Abstract
Children living in the streets are a global phenomenon and the concept street children have multiple definitions. Yet little is known about what it means to be a street child attending school in South Africa. The focus of this paper is on how teachers conceptualise learners who are street children. Data was generated from interviewing 15 teachers from two primary schools and one secondary school with learners who are street children. The findings of the study show that teachers identify such learners by their physical appearance, their behaviour at school, the lack of care and supervision, and their portrayed living conditions. From the findings of this study, it seems that learners who are street children are conceptualised by the teachers as unable to “fit in and function” in the school environment since they cannot adjust to the norms and culture of the school. There is also need for surrogate parents to fill in the parental gap that poses challenges in the educational experiences of the learners. This creates a gap in the relationship between the learners and the teachers, which need to be addressed through policy, training and practice. Keywords: concept; learners; schooling; social construction; social constructivist theory; South Africa street children; teachers
Highlights
There is growing literature that recognises the plight of street children across many disciplines and studies have been done globally on the conceptualisation of street children
We describe how teachers identify, describe and characterise learners who are street children based on the qualitative data generated from our interviews with the teachers
In this paper, we describe how teachers identify, describe and characterise learners who are street children based on the qualitative data generated from our interviews with the teachers
Summary
There is growing literature that recognises the plight of street children across many disciplines and studies have been done globally on the conceptualisation of street children. A more recent study by Stephen and Udisi (2016) in Nigeria report poverty and deprivation as a “push” factor and family relations as a “pull” factor among children living on the streets. All these studies show the different lenses used in exploring and deconstructing the concept street children. It seems that in some studies, disciplines and contexts, street children are perceived as vulnerable victims, while in other studies they are perceived as survivors
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