Understanding the way history students in the secondary phase view school history can contribute to research into the declining population of history students in a democratic South Africa. The key findings that emerged from the research in an intertextual manner included broad ideas about the content, such as school history being seen as being about South African politics.
Discussion of findings
OVERVIEW AND INTRODUCTION OF THE STUDY
Introduction
Background includes contextualizing the research with a focus on the post-apartheid South African education system, focusing on how history is viewed as a school subject at the secondary stage of schooling. I will then define the focus and purpose of the study and list the research questions.
Background and context to the study
Significantly, for school history it is recommended that the teaching of history should ensure that students develop a narrative and conceptual understanding of South African and African history and their place in the world. This culminated in the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) which signaled a departure from the original ideas of OBE in favor of the teaching and learning of history.
Rationale and motivation for the study
My passion for history was reawakened when I chose to major in the subject and become a history teacher. Why do secondary stage history teachers view the subject as they do.
Theoretical framework of the study
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how history students see history as a subject in the secondary phase of their education. In the proposed study, an attempt will be made to focus on the subjective views and experiences of the students arising from their engagement with history as a subject in the secondary phase of schooling.
Research methodology
These groups consisted of four to five history students in each of the schools. Regarding ethical permission, special permission was obtained from the principals of each of the schools included in the research.
Theoretical framework
The literature review was explained on the basis of a selection of available literature, both published and unpublished, on the subject of research. This chapter first discussed what a literature review is, what the purpose of a literature review is in research, and how my literature review was conducted.
Research design and methodology
The main topics discussed are: the nature of school history, the purposes and uses of school history and students' views of history as a school subject. The nature of school history focused on the procedural concepts of school history, which consisted of six historical thinking concepts, while the purposes and uses of school history focused on the core concepts.
Data presentation – Level 1 – analysis
This chapter also included a discussion on the methodology of the study which was approached through a qualitative perspective. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the reliability of the research, ethical considerations and limitations of the study.
Data presentation – Level 2 - analysis
The research design describes procedures for conducting research and includes when, from whom, and under what conditions data will be collected. I discussed the two sets of findings together to provide robust answers to the research questions underlying the study and how they relate to the literature.
Conclusion
- Conclusion
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Conducting and presenting a literature review
The research questions form the structure of the entire literature review (Jesson et al., 2011). For the purpose of this study, I decided to present my literature review by themes.
Literature on the nature and purpose of school history
- The nature of school history
- The purposes and uses of school history
- Learners’ positive views of school history
- Learners negative views on school history
Without these concepts it would be impractical to seriously engage in the study of the past (Levesque, 2005). When we write history, we must create interpretations of the past based on evidence. Indeed, taking historical perspective requires understanding the vast differences between us in the present and in the past.
Indeed, uncertainty in the present about the future order of a society tends to destabilize its view of the past (Smith, 1993). If teachers are able to develop students' understanding of the purposes and uses of school history, it is possible that students'. However, these are only some of the reasons why students see school history in a negative light.
Niche/Gap for my study
Conclusion
FRAMING THE STUDY THEORETICALLY
- Introduction
- Some views on theory
- Using theory
- What is a theoretical framework?
- Setting the stage for the theoretical framework
- Epistemology of constructionism
The suitability of my theoretical framework is to examine how students see history as a subject in the secondary phase of their schooling. Therefore, a theoretical framework is needed as it serves an important role in my study. The main purpose of my theoretical framework is to help me make my research findings meaningful.
In determining the theoretical framework for this study, the scheme of epistemologies and theoretical perspectives outlined by (Crotty, 1998) will be used.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Note: The last two aspects of the diagram are methodology and methods which will be covered in the next chapter. As already discussed above, I need to describe the epistemology inherent in the theoretical perspective and therefore in the methodology I have chosen.
EPISTEMOLOGY
Theoretical perspective for this study – symbolic interactionism
In light of this view, I have chosen to adopt 'Symbolic Interactionism', which is a theory, as the main component of the theoretical framework for this study and recognized the epistemology of constructionism embedded in symbolic interactionism. But according to (Crossman, 2014), the American philosopher, George Herbert Mead, above all others, laid the foundation for the symbolic interactionist perspective in the 1920s. Therefore, my participants for this study will act towards the subject of history based on the meanings that the subject has for them.
