The way in which the media report on school violence influences public perceptions, gives rise to particular attitudes and can influence decisions by policy makers. The more frequently an issue is ...presented in a specific way, the more likely it is for readers to perceive the media's version as the truth. Although news is assumed to be reliable, comprehensive and unprejudiced, journalism can be questioned. This study explores how school violence is framed in the South African print media. A framing analysis was done of 92 articles that appeared in 21 different public newspapers during one year. I found that the way in which the public is informed encourages the perception of school violence as being an individual, rather than a societal, problem and encourages the acceptance of assumptions and stereotypes. Typical 'blood-and-guts' reporting is popular, while issues such as emotional and sexual violence in schools appear largely unnoticed by journalists. I argue that the main frames provided to readers in South African newspapers fail largely to elicit social responsibility, while at the same time promoting civic indifference.
This paper argues that the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic created a space to reconceptualise education and rethink priorities. Although no one will deny the devastating impact of the pandemic, ...humans have been able to continue with various projects, including the global education project, largely made possible through unprecedented technology advancement, as well as the uptake of technologies that advanced pre-COVID-19. In many ways, the clear distinction between human and technological (being non-human) practices has blurred to a point where the mere nature of human projects such as the global education project has become post-human. While different schools of thought on the nature of “post-human” exist, we use it to refer to what we are becoming together, a comprehension and awareness of the connectedness between humans and their natural and technological environment and the ethical concerns that come with it. COVID-19 provides an opportunity to reconsider the connectedness, complexities and dynamics of the world, and what we (humans, nature, Earth, technology) are becoming. Based on a literature survey and critical refection on the state of the global education expansion project at the time of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we suggest the following changes to the ways quantity, quality and equality in education are conceptualised. The employment of technology should be added in the conceptualisation of input quality. Flexibility, support and connectedness should be built into the process quality equation. Most importantly, ecology should also be added as a product of education, and not merely a contextual influence in education.
Teachers in South Africa experience exceptionally high levels of bullying in the workplace, in particular, bullying that relates to their profession. As research has shown that the organisational ...culture can either inhibit or promote bullying, in this paper we consider the possibility that neoliberalism creates an environment for workplace bullying to thrive. Based on unstructured interviews with 4 educators, we draw parallels between what they subjectively perceived as workplace bullying within the hierarchical structure of the school and school system and the ideology of neoliberalism. The value of this study lies in the awareness that it could raise among managers in the education system of how the system actually influences their mind-set and actions.
Over many years, universities that offer teacher education programmes have been in partnerships of different kinds with schools. Not only are schools sites of research for faculty members, but ...student teachers get workplace experience during practicums. In the post-modern world, there is emphasis on amelioration at grassroots level, instead of only at systems level. The sentiment is that school-university partnerships should benefit schools as much as their higher education partners. In this paper, we reflect on the first seven years of a university-school partnership project. The purpose of the partnership was in part to improve the school results of potential students from underprivileged feeder areas towards access to higher education programmes. Looking back, some successes can be claimed, as the relative success of learners in the project schools has improved notably. Still, the project has to find ways to remain financially sustainable, and to expand the project to ECD and primary schools, in particular to improve numeracy and literacy skills of young children.
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