Mercy: This participant is a female high school teacher aged between 45-50 years. She has a Bachelor of Pedagogics (B. Paed) degree with English and History as major subjects. At the time of the study, she was teaching English in Grade 11. She had twenty- four years teaching. experience. When she passed her matric, Mercy was not sure which career to pursue. Together with her friends, they were persuaded by other students whom they knew from school, to choose teaching as a career which they regarded as an easy-to- pass career at university. By choosing teaching as a career, Mercy expected to earn enough money and to live a good life. Most importantly, she expected to be respected as a teacher.
Mercy’s interests are in teaching English grammar to Grades 10-12. She wishes to see all learners, particularly at matric level, being able to achieve the results that would allow them to study courses that they are interested in. She described her vision as being able to see all her learners achieve at least above 50% in English.
Grace: This participant is a female high school teacher aged between 40-50 years. She indicated that the teaching career was not her first choice when she applied for tertiary education. Nursing was her first choice. Her reasons for choosing nursing were based on
the fact that she likes people and that caring for people comes naturally to her and augurs well with her personality. She thought that a career in nursing would have allowed her to care and be closer to people all the time. She wanted being close to people, not for the sake of getting respect from them because they would be vulnerable and probably expecting much from her as a nurse, but because patients were people she could give her all to, as opposed to being in the education sector. Teaching was her second option and she did not like teaching as much as she did nursing. However, because of some disappointments she encountered in her life, she ended up being a teacher.
By becoming a teacher, Grace had a lot of expectations for herself and teachers or the teaching career in general. She expected to have a growing career trajectory because of understanding that a teacher needs to be a life-long researcher. However, she was not happy about the progress of some teachers as they seemed not to becoming life-long researchers. She also thought that being a teacher would afford her good opportunities, decent salary, and a good life. She, however, realised that all of these expectations were not coming to fruition. She has been experiencing discontent with her career because of the lack of respect that teachers in general, are receiving, not only from learners, but also from the Department of Education and the community at large.
She is passionate about education and she has a string of qualifications such as Bachelor of Arts, Higher Education Diploma, Bachelor of Education, Advanced Certificate in Education, Human Rights and Healthy Lifestyle Certificate and Master of Arts. She has taught isiZulu Home Language which was her major subject at university for over twenty years. She has ambitions of pursuing a PhD in Languages. She also works part-time in the Skills Development Programmes as a facilitator and assessor.
The names of the four parents are Whitney, Zenith, Sharon and Barbara. Their brief backgrounds are discussed in the following section.
Whitney: This participant was a parent to a grade eight girl-child. She was happy with the ethos of the school that her daughter attended and thought that teachers were doing a wonderful job in the education of learners. She is passionate about education and she always encourages her children to learn so that they can attain tertiary education. Being
married to a spouse who did not support her education endeavours taught her to be strong, persevere and fight for what she wants in life.
Zenith: This participant was a parent to a grade 9 boy-child. She was not entirely happy with the ethos of the school that her son attended, as she felt that the teachers lacked in the aspect of communicating with the parents. However, she valued the work that teachers do and regarded it as a very difficult and demanding job, although she felt that they were unable to make suggestions for her son who was not doing well at school. Zenith was unfortunate to have not been able to go beyond high school education because she had children early in her life and therefore, had to start working in order to provide for the children whom she was raising on her own. She encourages her children to value education.
Sharon: This participant was a parent to a grade eleven boy. She expressed her concern about the behaviour of some male teachers in the school that her child attends. The teachers were not modelling good behaviour for the children, particularly the boys.
Sharon values education and she loves the work that teachers do. She was even contemplating doing a postgraduate certificate in education in order to become a teacher because she thought that she would be a very good teacher.