Doctoral Degrees (Education Policy Studies)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Education Policy Studies) by browse.metadata.advisor "Fataar, Aslam"
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- ItemDiscourses of learning, transition and agency amongst students who attended a Cape Town high school under apartheid(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12) Matope, Jasmine; Badroodien, Azeem; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT : This dissertation explores how a group of students who attended a Cape Town High School between 1968 and 1990 navigated their schooling space and acquired various skills, knowledge and understandings to engage with the social world during and after leaving school. The learning experiences nurtured the students’ critical thinking, agency, assertiveness, self-worth, self-esteem, respect, autonomy, and desire to exercise social justice, dignity, responsibility and citizenry. I employ the works of Pierre Bourdieu to show how the students were not simply defined by their structures and contexts, but that they invariably acted back on the worlds they inhabited by employing a variety of understandings and meanings to navigate their schooling and other pathways into adulthood (Bourdieu, 1984). I also engage with the work of Paulo Freire to examine how the school’s opened the eyes and minds of students to become more fully human by reflecting and acting upon the world in ways that transform it (Freire, 1978:26). I also use Nancy Fraser’s theory of social justice to analyse how the school enables the students to overcome the social and racial barriers that inhibit them from participating on par with others and as full partners in their schooling and social interactions (Fraser, 2007). Methodologically, the study is based on the qualitative paradigm. I did extensive interviews with fourteen students. I utilised the life history and life course techniques to locate the students as individuals in time and space, and to interpret their memories and perceptions in ways that bring fresh perspectives on how they internalise learning over their lifetimes. I also interviewed four teachers to get a broader understanding of how the school’s ethos and pedagogical practices involve the students and promote their rationality and particular skills and world views. In particular the students observe that they are encouraged to participate and take responsibility positions in various activities such as debates, drama, films and sports that make them feel part of the learning process and make learning more meaningful, useful and transferrable. The dissertation thus argues that when students are agents in their own learning, they are able to develop the ability to think critically, flexibly and strategically. It argues that connecting learning to students’ contexts; dispositions and understandings enable them to develop transposable capital to confidently acclimatise to their schooling, social circumstances, and challenges.
- ItemEliciting pedagogical learning among teachers in a professional learning community(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Feldman, Jennifer; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Department of Education Policy StudiesENGLISH ABSTRACT : This thesis is about teachers’ learning in a professional learning community (PLC) and responds to the question: How do the dialogical processes of a professional learning community capacitate teachers’ pedagogical adaptation and change towards socially just pedagogical practices? My starting assumption is that teachers’ pedagogical learning requires a supportive and deliberative set of conversations about the intellectual terms and pedagogical capacitation needed for change. I argue that PLCs are able to provide a reflexive dialogical space for engaging in such pedagogical learning. This is a thesis presented in the form of three articles which is prefaced by an inter-leading piece that describes my positionality as a researcher and facilitator of the PLC process. The thesis contains three wraparound chapters, an introduction and conclusion. The introduction situates the context of this research study and PLC work and the conclusion draws together insights gained over the two-year PLC process and includes a summary of the intellectual contribution that this research work makes to the theorisation of teacher adaptation and change in consonance with a socially just teaching orientation. Drawing on Bourdieu’s thinking tools of practice, habitus, bodily hexis, field and doxa I provide a theorisation of teachers’ pedagogical habitus as a way to conceptualise teacher adaptation and change. I offer the view of PLCs as a form of ‘habitus engagement’ to describe the ways in which the on-going dialogical and reflexive PLC process challenges the teachers’ embodied pedagogical doxa to engender adaptation and change. The first article focuses on the conceptual bases that informed the establishment and functioning of the PLC which is central to this thesis. This article develops an argument for the use of the Funds of Knowledge approach as a way of engaging students meaningfully in their learning. The second article discusses the difficulty that the PLC encountered as it engaged with the ‘hardness’ of pedagogical change among the five teachers and discusses the twists and turns involved in the PLC’s struggle to deliberate productively about pedagogical change. The third article narrates the journey of pedagogical adaptation and change of one teacher who collaborated in the PLC over a two-year period. This article discusses the durability and malleability of this teacher’s pedagogical disposition by arguing for a conceptualisation of teacher change that moves beyond a cognitivist approach to one that engages the embodied practices of teachers. The thesis concludes by arguing that teacher adaptation and change, as capacitated through the on-going dialogical and reflexive PLC process, must engage with the teachers’ embodied dispositions, their pedagogical practices inscribed in their being, in order to effect sustained change in their pedagogical habitus and subsequently in their pedagogical practices.
