Abstract
This article discusses the teaching and learning arrangements for matric learners at a township school. The school succeeded in preparing its matric learners adequately for the final matric examination, despite these learners’ exposure to conditions of multiple deprivation. The ecological systems theory by Bronfenbrenner and the self-efficacy theory of Bandura served as theoretical lenses for the qualitative study, as part of which individual interviews were conducted with the school management team, teachers teaching grade 12 learners, and grade 12 learners themselves. Research findings elicited details of learners’ debilitating home and environmental conditions and of the teaching and learning actions by the school management team and teachers to prepare matric learners adequately for the final examination. The opportunity to learn functions as a life buoy environment for learners. This environment provides holistic support to matric learners by means of extra classes and a study camp event two weeks before the final examination commences. The findings contribute to the discourse on successful learning and how this success is achieved in an environment of multiple deprivation.
Accountability for classroom achievement is mainly defined by academic outcomes in standardised tests. School leaders account for these outcomes by focusing on mission formulation, instructional programme management and school-learning culture promotion (Hallinger 2011:127). Teachers serve as co-managers in obtaining these outcomes by pursuing successful learning through effective teaching. The specific context determines the construction and implementation of specific teaching and learning actions, with cognisance of learners’ own input for success. Multiple deprivation represents a specific context characterised by poverty which inhibits opportunities and attainments in education and society. This results in sustained marginalisation, fuelled by school failure. One way of countering these circumstances is arranging contextually tailor-made opportunities for successful learning. These opportunities are based on teachers’ perseverance in ensuring that learning happens and on learners’ self-initiated responses to teacher input, regardless of family and environmental conditions that might threaten to hamper them.
Ecological systems theory explains learner development as reciprocal interaction between the individual learner and other human beings, objects and symbols in the immediate and distant environment (Bronfenbrenner 1979). This development is contingent on learners’ self-efficacy levels, which serve as a primary factor fuelling their own development. The four sources of information by which learners assess their self-efficacy capacity, namely performance accomplishment, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and emotional arousal, are dominated by performance accomplishment, as previous mastery encourages future accomplishment (Bandura 1997). Due to the interactive functioning of ecological systems, interaction between self-efficacy factors in learners’ maturing biology, their immediate family and community environment, and the societal landscape in which they are placed fuels and steers learners’ development.
Learner development in a multiple-deprived environment is inhibited by poverty, which is understood by means of five categories of deprivation with indicators for each category (Barnes, Noble, Wright and Dawes 2009:185). The category of material and income deprivation includes children living in households with no refrigerator for the safe storage of food, and no radio or television to access information. The category of deprivation due to unemployment includes children of households where no adults aged 18 or over are in employment. Education deprivation occurs in households where children in the age group 7 to 15 are not in school or are in the wrong school grade for their age. A lack of running water and electricity and crowded households where children share sleeping space with several persons of a different age or gender represents living environment deprivation. The category of adequate care deprivation includes children growing up in households where both the mother and the father are deceased, or where the mother and the father are not living with their children in the same household. These categories of deprivation negatively influence children’s development and increases the reliance on schools to expose children to consistency and regularity to acquire social skills and work attitudes for possible social mobility.
The three factors determining learners’ educational achievement are the quality of parenting, the quality of schooling, and the quality of the community culture within which children grow up (Barnes and Horsfall 2010:18). Although some children growing up in a context of deprivation achieve well at school due to sound family networks, many children are acutely exposed to deficient parenting, combined with debilitating community conditions. These children are dependent on effective schools where realistic mission formulation, constructive instructional programme management, and consistent learning culture promotion result in successful learning. Many deprived learners are exposed to constant noise within their homes and the external environment and this inhibits focused studying. To ensure a successful learning environment for these learners, the school management team and grade 12 teachers of the selected school established an away-from-township environment on the school premises. With this environment – consisting of extra classes on Saturday mornings during the first three school terms and on the mornings of one week in the April school holiday and two weeks in the July school holiday – learners receive holistic support on a regular basis. This holistic support entails emotional assistance with personal problems, the provision of a nutritious meal and the facilitation of core subject matter, the latter based on a timetable that prioritises challenging subjects. The extra classes conclude with a study camp event a fortnight before the final matric examination commences.
Holistic teaching in a supportive learning environment guides learners to interactive engagement with subject content, encouraging the positive functioning of the four sources of self-efficacy development. In this regard, supportive learning – through critical teaching prompting realistic expectations – ensures that learners from multiple-deprived environments achieve positive outcomes in the final matric examination. However, a score of 30% for some subjects (including languages) and an extended matric year for learners, many of whom have been promoted to subsequent grades despite failing, portray inferior attainment. Lowered efficacy expectations because of the protracted time taken to obtain a substandard pass mark impede diligent attainment of essential knowledge and skills. Even so, the opportunity to learn by means of a life buoy environment consisting of extra classes and a study camp provides receptive township learners with the possibility of social mobility, all based on examination success that is related to convincingly attaining essential knowledge and skills for potential employability. Questions remain about the extent to which this life buoy environment equips multiple-deprived learners with deep learning that can generate competence for further study and that may, ultimately, result in first-generation families with higher education qualifications. Answers are also needed about the extent to which this life buoy environment ensures the kind of deep learning that prepares deprived learners for further studies in challenging courses with training in scarce skills for high-status employment possibilities. Only when deep learning of such an extent is achieved will the perpetual marginalisation of learners from multiple-deprived environments be ended, despite the lack of both quality parenting and a community culture conducive to learning.
Keywords: holistic support; learning success; matric learners; multiple deprivation; poverty; self-efficacy; social mobility; teaching and learning actions; township environment