Faculty of Education
School of Educational Studies
Department of Curriculum Studies
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Teaching in the new South Africa at Merrydale High School
Merrydale High School is a school in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town. As in many other schools across South Africa, its teachers have to deal with increased work demands as well as with issues related to teacher identities, classroom management, curricula and pedagogy, and racial diversity and integration.
Dr Everard Weber of the Department of Curriculum Studies has made this school the subject of a groundbreaking case study in which teachers’ work is viewed against the backdrop of its social context, the legacies of apartheid and the education reforms of the new government.
The research addresses several academic problems. One of these concerns the fact that, although South African scholars have conducted several analyses of macro-policies in education, hardly any work has been done to explain how these policies have been implemented on the ground.
Consequently, very little progress has been made to date in terms of elucidating the complex interrelationship between education policy and practice. The work also grapples with the pervasive influence of history and social dynamics on education.
Scholarly literature is largely silent on the question of whether, and how, this dimension ought to be incorporated into education policy studies. Weber’s research not only demonstrates the importance of casting the research net wide enough to capture these macro-level variables; it also describes the outcomes of such an analysis.
Weber employed a qualitative research design that enabled him to generate discursive portraits of teaching at Merrydale High School. These demonstrate how pedagogy, subject content, school and national history, as well as the relations of power regarding school governance intersect and clash. Taken together, they present a powerful image of teaching as a deeply social enterprise.
The outcome of this research has been published as a book, and has received positive reviews from scholars in South Africa and abroad
Contact person: Dr KE Weber.
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