- ItemAn exploration of how discourses of efficiency and social justice shaped the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector with special reference to TVET colleges(2018-03) Daniels, Leslie; Robertson, Cathy; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT : This study explores the influences of market-directed educational policies, underpinned by neoliberalism, to shape technical and vocational education and training practices at Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges post-1994. Given the financial constraints of the general South African budget, the government at the time believed that such an approach was appropriate because it was conducive to promoting efficiency and accountability in education. This approach, they thought, would ensure that the delivery of the desired educational outcomes, such as higher pass and throughput rates of college graduates with work-related skills, would be achieved. Prevailing educational discourses, as articulated in sources such as academic literature, public documents and the news media, not only question the appropriateness of marketoriented policies in education that target efficiency practices, but also question the lack of practices promoting social justice at TVET colleges. Therefore, this study questions whether the pursuit of efficiency targets at TVET colleges actually promoted the sustainability of social justice practices at these institutions. This study also examines whether it is feasible to hold both a market-oriented approach as well as a social justice approach simultaneously, by examining this tension, conceptually and in actual practice, by means of the wider philosophical framework of pragmatism. A conceptual investigation was chosen as the methodology to steer this study to its conclusion. On the one hand, the post-apartheid government has the responsibility of promoting policies aimed at removing the inherited barriers arising from unequal power relations that prevented equity, access and participation. On the other hand, in a globalised economy, the government has to ensure efficient use of limited resources and to ensure an educated workforce that can compete in the knowledge economy. In the post-apartheid era, tensions have emerged between issues of equity and efficiency. In effect, the government faces a policy dilemma, namely, that an increase in efficiency will more than likely compromise issues of equity and vice versa. The two objectives appear to be at odds with one another, but this thesis concludes that there is not necessarily mutual exclusion at the conceptual level. This study also emphasises that it is not impossible to maintain a delecate balance between the two. However, it needs to be borne in mind that policies aimed at social justice (such as increased access and redress) affect the actual quality of delivery and the need for increased resources. Despite the tension in real terms – interpreted in the light of a Deweyan pragmatist framework where what works is ‘right’ – the two discourses and resultant policies and practices can, to an extent, be practically reconciled. TVET colleges have included a substantially increased number of previously disadvantaged students who now have access to a college education, one that shows improved pass rates, reported improvements from Umalusi in quality assurance, rising qualification levels of staff, and a reported improvement in the availability of educational resources at TVET colleges. Nevertheless, in response to the question of whether market-oriented policies were actually successful in delivering the desired goals that were set for TVET, a definite no can be justified. Despite the tensions and potentially contradictory discourses, it is possible for TVET colleges to negotiate the precarious path between the two competing goals. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to recognise the tensions in order to prevent conceptual confusion and actual unwanted outcomes. However, further empirical studies need to be conducted to examine how, in actual, pragmatic terms, this complex balance plays itself out in multiple practices with varying consequences.
