CHAPTER 2: TOOLS REQUIRED TO CARVE A MASTERPIECE AROUND
2.5 THE DILEMMATIC SPACE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AS THE
2.5.5 Political and social transitions as a source of teacher dilemmas
The shifting and changing educational milieu forces teachers to “balance different options and positions” (Fransson & Grannäs, 2013, p. 9) in order to choose how best to negotiate situations in a particular context, a specific school, and a particular classroom. The “best”
way will vary amongst teachers, and will depend on various aspects, and what may be a dilemma for one teacher may not be so for another (Scager, Akkerman, Pilot, & Wubbels, 2017). One crucial change that teachers have to negotiate at present is the aspect of learner migration. The migration of learners that many schools experience creates multiple problems (Dieltiens & Motala, 2012). The movement of fee-paying learners, who generally come from more affluent families in the neighbourhood, to other so-called elite schools is a reality (Bell & McKay, 2011). According to Bell and McKay (2011), children of “wealthy” parents can gain entry to well-resourced schools as they can afford the fees needed for admittance. However, the management of schools may find the migration of poor learners from townships to suburban schools to be problematic (Nkomo, McKinney
& Chisholm, 2004).
According to Dieltiens and Motala (2012), very little thought is given by the DoE to the issue of urban migration. The problem with the movement of some poor learners from
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one area into another is that if the child qualified for a subsidy, then that subsidy may be lost if the receiving school is not ranked Q1, Q2 or Q3 (Dieltiens & Motala, 2012). This movement by learners may result in the receiving school losing out financially and being underfunded (Hall & Giese, 2010). Such practices have resulted in the quintile ranking of a school no longer reflecting the socio-economic status of the area. Added to this is that the government only subsidises those learners who cannot pay fees at all. But the subsidy received is much lower than the subsidy for fee-paying learners (Dieltiens & Motala, 2012).
Furthermore, a large portion of the learners that do remain at the school cannot afford to pay the school fees (Dieltiens & Motala, 2012). As a consequence, being ranked Q4 or Q5 can be a disadvantage to some schools, and can place an additional burden on teachers because of the circumstances that they are faced with (Grant, 2013). According to Biesta (2004), teachers at fee-paying schools that receive reduced funding from the department may have to raise funds if the learner population are unable to pay their school fees.
Hence, teachers at wealthy schools welcome fee-paying learners and may not regard learner migration as a dilemma. However, teachers who are forced to find creative means to supplement their schools’ income, while at the same time engaging in the technical work of curriculum delivery, may feel differently. Such teachers are forced to become accountable for their school’s financial upkeep (Biesta, 2004), adding another layer to their dilemmas at school. The aspect of economic capital is, therefore, essential for the South African educational context at the school level, as the experiences a teacher has at a school are linked to the financial status of the school (Mestry & Ndhlovu, 2014).
Schools ranked Q4 and Q5 are considered wealthy schools and therefore are required to charge school fees to maintain themselves. Teachers’ experiences at such a school can be negatively influenced if the schools are unable to maintain themselves financially.
SECTION C
2.6 THE ETHICAL DILEMMA DECISION-MAKING MODEL AS THE
THIRD TOOL
In Section A, I outlined teachers’ personal-professional lives and the possible experiences that they may encounter during practice through the SIT lens. In Section B, I looked at
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teachers’ experiences concerning context. However, in the absence of research on teachers’ personal-professional experiences in the context of school quintiling, I unpacked the dilemmas that teachers may experience and the forces responsible for these dilemmas within schools, as provided by scholarship around teachers’ work. Nonetheless, while teachers work within these contexts, there is also the care aspect that is involved in negotiating their dilemmas — both care of the learners and care of themselves.
In this section, I acknowledge that dilemmas exist. However, I intend to see how teachers negotiate the dilemmas that they are confronted with by drawing from their biography and their past and present experiences. Furthermore, while teachers are called upon to negotiate their challenges, they are required to consider the aspect of care that is involved in negotiating their dilemmas and engage in practice that can be deemed beneficial to the child (Magwa, 2015). This is important because given all the complexities that the system of school quintiling presents, teachers are called to make choices on how to address their challenges. These choices are underpinned by a certain ethics of care. In an attempt to position teachers as engaging in ethical caring behaviour, I draw on Ehrich et al.’s (2011) ethical dilemma decision-making model to provide an outline of how these dilemmas can be negotiated in the context of school quintiling. This model has been divided into five main components or parts, as shown in Figure 2.1. At the centre, I have added the main element of dilemmatic space from Fransson and Grannäs’s (2013) dilemmatic space framework. The five steps, as outlined in this model, will be used during the analysis of critical question three in Chapter Six, which looks at how teachers’ personal-professional identities are negotiated in the dilemmatic context of school quintiles.
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Figure 2.2 The ethical dilemma decision-making model to understand teacher practice
According to Ehrich et al.’s (2011, p. 13) ethical dilemma decision-making model, the first step is to identify the critical incident (step 1 in Figure 2.1). The significant event is the genesis of the ethical dilemma. Step two identifies the set of opposing forces, each of which explains the critical incident from its individual bias. These forces may be professional ethics, legal issues or policies, organisational culture, the institutional context, the public interest, society and community, the global context, the political framework, or economic and financial contexts (Ehrich et al., 2011, p. 13). The critical incident can arise from these forces. Step three focuses on the teacher, who brings his or her morals, principles, values and ethical preferences to the dilemma. According to Edwards (2001), these values have been shaped by several sources, such as the teacher’s past, his/her socialisation, and so on. Step four comprises the decision-making process — the choice that the teacher makes in addressing the dilemma from the competing options available to him or her. It is through reflecting on the possibilities and choices that the ethical dilemma occurs. The individual may choose to either disregard the dilemma or note the dilemma and act in one or more ways. These acts can be official or unofficial, internal or external. Finally, in step five the action or inaction can produce certain consequences, not only for the teacher but for the school, the learners and the community (Ehrich et al., 2011, p. 13).
1.
What is the dilemmatic
incident at the school ? 2.
What forces caused the dilemmatic incident at the school (institutional/contextual/
programmatic)?
3.
Teachers values that help negotiate the dilemma – values drawn from their past and present socialisation (biographical)
4.
What decision/choice is made to address the
dilemma?
5.
Implication of the action/non- action for the school and the
teacher The dilemmatic space
The context Different school quintiles
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