This was addressed in my study as it was small scale and I was able to analyze and interpret most of my participants' views through symbolic interactionism theory.
Aligning the study with constructionism and symbolic interactionism
Built into this theoretical framework is the epistemology of "constructionism", which assumes a pluralistic and relativistic view of reality (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). A solid consensus requires that the researcher has heard a wide range of voices with constructions of the powerless that deserve the same treatment as those of the powerful. Here I, as a researcher, was appointed as the orchestrator and accelerator of the research process.
Here, data collection involved me as a researcher eliciting and refining the research participants' constructions through interactions between and between myself and the research participants.
Conclusion
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
Introduction
Methodology therefore deals with the relationships between the various parts of the study and the production of findings. Aspects of methodology and research design briefly covered in Chapter 1 will be elaborated in this chapter to justify the choice of a qualitative approach and an interpretivist paradigm. Next, this chapter describes the participants involved in the study and the instruments I used to collect the data.
The research design
Research design is a very important part of a study because certain limitations in interpreting the results are associated with any design, and also because the research design determines how the data should be analyzed (McMillan & Schumacher 1993). In other words, the research design for this study should be understood according to the nature of the qualitative research approach. However, I still needed to have an initial basic research design that I could build on as I progressed.
Thus, the research design for this study guided me in choosing my sample; how my participants were selected; where the data generation took place and the procedures put in place to generate it.
- Research paradigm
- Research sample
However, this should not be seen as a weakness as “the research process is rarely orderly, linear, coherent or straightforward” (Wellington et al., 2005, p. 95). This premise is related to the premise of the theoretical framework of the study, which tries to understand students' views of history as a subject symbolically in the school context. The student population at this particular school has declined tremendously recently due to its poor socio-economic status and negative societal view of the school.
As the researcher, I oriented all participants to the purpose of the study and what was required of them before they actually participated in the research.
Ethical considerations
I also sent letters to the principals of the four identified schools for the research to ask permission to conduct the research at their schools. After explaining the purpose of the study, and the type of assistance I needed from them, I received permission to conduct the research at the identified secondary schools. Informed consent was obtained from the participants after the nature and purpose of the research was explained and confidentiality and anonymity were assured to them.
Informed consent was obtained by providing the history teachers with an explanation of the study.
Research methodology
- Research methods used as part of creative arts-based methodology to generate data data
- Data analysis
- Trustworthiness of the research
The resources were carefully thought out and selected before I got involved in the collage making process. After that, I explained to them that after completing their collages, they would present it in the form of a gallery walk. The presentations of the collages were recorded by the video operator and transcribed verbatim - the use of the video will be explained in the next section.
A presentation at this stage was important in the sense that participants presented and explained their view of school history through the symbolism of their collages, which was the purpose of the collage making.
Conclusion
In the end, only one change needed to be made, where one participant indicated that during the discussion session she stated that “history is concerned with issues of war” while the transcript stated that “history is about the study of wars” - This change I then added it to the transcripts before analysis. Member checking therefore offered me the opportunity to correct errors and misinterpretations I had made, further increasing the reliability of the study. Thus, understanding my data helped me highlight the strengths of the chosen data generation methods and minimize the weaknesses, thereby increasing the reliability of the study.
Also the literature on how history is viewed by students was used to corroborate the statements made by the participants, which further increased the credibility of the study.
PRESENTATIONS OF FINDINGS – LEVEL 1 ANALYSIS OF COLLAGES
Introduction
The intention of open coding here as mentioned above was to break down the data in the collages into categories/segments to interpret the collages at face value. Furthermore, by designing different categories/segments for the analysis of the collages I was able to ensure that I saturate all aspects and minimize the omission of important aspects in the collages. This resulted in a feeling that nothing was left out, but I could have inadvertently left out some aspects depicted in the collages.
They then discussed the common patterns and themes that emerged in the four schools after individual analysis of the collages.
Analysis of individual collages from each school .1 Indian Ocean Secondary School .1 Indian Ocean Secondary School
- Atlantic Ocean High School
Another common depiction in the collages was the idea of school history as a study of the past struggles in South Africa. Kimone thus focuses on both local and international history as being important in the study of school history. This collage maker thus seems to be of the opinion that school history is strongly linked to the educational idea.
Laila's choice of words and images for her collage speaks a very powerful message of her views on the school's history.