- ItemAn exploration of leadership practices in enacted a curriculum policy platform in working class secondary schools(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12) Terhoven, Rene B.; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. Education Policy StudiesENGLISH ABSTRACT : It can be argued that South African schools, particularly those in working class contexts, are struggling to contend with the challenges of curriculum reform. These curriculum reforms, which were introduced in an attempt to alleviate past injustices, are arguably not providing equal educational opportunities for all. Based primarily on their students’ poor results on tests and examinations, schools in working class contexts are labeled as underperforming or dysfunctional schools by the Department of Education (DoE). Consequently, this negative positioning of many working class schools places huge pressure on the principals and School Management Teams (SMTs) of these schools. Based on qualitative research in three selected working class schools, the thesis explores how curriculum policy plays out in working class secondary schools by focusing on the leadership practices enacted by their School Management Teams. The research concentrates on how these SMTs develop and implement a range of leadership practices within their schools in order to enact a curriculum policy platform for optimal teaching and learning. Employing Stephen Ball’s theory of policy enactment, the study is an illustration of how the contexts of working class schools impact on the type of leadership practices that are enacted, which, in turn, impact the type of curriculum policy platform that is constructed. A key conceptual assumption of the study is the view that policy enactment is regarded as a process of ‘becoming’ and not as something fixed or with predetermined outcomes within a school. This thesis elucidates how curriculum policy is received by the formal leadership structure of the school, and shaped and implemented in the ‘messy’ reality of selected working class schools in the process of enacting a curriculum policy platform. The thesis focuses on the processes, mediations and meanings of curriculum policy in selected working class secondary schools. I present the argument that the enactment of leadership practices by the selected schools’ SMTs are fundamentally impacted and determined by the schools’ ‘materiality’ and discursive constructions. Their leadership practices, based on narrow and one-dimensional enactment of the curriculum policy, have negative and uneven consequences for these schools’ curriculum and teaching and learning offerings.
- ItemThe identities and practices of school administrative clerks in selected schools in the Western Cape(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-04) Bayat, Abdullah; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: School administrative clerks are a category of educational worker that is normally overlooked by those doing research on schools. These workers are also ubiquitously underappreciated in school discourses. There is a lack of research on the identities and practices of administrative clerks which is the specific focus of this thesis. This thesis aims to address this knowledge gap in the literature. Therefore the research questions addressed in this thesis were: (1) how are school administrative clerks’ identities and practices constituted? (2) what are school administrative clerks contributions to the functioning of schools? The research questions were answered by conducting a qualitative study that involved interviewing and observing three purposively chosen school administrative clerks as well as conducting document analysis of policy documents. The analysis of the data was written up in four articles, each employing theoretical frameworks apposite for the analysis that it pursued. The articles variously addressed the way in which school administrative clerks’ identities and practices are negotiated. They provided insight into their professional contributions in their worksites. This is a thesis by articles. It consists of six chapters. The introductory wraparound chapter is followed by four articles, which constitute the four middle chapters of the thesis. These four academic articles have been published in, or submitted for publication to, different journals. Chapter six is the conclusion chapter. The insights gained from the four articles were that the administrative clerks’ identities and practices were constituted by their exercise of agency. They enacted what I regarded as a form of ‘subordinated agency’. The first article suggests that their reflexive agency resulted in spatial practices that made a contribution to their schools’ management and teaching practices. The second article suggests that administrative clerks’ rhetorical agency was established through their careful and tactful negotiation of rhetorical spaces in order to exercise their voice. They accomplished this through their resistance to the rhetorical norms of the school. The third article argues that they enacted an ethical agency which was instantiated through their quest for self-transformation which led to professional practices that had considerable positive consequences for the school. The fourth article posits that their accumulation of information and relational resources translated into a form of participatory capital that laid the foundation for their agency. It is through the deployment of their participatory capital that they exercised their agency to fashion unique professional identities. The conclusion of the thesis is that agency plays a significant role in the way that school administrative clerks’ identities, practices and their contribution to their school spaces are instantiated. School administrative clerks’ identities and practices are constituted by the subordinated agency that they are able to marshal within the professional spaces of their work environments. It is this subordinated agency that propels the administrative clerks’ daily creative boundary crossings between their school management practices on the one hand and their broader educational practices on the other hand. The study thus presents an analysis of their incisive professional contribution in spite of their putative subordinated status.
