they genuinely commit themselves to changing their own linguistic practices through learning to speak isiZulu will the change that has begun in their own classes be sustained.
In this respect Douglas (1997) asserts that true change can only be brought by the individual him or herself and while help and guidance may assist the change process, change will scarcely be durable unless the individual commits initial energy to the process. Fullan & Hargreaves (1991) reinforce this view by positing as one of the guidelines for action consistent with the conception of the professional teacher the commitment to continuous improvement and perpetual learning.
At Agent G and R‟s schools initial resistance to school language change, particularly a change in racial composition of the staff to meet the needs of language transformation, was reportedly breaking down as is evident from the following responses from Agents G and R respectively:
I think in any work situation when there is a change of the type we are experiencing now then there would be resistance because the whole culture of the staff will have to change but I must tell you again that as we brought in teachers one by one there was acceptance of these teachers. Initially, like in any work situation there was resistance.
Now I think it‟s hitting them, the fact that they need to change,
needs to change and how this change should be effected. In this respect Fullan (1993) stresses the need for expertise, not one-shot workshops and disconnected training of the type of isiZulu courses described by Agent G earlier in the analysis but sustained career- long staff development that would equip educators with the knowledge to recognize the value of and the need to shift to multilingual education in a post-apartheid school context and the expertise to meet the challenge of delivering multilingual education in such a context.
Although there was strong reaction to the practice of multilingual strategies like code- switching in Agent G‟s school, there was also reportedly wide use of this strategy in classrooms (see Adendorff 1996 for the academic and social functions of classroom code-switching). The preferred mode of code-switching (CS) was pupil-pupil CS in group and pair work because of the inability of many Indian teachers to communicate effectively in isiZulu. However, those who could speak the language used it to issue simple instructions, provide direction in the completion of tasks and to discipline learners. When an African educator in Willy Wonke Primary was questioned about whether her HOD, who is Indian, approved of her use of CS she stated:
I think she is very happy because she is also switching to Zulu.
Although she is battling but I also suspect that she is also speaking to them in Zulu.
In interrogating the response above it was evident that the Indian HOD at Willy Wonke Primary had become conscious of the rewards of attempting Zulu-English CS despite the costs in terms of battling to articulate clearly in isiZulu.
In Agent R‟s school educators were reportedly embracing CS as a significant multilingual teaching/learning strategy. The following response from Agent R confirms this:
The teachers won‟t be resistant to that (referring to CS) and they haven‟t been resistant because they understand that somehow learning must take place, so if it‟s gonna take place by CS let it carry on. So
they had to let it go or else learning would come to a standstill if we don‟t do that kind of stuff, somehow you gotta get it done.
Once again it is evident from this response that resistance to school language change became eroded as teachers counted the rewards of changing old linguistic practices. They were only too aware, as is conveyed by the above response, that refusing to change would incur an enormous cost, i.e. “learning would come to a standstill”.
It was also reported that in both Piper and Willy Wonke primary schools Indian teachers have been using African teachers as a resource to assist them in communicating with African learners who could barely speak English. This is reflected in the following responses from African educators at Piper and Willy Wonke primary schools:
Because if the learners are making noise they call me and I speak to them in Zulu and they keep quiet…they call some other times, some days they call in the morning early to come and explain in isiZulu so that the learners can understand.
In the Foundation Phase some children are having problems to pronounce the African names and they come to me and I help them how to pronounce those names and even if they (referring to Indian teachers) are having problem with the child because some children come without the background of the English so we help each other.
Some like Mrs G, whenever the children didn‟t understand she said Barbara come and explain to this learner…Barbara come I got a problem with this, can I ask you this in English and you can translate in isiZulu so that they can understand. Even Mrs J come and say, Barbara I have got a problem with this and then I explain in isiZulu and then the learners are happy.
While it is not the most effective way of dealing with the challenge of teaching in schools with linguistically diverse learners, this approach, nevertheless, confirmed that Indian teachers in the two schools were beginning to recognize the need to use the learner‟s mother tongue, particularly in the Foundation Phase.
This part of section two focused on educator acceptance of the need to engage in school language change. Interrogation of the data revealed that initial resistance to language change was eroded by a realization that the rewards of changing outweighed the costs of resisting change. This realization evidently arose out of a rational decision based on greater knowledge of what needed to be changed and how this would impact on educators and learners within the schools and the wider community.
4.2.2.3 Resistance to change from parents
This part of the analysis in section two interrogates the resistance of African parents to school language change by exploring how resistance was fuelled firstly by the perception that isiZulu had little or no market value and secondly by the perception that African educators who were appointed at previously Indian schools as part of the language transformation agenda could not deliver quality English education.
The data revealed that there was some resistance from African parents to language policy revision at Piper and Willy Wonke Primary schools. Some of the African parents had reportedly expressed the view that there was no need for isiZulu to be offered as a subject on the curriculum and stated: “We can teach isiZulu to the children at home, we want them to learn English at school.” Evidently the priority for these and perhaps other African parents was that their children should become proficient in English and they were prepared to compromise the position of isiZulu in these schools as long as their children gained access to quality instruction in English.
The school language preferences of African parents for their children have become the subject of much research in Africa (Kelly 1994, Zungu 1998, Bamgbose 2000, Arua &
Magocha 2002, de Klerk 2002). In researching the language attitudes of isiXhosa parents who sent their children to English-medium schools, de Klerk (2002)31 discovered that
31 Vivian de Klerk, researching the reasons for Xhosa parents‟ decision to move their children from township schools to English-medium schools in Grahamstown, discovered that the parents were motivated by the need for their children to gain high levels of literacy in English to gain access to wealth, power and prestige and they saw the English-medium schools as providing this access rather than the township schools which they felt were inadequately resourced, poorly managed and were staffed with poorly qualified teachers. Despite the Xhosa parents‟ preference for English for their
these parents made the decision based on the knowledge that English would give their children greater access to wealth, prestige and upward social mobility. This decision was premised on the view that African languages do not have the linguistic capital that English has as contemplated by Kamwangamalu (2000). de Klerk‟s (2002) findings are similar to Arua & Magocha‟s (2002) in a study examining the patterns of language use and language preferences of some children and their parents in Botswana. Arua &
Magocha (2002) discovered that the parents in the study preferred an expanded role for English for their children both in and out of school but they did not want English to play any role in the home. This role was reserved for Setswana. de Klerk‟s (2002) study also reflected a desire by the isiXhosa parents for their children to maintain isiXhosa in the domain of the home in spite of the need for greater social mobility through expanded use of English in other domains. The attitudes of parents reported by change agents and significant others in this study also reflect the ambivalence or apparent ambivalence of parents in respect of language preferences for their children as captured in the following responses.
Agent R made these comments on African parents‟ language preferences for their children:
The parents were generally happy so long as their children can do English I noticed that, that was their main concern that we teach their children English. That is the reason they send their children to this school and not to the schools on that side because they want their children to learn English.
Generally the younger people are not so happy to carry on in their MT. This is the impression I am getting as a person from what I‟ve been seeing. So it‟s a white man‟s world and they want the white man‟s language, that‟s the impression I‟m getting. So they want their children to learn English.
children, they regretted their children‟s loss of the mother tongue. They were keen for their children to maintain their mother tongue while acquiring proficiency in English (de Klerk 2002).