Engaging critical emancipatory research as an alternative to mitigate school violence in South Africa

Abstract

In this theoretical paper, we contribute to ongoing narratives that attempt to mitigate and curb school violence. We do this by critiquing school relations through the lens of critical emancipatory research. Critical emancipatory research has the impetus to map skewed relations that exacerbate school violence in South African schools. In order to achieve our aim, we highlight various principles of critical emancipatory research that position the theory so that it relates to rebuilding school safety to achieve better schools for all stakeholders. The principles of social justice and social transformation, and the necessity to eliminate false consciousness, are discussed as critical elements of mitigating school violence. The article argues that critical emancipatory research, when it is used to frame relationships within the school milieu, has the impetus to forge new dimensions of, and responses to, conflict resolution-and to lessen school violence.

Pathways to Mitigate Challenges of Learner Academic Performance in a Grade 10 Economics Class in South Africa

“…Thematic analysis (TA) was used to analyze the generated data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Reflexive thematic analysis theory as used in this study was found to be appropriate to analyzing qualitative data to answer broad or narrow research questions about people's experiences, views and perceptions, and representations of a given phenomena (Dube & Hlalele, 2018). This process was originally developed for psychology research by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke (Msimanga, 2017;Makoelle, 2013;Adebola, Tsotetsi & Omodan, 2020).…”

“…All the relevant stakeholders were engaged, and operated under equal power relations (Hlalele, 2018) and, therefore, owned the process of research, from identifying the research topic to collecting and analyzing data (Mahlomaholo, 2014). The aim of working together with the participants as a team was to create a space for the participants to be empowered as CER advocates (Dube & Hlalele, 2018;Mashego, 2012). Thus, CER enabled me to listen to the participants and work with them to determine the pathways we used to mitigate the challenges of learners' academic performance.…”

“…PAR enabled the participants to investigate meaningful social topics, especially the challenges of LAP and mitigation strategies/pathways (Msimanga, 2017), by participating in research to understand the root causes of problems relating to LAP (Tshelane, 2013), and then took collective action to influence policies through the dissemination of their findings to policymakers and stakeholders about strategies to tackle LAP (Molise, 2015). PAR is deemed relevant in this study because the researcher and the participants were equally involved in the process (Dube & Hlalele, 2018), they took shared responsibility for the outcome of the research endeavor (Wright, 2020). In other words, participation, research, and action were of major importance in such a partnership (Esau, 2013).…”

“…Both the observers wrote reflective journals of the teachers' lessons about economics content and participated in a focus group discussion setting (Adebola, Tsotetsi & Omodan, 2020). Concurrently, the author kept observational and reflective notes during each phase, met weekly (Dube & Hlalele, 2018) to discuss the pathways to mitigate the challenges of LAP, and reviewed recordings of lessons presented by teachers. In operationalizing the TIG, the following questions were posed to the participants during the interviews to gather their in-depth understanding of the challenges of LAP and pathways they can use to mitigate these challenges:…”

“…Students indicated that the use of games was the catalyst for creating a dynamic, vibrant learning environment that was conducive to deepening and internalizing their conceptual knowledge (Koenane, 2018;Soltero Lopez & Lopez, 2020). From the above studies, it is evident that the authors used teaching strategies in their capacity to enhance learning in economics, but their approach seemed to romanticize it, they did not locate the issue within a theoretical framework (Dube & Hlalele, 2018). The author acknowledges that there are many ways to conceptualize some suitable pathways to deal with the problem (Tsotetsi & Mahlomaholo, 2015).…”