The struggle for quality education in South Africa : the dynamics of integrating learner drifters from rural and township contexts into suburban schools.
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Abstract
The year 1994, heralded as a watershed year that would ring changes in the lives of all
South Africans has come and gone but poor quality education has remained stubbornly
rooted mainly in the majority of rural and township schools. Twenty years into democracy
the exodus from rural and township schools has gathered momentum as new problems
arise to compound those that have been prevalent these past years. Rural and township
based parents who patiently awaited change in the form of quality education became
despondent and started the trek to suburban schools in their struggle to find better quality
education for their children to give them a better chance in life. The study investigated what
it took for integration of drifters to happen in suburban schools. Integration entails areas
such as maintaining learner attainment, bringing parents on board and utilising social,
intellectual and cultural capital that drifters bring with them. A two-pronged theoretical
framework made up of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory and the student
integration model posited by Tinto (1987) is used as the lens through which the
phenomenon is studied. In this regard the theoretical framework purposefully combines the
development phases of the child as it interacts with the various environments and the
phases of separation, transition and incorporation that drifters would undergo when
engaging with their changed circumstances at the suburban school. This is a qualitative
study located within the interpretative paradigm. It was a multiple- site case study that
gathered data from principals, teachers, learners and parents in three suburban schools.
Semi- structured interviews supported by observation were the data collection instruments
employed. The study explored whether suburban schools sought to understand and
integrate drifters instead of assimilating them. The study found that while learner
attainment was prioritised, the three suburban schools chose acculturalisation and
acclimatisation ahead of embracing diversity in their efforts to integrate drifters. My thesis
is that the dynamic of integration of drifters at suburban schools is dependent on selfdeveloped
mechanisms at each of the confluences that draw on and develop the diversity of
cultural, social and intellectual capital that all stakeholders have to offer which embraces
the broad transformation agenda.
Description
Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.
Keywords
Poor children -- Education -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal., School integration -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal., Education -- Social aspects -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal., Theses -- Education.