- ItemDie konstruering van hoerskool leerders se leerpraktyke binne 'n werkersklaswoonbuurt(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-03) Fillies, Henry; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study focuses on the learning practice construction of selective poor learners in their rural workers class context. The construction of learners’ learning practices in their neighbourhood context is a complex process of confluence, and largely depends on their context-specific perceptions and conceptualisation. In the South African educational environment, learners’ academic achievement is generally seen as a barometer of the quality of education in schools. From a sociological perspective, this study focuses on how high-school learners in a working-class neighbourhood construct their learning practice amidst their particular community dynamics. The study uses the analytical lens of space in order to investigate the underlying relationship between youth development and the youths’ construction of their learning practices in their neighbourhood context. It emphasises learners’ life experiences in their residential space (the neighbourhood) in the construction of their learning practices. This is an important focus in order to explore the dynamic relationship between learners’ spatial living dynamics and how they navigate within their neighbourhood in order to construct their learning practices. The study focuses on how the students experience the neighbourhood in relation to their learning practices, and how these aspects manifest in the shaping of their learning practices. Also key to the study is the learners’ socialisation processes with regard to their learning practices. Qualitative research instruments, such as field notes, participatory and non-participatory observations as well as formal and informal interviews, were used to answer the research question and achieve the research objectives of the thesis. The findings are presented in narrative format according to relevant themes, and are also analysed on a narrative basis. The study’s primary point of departure is that there is a unique relationship between these learners’ living contexts and how they construct and position their learning practices within this context. I place this study within the qualitative interpretative paradigm, as I attempt to describe and understand how these learners [un]consciously draw from practices and interactions in their living context to shape their lerning practices. Qualitative research instruments, such as field notes, participatory and non-participatory observations as well as formal and informal interviews, were used to answer the research question and achieve the research objectives of the thesis. The findings are presented in narrative format according to relevant themes, and are also analysed on a narrative basis. The research shows how the students – based on their own resources, networks and interactions as well as their own agency – position themselves in relation to their learning practices in order to construct their learning practices. In this way, the study reveals how the participating learners draw from the practices out of their doxa and habituated dispositions to construct their emergent learning practices in their living spaces (neighbourhood) – in order to give content to their learning practices.
- ItemDie opvoedkundige navigasiepraktyke van leerders in 'n landelike laerskoolkonteks in beleerde omstandighede(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-12) Heynes, Kim; Fataar, Aslam; Joorst, Jerome; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Education reform has been negotiated in complex ways in the South African context for more than two decades. The history of education in South Africa forms an important part of our socialisation and life approaches as citizens of the country, but specifically as individuals embedded in various educational communities within specific geographical contexts. This study examines the educational navigation practices of five primary school learners in a Stellenbosch rural farm context. Their educational navigation practices were explored by focusing on their use of their cultural and educational resources, specially how they constructed their aspirant educational pathways amidst their impoverished family context on the farms and in their schools. Given the limitations that the farm context as a social and educational ‘field’ imposes on them, these learners use various techniques to mediate the harsh circumstances of their living environments. To explore these learners' mediation of their educational pathways, I draw on the theoretical tools provided by Pierre Bourdieu, especially his concepts 'field', 'habitus' and 'capital'. I proceed to show how the learners make habitus shifts in their constrained field that enable them to build learning identities to counteract the limitations of the field, thereby opening a viable, yet complex, educational path. The study on which this thesis was based is founded on a multi-spatial ethnographic and interpretive methodological approach. I explored how the learners continue to show agency despite the limitations set. These learners show that they are active mediators of their context. They are active collaborators and speak against the structures of their life contexts. The thesis argues that the learners were able to build an educational pathway for themselves as foot soldiers of a two decade-old apartheid differentiation.
