The Educational Psychologist and School Organization Development in the Reconstruction of Education in South Africa: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

In South Africa, as the myriad of ‘apartheid holy cows’ are buried, so the opportunity for reconstruction takes on an unprecedented challenge. The renewal of South Africa's dishevelled education system is central to the country's renaissance. Against this backdrop, this article briefly describes some current positions on systems thinking and educational psychology service delivery in the South African context. Derived mainly from a formative evaluation of a Cape Town-based teacher in-service project which focuses on whole school development, three substantive issues related to school organization development are raised. They are the issue of effecting a paradigm shift from a positivistic to a systemic worldview; the issue of the relationship between power and organization development, and the issue of sustainability of organization development. These issues are discussed with particular reference to the challenges that they present to educational psychologists as school organization development consultants in South Africa's education reconstruction process.