Foundation Phase Educators’ Views on the Management of Professional Development in Historically Disadvantaged Schools

Abstract

Foundation Phase (FP) educators are deemed productive when cohorts of learners who pass through their hands cope well with learning beyond the initial three grades of schooling. In South Africa, despite empirical evidence showing that FP educators in historically disadvantaged schools contend with overcrowded classes, low parental involvement and a shortage of teaching and learning resources, are still perceived as the primary source of poor learner achievement. The other point of view is that teacher underperformance and poor learner achievement are a legacy of the apartheid-engineered Bantu education policies that left the schooling system with poorly trained Black educators. To reverse these challenges, post-apartheid educational policies mandate that every school continuously conduct teacher professional development (TPD). Situated in the theory of change (ToC), this qualitative interpretivist study used interviews of a semi-structured nature to purposefully interact with a sample of six FP educators. They each characterised their HoDs’ management of TPD in two primary schools in Emalahleni Circuit 2, Mpumalanga Province. The second method of data collection entailed the analysis of a range of documents, namely the educators’ files, school performance improvement plans, and national education policy documents, to cross-check the findings of the thematic analysis. The findings revealed that HoDs were sufficiently collegial towards educators, showed commitment towards rendering professional support to educators, and adhered to a tight schedule of class visits to develop and appraise educators and monitor their implementation of inclusive education practices. Barriers stemmed from educators’ apprehension towards HoD’s class visits, especially the randomly conducted ones. The second barrier was the school management teams’ (SMTs’) inefficiency of professionalism, support for HoDs and understanding of curriculum leadership policy. The study recommends that communication around HODs’ scheduled and random class visits needs to take a more inclusive approach to scale down the panic caused by them, and SMTs must be equally prioritised for continuous professional development.