- ItemThe place-making pedagogical practices of teachers in an inclusive high school(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Rinquest, Elzahn; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH SUMMARY : This thesis explores the place-making pedagogical practices of six high school teachers at their special-needs school. The study investigates a link between space and identity, which provides a conceptual platform to investigate how teachers go about conceptualising their place-making in their school, with a specific focus on their pedagogical practices. The investigation focuses on understanding the historical unfolding of the school's institutional culture, how teachers position themselves with respect to the dominant discourses and culture at the school, and how they ‘made their place’ through their pedagogical practices outside of and in their classrooms. The theoretical framework is founded on Lefebvre's theory (1971/1991) on the production of space, which conceptualises the interaction of the physical, social and mental dimensions of space. I develop Lefebvre’s theory by using Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus and Nespor’s (1997) theory related to bodies in space in order to research the specific practices of the selected teachers at the school. These conceptual lenses allowed me explore the specific culture of the school within its context and the subjective pedagogical practices of the teachers. This study is situated within the interpretivist paradigm and utilised an ethnographic research approach that produced findings based on qualitative data. Data were collected over a school year through the use of extensive participant observations as well as unstructured and semi-structured interviews. My findings reveal that the historically unfolding institutional culture of the school positioned the school and its teachers in specific ways. The school expressed its Afrikaans, Christian, ‘white tone’ through the ‘unwritten rules’ prevalent in its daily operations and its prestige as a leading specialneeds institution in South Africa. I argue that a discourse of managerialism had come to characterise the school’s adapted institutional tone, made up of the managerial practices associated with the institutional functioning of the school. The school’s institutional culture provided the context within which the agents (teachers) acted as active participants in the place-making processes at the school. Subsequently, as the teachers come immersed in the institutional culture, they activate facets of their accumulated dispositions and skills to establish their professional identities. Issues of class, race and age significantly impacted on each of the participating teachers’ personal and professional socialising processes, situating each in different ways in the school. I argue that these teachers project and express particular professional subjectivities that resulted from how they understood their place and expressed themselves in the school. The teachers repositioned themselves vis-à-vis the institutional culture through their individualised ways of acting and living in the school. Finally, the selected teachers established their place-making pedagogical practices within the limits of the institutional culture and their specific subjectivities in making a place at the school and in their classrooms. I argue that responding constructively to students’ special educational needs depends on the ability of the teacher to establish a teacher subjectivity that would enable them to embrace the challenge to teach to the wide variety of students in this inclusive special-needs school.
- ItemDie selfgeskoolde habitus van jeugdiges op 'n plattelandse dorp(2013-12) Joorst, Jerome; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In a post apartheid South African educational environment, learners’ academic achievement is generally seen as a barometer of the quality of education in schools. The low academic performance of black learners has contributed to an overall, but narrow and decontextualised view, that these learners generally produce poor results because of something inherently wrong with their abilities to learn. Educational research has hitherto focused on unproblematized pedagogical approaches that result in narrow and decontextualized, functionalist views that working class learners’ learning is problematic. What is less known are the challenges that working class learners have to face on a daily basis as they try to navigate deeply constraint lived spaces of their homes, communities and schools in their quest to realise their educational goals. The study explores selected working class high school learners’ navigation and mediation practices as they engage with their schooling over different spaces of their rural town. I assert that these learners have the ability to shift their habitus just enough to enable them to stay on course in their quest for educational achievement and a better future. I argue that, through the optimal utilisation of available resources in their lived spaces and the strategic deployment of embodied adaptive practices, these youth develop a ‘self-schooled’ habitus that enable them to re-imagine their daily realities and aspire to better futures despite their adverse living conditions. In order to study these learners’ habitus adaptations, I utilise Bourdieu’s theoretical lenses of field, capital and habitus to argue that the youth in this study are not mere passive recipients of global influences and changing environments, but active agents in the shaping of their local realities. Through ethnographic study I explore the self- schooled navigation practices that these youth employ to help them mediate between the structural reproductive influences of their educational environments and their educational aspirations. The thesis is motivated by the position that qualitative research can offer a view of the intersections of fast changing macro-community processes and young people’s micro-lived educational dimensionalities.
