Monthly Archives: February 2014

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the fifth interview in the series. Johan Muller is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Education at UCT. 

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

 Short answer – by accident. I did my Masters in Organisational Psychology, discovered pretty quickly I didn’t want to work for Anglo, studied in Leiden where I drifted into sociology. First academic job back was in psychology at Turfloop (now Limpopo), when fate lent a hand: A mate of mine asked me whether I didn’t fancy coming to Wits to lecture in Education, about which I knew virtually nothing. To my amazement I was offered a job, teaching social/ educational theory. (He then went farming). This was the middle of the dismal 1980s and politics intervened, I became involved with the NECC, headed the first Education Policy Unit at Wits and never looked back. When UCT offered me a chair in education, I still had only my Masters in psychology. Does that say something about UCT or about education? (Don’t worry, I did the PhD since).

 2)   What does your average week look like?

 Ah well now, I’m retired, so I spend a lot of time reading, writing, and talking to the passing graduate student. I do odd jobs for Higher Education South Africa and UCT’s Research Office, and various universities around the country. Can’t complain.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick two or three that have been especially influential for you which two or three would they be and why?

Althusser’s ISA article lifted the lid on the deviousness of culture and its connivance with education; Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks told me you could get into trouble if you took policy too seriously; Durkheim’s work on religion showed me that science was religion (the ‘sacred’) by other, vastly more sophisticated, means; and Bernstein’s work tied a knot in it all that I haven’t been inclined to undo, and that proves vastly generative for me, day by day.

Not many educators in that list, you might say, but not many educators write very well, or with the combination of wit and passion that the above do. Reminds me why education was not my first choice. But I’ve learnt not to hold that against the learners bent on epistemic ascent.

  4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

I consider my field to be sociology of education (that’s the discipline) and curriculum and educational policy as the applied domains. So the most important sociologists have to be Bernstein (experiencing a resurgence of interest), Bourdieu, currently Andrew Abbott and Randall Collins. These are important because all of them have written synoptically about how education ‘works’ in the social body of the nation state. Then more directly education, Stephen Ball, Steve Raudenbusch, David Cohen, all of whom are smarter and more interesting than many others. Then there’s Martin Carnoy … and a longer list. My own focus is on knowledge, which shears me off a little from the mainstream.

 5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

 We have no idea what it will take to make knowledgeable teachers out of clueless ones, at least not while they are actually on-the-job. And I think the neurosciences will pretty soon say some surprising things to the educational enterprise, but I know of no-one in this country working there.

  6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

 Write that book!

  7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

  Teachers, teachers and teachers. And, unlike most of my colleagues, I don’t think it’s what the teachers can’t do that matters; it’s what they don’t know that makes the critical difference. (Of course those are connected).

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

 Law, probably, that’s what my mother wanted me to do. Or writing novels.

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

 Look, if 5% of educators said they were fans I’d be surprised. We’re natural Luddites, you see. But technology is going to advance very quickly, and prostheses that are some sort of extension of our brains is just around the corner.

 10) If you were given a R5million research grant what would you use it for?

 Doing neuro-social investigations of kids that succeed against the odds.

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I have included a few of Joe’s articles below and a full list of his research can be found here,

• Engagements with engagement: a response to Martin Hall. Community Engagement in South African Higher Education. Kagisano No 6, January 2010.
• (with Michael Young) Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge. European Journal of Education, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2010, Part I.
• (with Ursula Hoadley) Codes, pedagogy and knowledge Advances in Bernsteinian sociology of education . In M. Apple, S. Ball & L. Gandin (eds) 2010, The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Forms of knowledge and curriculum coherence. Journal of Education and Work Vol. 22, No. 3, July 2009, 205–226.

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Some of the other academics/policy-makers on my “to-interview” list include Servaas van der Berg, Martin Gustafsson, Thabo Mabogoane, Veronica McKay, Hamsa Venkatakrishnan, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Eric Atmore, Linda Biersteker, Jonathan Jansen and Jon Clark. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the fourth interview in the series. Ursula Hoadley is an Associate Professor at UCT’s School of Education. 

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

 I did a teacher training diploma after my degree, unsure of where I was headed, but wanting a qualification that would guarantee me a job. In the course of the Diploma I did a module on the sociology of education. I was absolutely transfixed. The lecturer (Dave Gilmour, who is now a colleague in the School of Ed at UCT) showed us the British documentary 7-Up, and thus began my interest in the relation between education and class, it’s reproductive processes and later, how to think about interruption. After the diploma I went straight on to do a Masters. I taught for a short period and then was offered a position on a research project based at UCT, part of the President’s Education Initiative study which was the first attempt at a systematic investigation of classrooms in South Africa.

 2)   What does your average week look like?

Spread between teaching, working with post grad students, research, admin and work with people and agencies outside my institution, like Equal Education Law Centre, UMALUSI, the fabulous Stellenbosch economics crew…! I try to run three times a week, and my university job is sandwiched by my other (wonderful) job – my 3 and 5 year olds.

