Section B of this study has shown how teachers go beyond the routine practices of talk and chalk for ongoing improvement in their schools. The evidence has shown that teachers use different resources and different teaching strategies to accommodate all different learners in their schools. While managers and teachers align themselves differently to their respective responsibilities what this study wants to show are those spaces created outside these positions of teachers and managers through which thinking and working as educators are redefined or re-inscribed.
As teachers are given responsibilities to teach and to ensure that they use what is available on disposal in order to provide quality teaching and learning in schools, ultimately teachers are still not producing what is expected of them. The following section C will look beyond (accountability and support) what is expected of teachers.
4.6.1 CULTURAL ETHOS
"My support extends beyond the boundaries ofthis school":
In this study active leadership role shows that a school without a principal will not progress smoothly because the principal is regarded as the head of a school whether he or she takes the responsibility of running the school or not. In Bonginkosi Senior Primary School a member of the management team was asked how much support they provide to their teachers for effective teaching and learning. She indicated:
I provide many resources for teachers in making the school climate conducive for teaching and learning to take place.
What emerged as a progressive practice by both managers and teachers as the study shows, is that besides helping teachers with resources, the school managers were also involved in counselling teachers who approach them with family problems are in need of moral support, as the principal of ZweliWe Senior Primary School responded:
My support extends beyond the boundaries of this school, it is not limited to the premises of this school, it is beyond this school. I organise teaching resources by buying textbooks, providing classroom for teaching and learning and providing transport for attending staffdevelopment programmes, on top ofthat I share with them some domestic problems and provide advice.11
"] willnot go alone":
When the school managers were asked how they motivate their teachers in order to cope
with teaching in rural schools, the answer from one of the principal's was as follows:
I am registered for the HDE at the University of Natal, I told them I will not go alone, three ofmy teachers are now registered at the same institution.
4.6.2 Community Development
"We have opened adult education classes every Saturday":
The question of involvement was raised agam m my in-depth interview with the principals of the schools and the teachers' responses were positive, when asked how much the community involvement in the school programmes. As one teacher explained:
Initially the majority ofparents in this area or community were uneducated and simply regarded schools as a place of safe-keeping for their children while they were busy with their household and farming activities, since we have opened the adult education classes every Saturday, we have adult education classes there is an increase in community attendance at our school meetings.
Mr Sosibo the principal of Zwelihle Senior Primary School also added that initially, the community only utilized the school premises for church services and for the facilitation of burial procedures however since the formation of the school governing bodies, the community is increasing its participation in more school programmes and school activities.
The principal of Zwelihle Senior Primary School when was asked about project or community upliftment or development in place, responded:
I am proud of the relationship created between this school and the community andwehave extended our relationship by introducing the adult classes and skills development centre where the community classes take place after schools and on weekends days. The school relationship has made the school succeed in achieving roles in providing the community with quality teaching and learning.
The participation of parents in the school governance has greatly assisted the school in maintaining school discipline, drafting school admission policy, writing the code of conduct, school mission statement and helping in fundraising. This involvement also created Adult Basic education centres and Skills development centres in the community.
I began this study attempting to understand how school managers and teachers are able to sustain a commitment to quality teaching and learning in three rural primary schools.
Significantly, this study shows that teachers and school managers continue to be burdened by the contextual and social constraints and teachers and managers continue to struggle with the desire to change within the multiple forces (politics and the normative structure), thinking and working in and out of the hierarchical grids in their agenda for better ways of teaching and learning. As professionals with apparently to change and question oppressive practices, managers rethink their positions in the maintenance of domination and authority through creating spaces which challenge the traditional ways of which work. Finally, what has been found in this study is that leaders' choices and teachers' decisions for quality teaching and learning are crucial issues in these three rural schools. Teachers and managers were able to go beyond their respective responsibilities personal, professional and communal for improving quality teaching and learning in their schools.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
This final chapter serves to offer a summary of the findings and makes recommendations that may at best address the concerns and difficulties that arise in the context of rural teaching. This does not mean that the suggestions, that are being articulated here, have no relevance outside the teaching context of this investigation, for it may well be that some people who are trapped in the dilemma of improving teaching and learning in schools, in general will be in a position to derive benefit from these suggestions.
In this study, I have created a layered representation of the practices, ideas and interests of teachers and managers of the three rural schools to address the key questions that I set out in chapter one. In employing a range of research instruments, I explored how teachers and school managers in three rural primary schools manage quality teaching and learning in a rural environment. Rural schools have been the focus in this study because of poverty and negligence by departments that are associated with these schools.
In this study I have focused on the leadership choices that are supportive and teachers' instructional decisions that are both common and found as the building blocks of this study to all three schools, and I have shown how they offer the teachers who work in rural schools the spaces to perform. These practices have been represented through an analytical framework that is understood at three levels:
~ Level One: Support as a space for personal and professional relations
~ Level Two: Accountability: as a space for personal and professional relations
~ Level Three: Collective spaces beyond support and accountability:
- Personal - Profesional
- Communal Relations
The main concern of this research was to find out how these three schools manage quality teaching and learning in a rural context. It is interesting to note that there were many factors that contributed to the quality of teaching and learning in these schools.
The common factors are leadership choices and teachers instructional decisions includes the following: active role play by the principal in supporting teaching and learning, professional development, community relations, flexibility of leadership style, medium of instruction, teaching methods, cultural ethos, language of the community and resources. The following section will look at these crucial practices in detail: