Diversity in Basic Education in South Africa: intersectionality and Critical Diversity Literacy

Reygan, Finn; Steyn, Melissa

doi:10.1080/18146627.2017.1280374

Cited by 29 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…When opinion pieces hinge on blame games, readers are exposed to arguments and counter-arguments about the severity of the damage incurred by a newsworthy event and the potential guilt of human actors whose actions or inactions render them vulnerable to accusations (Nijjar 2015;Hansson 2018b). The language policies of South African institutions are instrumental to national programmes to redress Apartheid-based injustices and moves to cement English as the most expedient solution continues to stimulate debate in numerous spaces, including online news (Reygan and Steyn 2017). Overvaal, as an episode that occasioned violent confrontations across racial fault lines, constitutes an insightful case for discursively analysing knowledge construc-tion, racialisation and blame-attribution, as it emerges in the modes of reasoning that inflected media reactions.…”

Section: Research Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over fifty percent of all adolescents who enter schooling leave before completing their senior stage. The majority of these are racialised as black, mainly from rural, low-income families (Reygan and Steyn 2017). The link between this dilemma and the reverberations of Apartheid is broadly accepted.…”

Section: Race Trouble As Related To Blame Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Online news media constitute a cardinal site for the application of race trouble. Its multiple platforms facilitate regular and pronounced debates over the exact nature and severity of racism, and its impact on education (Reygan and Steyn 2017;Bosch 2017). The Overvaal episode represents an instance where such disagreements surfaced in online opinion pieces.…”

Section: Race Trouble As Related To Blame Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pure Politicking! Racialised Blame Games and Moral Panic in the Case of a South African High School

Conradie

2020

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This study combines two discourse analytic frameworks, and explores the utility of this combination for unpacking journalistic opinions written in response to a polarising and racialised event in South African education: the Overvaal High School incident. It uncovers strategic constructions of racism within politicised blame games, in the context of Overvaal, and discloses how blame-assertion and blame-denial became implicated in framings of moral panic. Methodologically, this study relies on the concept race trouble, as well as a practical model of argumentation. In conjunction, these two approaches supply insight into both the calculated construction of racism, as well as the incorporation of these constructions into arguments aimed at rationalising blame-assertion and blame-denial. The results are interpreted within theorisations of moral panic. The findings showcase how arguments are produced to blame an individual politician for escalating racial antagonism around Overvaal, instead of offering a deeply historicised and contextualised account of the incident. Consequently, the arguments that shaped the opinion pieces, and the framing of racism involved in these arguments, ultimately obfuscate inquiry into structural determinants of racial inequity. Implicitly, this framing of racism and its incorporation into argumentation and blame games, produce a form of moral panic, in which South Africans racialised as white are construed as embattled by self-serving (black) politicians. Such politicians are vilified, or rendered as folk devils, and the results indicate how this process evades penetrating analyses of racialisation and its intersection with unequal education.

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Section: Research Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Race Trouble As Related To Blame Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Race Trouble As Related To Blame Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pure Politicking! Racialised Blame Games and Moral Panic in the Case of a South African High School

Conradie

2020

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“…In an editorial overview about the complexity of teaching, Livingston (2017) include the following elements of a teacher"s work, namely the learning needs of learners, learners with learning difficulties, choice of suitable assessment and teaching learning strategies, the use of technology to enhance the learning environment, the subject content and its specific requirements, the particular groups of learners to be taught, and their contexts. In this paper the focus is on the diverse context of the South African classroom characterised by significant racial, ethnic, linguistic and other forms of diversity (Reygan & Steyn 2017). The other forms of diversity include religion, sexual orientation and the unequal socio-economic backgrounds of learners.…”

Section: Student Teachers' Realization Of the Complexity Of Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Forest in My Hand: Student Teachers’ Experiences of Engaging in an Educational Excursion

Petersen¹,

Beer²

2019

Proceedings of the 8th Teaching &Amp; Education Conference, Vienna

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This paper sheds light on the value of a three-day excursion for South African student teachers in their first year of study. The rationale for the excursion should be considered from two perspectives: the unfortunate history of the country that divided people along racial lines, and the poor quality of teaching and learning that characterizes many South African school classrooms. This context dictates innovative interventions in pre-service teacher education, in order to ensure that South Africa has teachers who are inclusive and who enhance social justice on the one hand, and on the other hand who are well educated in making use of learner-centred and inquiry learning approaches. South Africa is a young democracy, and the legacy of the apartheid regime is still seen in a society that is not completely integrated. The NorthWest University (NWU) has three campuses, and whereas the Mafikeng Campus hosts predominantly Black students, the Potchefstroom Campus again has mainly White students. When student teachers board the buses to take them to the venue where the excursion is held, they also enter a different epistemological learning space, where they will reflect on their journeys of becoming teachers in socially diverse groups. While navigating the learning space as homo ludens (the playing human), engaging in a pedagogy of play, student teachers are confronted with their own biases and naïve understandings of teaching and the profession. The excursion also creates the opportunity for potential conflict and tension, which Veresov refers to as "dramatical collisions". Such social discomfort or disequilibrium acts as a good catalyst in the journey of becoming truly inclusive practitioners. However, the excursion, in contrast to a 'real' classroom, provides a low-risk setting (laboratory) for such learning. The pedagogy of play that characterizes the excursion, furthermore provides the student-teachers with an alternative approach to the "chalk-and-talk", transmission-mode teaching and learning approaches, which a large percentage of them experienced when they themselves were school learners. In this paper, the authors disseminate findings that emerged from a qualitative inquiry into the experiences of almost 1700 NWU student-teachers who participated in the 2019 excursions. Data were collected by means of questionnaires, focus group interviews, and studying artefacts.

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“…However, many schools and teachers appear either unwilling or unable to follow through on this mandate and to prepare learners and school communities to develop competence on issues of diversity (Moletsane, Hemson & Muthukrishna, 2004). As Reygan and Steyn (2017) point out, given the apartheid legacy in South Africa, policy makers and educators need a much greater focus on the "theoretical, epistemological, methodological and pedagogical underpinnings of diversity literacy in schools". Reygan and Steyn (2017) argue that this is the case for all educators and not only for the Life Orientation (LO) subject area and that meanwhile the impetus towards essentialising the difference is an apartheid legacy that is perpetuated through the severe inequality in South African schooling.…”

Section: Diversity In Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual and gender diversity in schools: Belonging, in/exclusion and the African child

Reygan¹

2018

PiE

Self Cite

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The school system in South Africa has only in recent years begun to more deeply grapple with issues of power and privilege along a number of axes of oppression including race, gender, class and recently, sexual and gender diversity. As a result, learners who embody sexual and gender diversity experiences spaces of belonging and exclusion in school settings. As a result, this paper asks: What needs to be done in the school system to reconstruct the "African child" to include sexual and gender diversity? Possibilities include inclusive policy implementation; inclusive learning and teaching resource materials; teacher preparedness to teach about and affirm sexual and gender diversity in the classroom and a clear rejection of homophobic and transphobic violence. The lessons learnt through the process of challenging racism in the school system-such as around essentialising, othering and systemic violence-have yet to be fully applied to sexual and gender diversity in schools.

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Diversity in Basic Education in South Africa: intersectionality and Critical Diversity Literacy

Cited by 29 publications

References 8 publications

Pure Politicking! Racialised Blame Games and Moral Panic in the Case of a South African High School

Pure Politicking! Racialised Blame Games and Moral Panic in the Case of a South African High School

The Forest in My Hand: Student Teachers’ Experiences of Engaging in an Educational Excursion

Sexual and gender diversity in schools: Belonging, in/exclusion and the African child

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