- ItemSkoolhoofde se leierskapspraktyke met betrekking tot die skepping van ruimte by hul skole(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12) Burger, Johann Richards Vivian; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. Education Policy StudiesENGLISH ABSTRACT : This study provides an analysis of how two principals, through their leadership and spatial practices, create productive learning environments. It uses Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triade, namely “physical space”, “mental space” and “social space” to investigate how the principals integrate these three dimensions of space in order to create healthy learning environments. The focus of this research is how the two selected principals, who are acknowledged as successful spatial producers, use their transformational leadership skills to acquire the commitment and cooperation of their school management teams and school governing bodies, in order to obtain support for their spatial and other projects. They put structures and systems in place that promote good working relationships between the managerial and governing components of their schools, preventing them from working independently (in silos) at their schools. The geographical contexts of the two principals differ from one another. One school is situated and operates in a rural area, while the other is in an urban area. The conceptual question therefore focuses on how the principals produce school space in two different geographical areas, with the aim of influencing users' thinking, their minds, inspiration, motivation, behaviour and creativity. The study looks at the extent to which the geographical and distinctive contexts influence the outcomes of the production of learning environments. This study further aimed to determine the "natural" leadership style of the principals, by measuring it against Leithwood and Jantzi’s (2006) Nine-dimensional Transformational Leadership Model, and by using Lefebvre’s (1991) conceptual and analytical lenses, observing how they go about producing inviting and inspiring learning environments. The data were collected by using semistructured one-on-one interviews, allowing the principals to contextualise how they produced space at their schools, how they experienced it, and how their biographies influenced it. A focus group meeting and observations were used to verify data obtained in this way. Based on Lefebvre's spatial triad, the analysis of the data revealed that the principals produced space instinctively or intuitively, creating what they believed would make a difference in the lives of their learners and educators, resulting in their schools benefiting from it. The main research finding is that each of the two principals follows a transformational leadership style, and instinctively or intuitively produces space that encourages professional interaction between their educators, as well as gaining strong collegial support for their spatial changes and projects. The other important findings, however, about the embodied or social spaces in the schools, are that the two principals have transformed the physical spaces at their schools into new mental spaces, influencing the perceptions, thinking, mind, behaviour and motivation of the users of that space.
- ItemTrans-local habitus : high school students mediation of their educational success at a Focus School(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-10) Domingo-Salie, Nazli; Fataar, Aslam; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. Education Policy StudiesENGLISH ABSTRACT : Against the backdrop of school reform in South Africa, this dissertation analyses the practices of selected mobile students who accomplished their education ‘on the move’ between their working-class domestic environment and the dissonant terrain of the Focus School situated in a middle-class suburb. This study describes the navigational practices of the four students in their establishment of a successful educational path. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of practice, habitus and field, augmented by Urry’s theory of mobility, this dissertation discusses the shifts and changes that the four students made as they moved between their domestic environments and the Focus School in order to access quality schooling. This study is based on qualitative data from in-depth, semi-structured interviews which are used to illustrate the navigation practices of the four students as they develop successful educational subjectivities – a trans-local habitus –as they move from their domestic locations to the new terrain of the Focus School. The study uses the analytical lens of trans-locality to explore how the four students shifted and adapted their educational subjectivities, developed social competency and established subjectivities that enabled them to become successful students at the Focus School. I argue that it is possible for historically disadvantaged, rural and township students to adapt to and meet the academic and behavioural standards of a new school context in the middle-class environment, and that they do this by establishing a trans-local habitus. Acquiring a trans-local habitus enables them to successfully shift and adapt their subjectivity ‘on the move’ across different contexts. A successful trans-local habitus is thus one that allows the individual, via their navigation across different field contexts, to successfully change or adapt their dispositions to the rules and regularities of the new field context. This study illustrates, therefore, the navigational bases upon which the four students transact their school-going experiences, in effect shifting their ‘habitus on the move’, as they figure out ways of achieving school success.
