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Norman’s teaching environment
East Rand High School (ERHS) is situated forty-five kilometers east of the Johannesburg city center. It is an urban school located in a predominantly Afrikaans speaking town that opened its doors to all races in 1992. Since then its racial identity has grown to ninety five percent black. It is still, and has always been, the only English medium high school in this town. A principal, two deputy principals- one female and one male- and thirty-three teachers constitute the academic staff at ERHS. Interestingly, of the thirty-three academic staff twenty-seven are female with the six remaining male staff either teaching mathematics or science. The mathematics department itself is four educators strong, all of them black male. The racial composition of the remaining twenty nine academic staff members, in terms of race, is majority black South African, with four white South African female teachers and three black Zimbabwean males. The description of Norman’s teaching environment in terms of race and ethnicity is provided, as it was a basis for the hostile experiences, in terms of xenophobia and racism that Norman experienced for several years at ERHS.
Male educators with the exception of the one female deputy, hold all the promotion posts, which include one principal, two deputy principals and five heads of department. The administrative staff is all white and female. There is a general secretary, the principal’s secretary, the school typist, the school financial controller and a second typist who is also the laboratory assistant. The auxiliary staff includes a kitchen worker, a caretaker and several ground staff cleaners whom he supervises.
ERHS has a governing body, which is democratically elected by the parent body. However there is general consensus in the staff room that the governing body oversteps the boundaries and involves itself in areas that they should not. These areas include actual teaching ability and staffing. The principal is aware of his staffs’ feelings and readily admits that he absorbs a lot of the complaints so that his educators are not demotivated or feel threatened even further. There are also grievance procedures in place for both the educators and learners which both parties can make use of through their respective elected representatives. Several staff is of the opinion that a procedure should also be put in place for the parents, as they are a major source of staff unhappiness and unease.
ERHS runs from grades eight to twelve and has eight hundred and seventy three learners registered on its school records. The learners attending the school are mostly from the surrounding two townships with a small minority that actually live in the town itself. A neighboring squatter camp15 also feeds some learners to ERHS but this is only a handful, as these parents cannot afford the required school fees. Racially the percentage of black to white learners is ninety-five to five, with the five percent having English as their home language and the majority an African home language. Most of the learners at ERHS did however receive their primary school tuition with English as the medium of instruction. ERHS is on the northern outskirts of the town in which it is situated. It is easily accessed by any of the four tar roads that surround it as it occupies an entire street block. The school building and grounds have a high-wire mesh fence that encloses it and an electric gate at its main entrance. The intercom at this gate was not functioning during the entire research period and one was required to either hoot for it to be opened or to phone the secretary of the school on arrival. A walk-in gate is situated near the electric gate and this was found to be always open during the duration of the study. A steady trickle of learners, in and out the school, was visible at most times during the school day.
The school is a two story brick building with a tin roof, thirty seven classrooms, one library, one computer laboratory, two science laboratories, one biology laboratory, four learner ablution blocks, two upstairs one for males and one for females and two similarly distributed downstairs. The staff toilet facilities are on the downstairs level only, male and female separate. These are kept locked with staff having a key to prevent theft of soap and towels, which has occurred in the past. In addition there is a carpeted staff room with several round tables and chairs and an adjoining kitchen with a fridge and a microwave. There is also a tuck shop were the learners can purchase lunch or snacks at either of their two breaks. Vendors selling sweets and cool drinks dot the pavement area outside the schools main gate every weekday afternoon and the learners make prolific use of the vendors‟ trade.
The computer laboratory was funded by a nationwide project for government schools which provided for twenty-five computers and two printers, all still in good working order. These may be used only by the learners who take Computer Studies as a subject from Grade 10 onwards, with the room been out of bounds to all other learners. During this study it translated to approximately seven percent of learners being allowed to use the computer laboratory. The Internet is only accessible to the Principal and the Deputy Principals who have got dial-up connections in their offices. The learners may at no time use the Internet facility and staff needs to motivate in writing if they require the use of the Internet. If deemed necessary, the research is then done by either of the two Deputies and the relevant material is printed out for the staff member.
Snapshot of Norman’s Grade 10 F Mathematical Literacy Class
There are thirty-eight learners in Norman’s mathematical literacy class. The majority of these learners either failed Grade 9 Mathematics or attained a promotion mark that was a pass mark but failed the end of year examination. The learners that failed mathematics on the promotion mark were condoned to Grade 10 on condition that they do Mathematical Literacy and not Mathematics; for those that failed the end of year examination but passed on the promotion mark mathematical literacy was highly recommended by both the Head of Department and the Principal. ERHS has two more mathematical literacy classes with thirty-five learners and thirty-eight respectively, which Norman’s colleague teaches. Together the three classes represent a seventy one percent majority of Grade 10 learners doing Mathematical Literacy instead of Mathematics.
The home language of the learners in Norman’s class is varied and includes Sotho, Zulu and Sepedi.However, the learners are relatively proficient in English and most of them attended the neighboring English medium primary school. Absenteeism is minimal and during the six-week observation period the highest absenteeism on any one-day in Norman’s class were four out of the thirty-eight learners. The ratio of boys to girls was nearly even and, with the exception of two white girls, all the learners were Black African.
The learners do not have mathematical literacy textbooks nor do they have scientific calculators of their own. They have a writing book, which is used by many to take notes in at least two learning areas. From front to back the mathematical literacy notes are evident, from back to front the notes of other subjects appear and in some of them from the middle of the notebook onwards the notes of a third subject are also apparent. The learners are outspoken and there is an overwhelming sense of disrespect for the educator.
Continuous talking throughout the lesson is common as is the ‘back chat’ when Norman attempts to discipline the class. The learners are taught in Norman’s classroom, which is a typical example of most of the ERHS classrooms barring the distinct absence of graffiti, as previously mentioned. The walls have no posters and the only writing includes faded formulae of three trigonometric identities. The desk are arranged in tightly packed horizontal rows and once the learners are all seated it becomes difficult to move around the room as the desks, chairs and school bags occupy most of the floor space.
Norman Mhuka claims that this is one of the better schools in terms of resources and academic offerings in the surrounding area and often points out that many of his colleagues from neighboring schools would like to work at ERHS.This is also evident by the large number of learners that are on the waiting list to attend this school. As a government school the school fees are manageable for most of the parents of the learners that attend ERHS and it is preferred over the township schools that both the educators and learners of this community believe to be worse off.
CHAPTER 1
Orientation and Background
CHAPTER 2
The implementation of mathematics reforms in the classroom: a review of the literature
CHAPTER 3
A ‘Deep Change’ framework for understanding reforms in mathematics education
CHAPTER 4
The Research Process: Inquiry, Design and Methods
CHAPTER 5
A Snapshot Survey: What Mathematical Literacy teachers claim about the new curriculum
CHAPTER 6
The case of Norman Mhuka: ‘The maths of oranges and bananas’
CHAPTER 7
The case of Michael Michaels: ‘I am too qualified to teach mathematical literacy’
CHAPTER 8
Probing the relationship between theory and practice
APPENDICES
REFERENCES