- ItemDie verwerkliking van die neoliberale diskoerse in die leierskappraktyke van plattelandse skoolhoofde(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-12) Spies, Jacobus Johannes; Fataar, Aslam; Heystek, Jan; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study offers an analysis of the realization of the neoliberal discourses in the leadership practices of rural school headmasters. It is a Bourdieuian study of leadership in the rural context in relation to the influence of neoliberalism. The focus of this study is the manner in which neoliberalism manifests itself in the leadership practices of headmasters functioning within a specific geographical context, namely a rural village. The conceptual question therefore focuses on the endeavour made by the headmasters with the manifestation of the neoliberal discourses in the leadership practises of the headmasters in question. The point of reference of this study is that neoliberalism positions schools to function in a distinct way as the logic of the market, privatisation, deregulation and the individual's freedom of choice of school are manifested in the school as field. A further outcome of neoliberalism is that a particular leadership practice namely managerialism, use of data, efficiency, performativity and a focus on outcomes and achievements in the school is established in the field and proffered as norm. The discursive function of neoliberalism in the school as field has a direct impact on the leadership practices of headmasters as it effects a distinct logic of practice which endeavours to influence the headmaster’s leadership habitus in a certain way. Furthermore it tends to influence the headmasters reason to act directly in the form of policy changes and indirectly when proposed as the norm or standard of practice. In this study Bourdieu’s conceptual lenses of habitus, field, capital, strategy and practice are employed as comprehensive theoretical background and analytical lenses. The aim of this study is to understand what the neoliberal discourses entail, to interpret how they manifest themselves in the leadership practices of rural headmasters and to establish the consequences for the headmasters. The data was gathered by means of semi-structured one-on-one interviews during which each headmaster was granted the opportunity to contextualise in his own words, his experience of the effect that neoliberalism discourse has on his leadership practice in his particular rural school. The data of the twelve transcribed interviews (with the use of Atlas.ti computer programme) was coded by selecting segments of the primary documents to which codes were accordingly linked. By applying Bourdieu’s conceptual framework of habitus, field, capital and practice as “super codes”, the data was dealt with thematically and organised accordingly.This study offers an analysis of the realization of the neoliberal discourses in the leadership practices of rural school headmasters. It is a Bourdieuian study of leadership in the rural context in relation to the influence of neoliberalism. The focus of this study is the manner in which neoliberalism manifests itself in the leadership practices of headmasters functioning within a specific geographical context, namely a rural village. The conceptual question therefore focuses on the endeavour made by the headmasters with the manifestation of the neoliberal discourses in the leadership practises of the headmasters in question. The point of reference of this study is that neoliberalism positions schools to function in a distinct way as the logic of the market, privatisation, deregulation and the individual's freedom of choice of school are manifested in the school as field. A further outcome of neoliberalism is that a particular leadership practice namely managerialism, use of data, efficiency, performativity and a focus on outcomes and achievements in the school is established in the field and proffered as norm. The discursive function of neoliberalism in the school as field has a direct impact on the leadership practices of headmasters as it effects a distinct logic of practice which endeavours to influence the headmaster’s leadership habitus in a certain way. Furthermore it tends to influence the headmasters reason to act directly in the form of policy changes and indirectly when proposed as the norm or standard of practice. In this study Bourdieu’s conceptual lenses of habitus, field, capital, strategy and practice are employed as comprehensive theoretical background and analytical lenses. The aim of this study is to understand what the neoliberal discourses entail, to interpret how they manifest themselves in the leadership practices of rural headmasters and to establish the consequences for the headmasters. The data was gathered by means of semi-structured one-on-one interviews during which each headmaster was granted the opportunity to contextualise in his own words, his experience of the effect that neoliberalism discourse has on his leadership practice in his particular rural school. The data of the twelve transcribed interviews (with the use of Atlas.ti computer programme) was coded by selecting segments of the primary documents to which codes were accordingly linked. By applying Bourdieu’s conceptual framework of habitus, field, capital and practice as “super codes”, the data was dealt with thematically and organised accordingly. An analysis of the data revealed that the manifestation of neoliberalism results in the headmaster increasingly having to play a dual role namely that of manager plus that of professional educationist. The leadership skills or practises associated with those two roles are not always compatible. The latter places principals in a very difficult position where, on the one hand they are expected to act as Representative of the Department of Education (in which neoliberal ideas increasingly function), while on the other hand, as professional educationist, the logic behind these practices and its educational accountability may be questioned. Headmasters, however, despite the fact that neoliberalism seeks to enforce a uniform system upon them, respond in a unique, diverse manner to the manifestation of the neoliberal discourses in their leadership practices.