 3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick two or three that have been especially influential for you which two or three would they be and why?

Very hard to answer this question. There have been many. The foundational sociology texts were fundamental to my thinking about education – especially Durkheim and Marx. Durkheim’s “Division of Labour in Society” and “Elementary Forms of Religious Life” especially provided a particular way of thinking about education as the specialisation of consciousness, a social process whereby the “outside” (society) becomes “inside” (to the individual consciousness). Basil Bernstein’s work opened up for me the abiding question in my own research  – why does schooling fail the working class? His work has been the most influential on my own work, because of the concerns but also because the theory is so generative in relation to empirical elaboration. There have also been a number of particularly influential texts in education: Dan Lortie’s ‘School Teacher’. This book completely fascinated me in its account of a systematic sociological analysis of teachers in the US. Who they are, why they are there, where do they come from etc. I’ve always wanted to do a replication of this type of study in South Africa. David Labarree: How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. His historical/sociology analyses of education systems and their evolution is great.

 4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

I like the bloggers and tweeters, like Diane Ravich and Doron Isaacs. You’re good like this too. Up to the minute responses to things that are going on, that are critical and thoughtful.

  5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

I think one is our teachers. I have wanted for a long time to do a study along the lines of Lortie (see above) – which uncovers who our teachers are, why they are there, how long they stay, what they read… I don’t think we clearly understand why teachers do the things they do in the classroom (and these are quite enduring things, that have some uniformity across similar contexts). Part of understanding that is understanding why and how teachers come to be in the classroom in the first place.

  6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

Read thinkers in the original. Don’t rely on secondary texts. I remember reading a lot about Durkheim, the division of labour etc. and then finally reading Durkheim in his own words. The ideas are very different in the original, generally more interesting and engaging and I find they stay in the mind. He writes beautifully. Like a very sophisticated old gentleman.

  7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

Overshoot, overambitious plans. Why is a pre Grade R even being proposed at the point at which we can barely afford Grade R and have so little capacity in the system to deliver quality there? Why are we proposing a third compulsory language when we don’t have sufficient skilled language teachers, nor enough good texts, to teach a first and second? We need to be more modest in our goals.

The second is a lack of differentiation within the system. We can’t have the same plan for every school and every university. This is hard, but trying to hit all nails with the same hammer is buggering up the coffin… or something like that…

 8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

  A documentary film maker. I have no idea whether I would be any good at it, but I have a fascination for the way an unusual or specific issue phenomenon is considered visually, and an argument constructed through film. I would love translating the research involved into an angle with an aesthetic.

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

  Total skeptic, as you well know!

 10) If you were given a R5million research grant what would you use it for?

 A Lortie-style Sociology of teachers in South Africa study…

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Some of Ursula’s recent research can be found below:

• Hoadley, U. (2012). What do we know about teaching and learning in South Afrcan primary schools? Education as Change.

• Hoadley, U. (2012). Vermittlungsstrategien und soziale Reproduktion Ein Analysemodell. In: Gellert, U. (Ed.) Zur Soziologie des Unterrichts. Arbeiten mit Basil Bernsteins Theorie des pädagogischen Diskurses. Weinheim: Juventa Verlag

• Muller, J. & Hoadley, U. (2012, forthcoming). Knowledge mobilisation in South Africa. In B. Levin (Ed.), Knowledge Mobilisation in Education. Policy Press.

• Gamble, J. & Hoadley, U. (2011). Positioning the regulative. In: G. Ivinson & B. Davies. Bernstein’s sociology of knowledge: New developments, new possibilities, thinking outside the frame. London: Routledge.

• Hoadley, U. (2011). Knowledge, knowers and knowing: Curriculum reform in South Africa (pp. 139-154). In L. Yates & M. Grumet (eds.) Curriculum in Today’s World: configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics. Routledge.
• See here for a full list of her publications.

Some of the other academics/policy-makers on my “to-interview” list include Servaas van der Berg, Martin Gustafsson, Veronica McKay, Hamsa Venkatakrishnan, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Eric Atmore, Linda Biersteker, Jonathan Jansen and Jon Clark. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the third interview in the series.

Dr Stephen Taylor is currently an advisor and researcher in the Director General’s office of the national Department of Basic Education in South Africa.

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

 After finishing school my interests lay mainly in the social sciences, so I decided to major in Political Science, Philosophy and Economics. I also did History and English at university. Upon finishing undergraduate studies it seemed to me that economics offered the widest range of applied career alternatives, so I felt that a BComm Honours degree in Economics was sensible.  One year goes by fast and so it seemed easy to continue with a one-year coursework Masters  in Economics.  Here I first was exposed to education through Professor Servaas van der Berg’s Economics of Education course.  At the end of a Masters Degree in Economics I felt that I had the perspective acquired through studies in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, but I felt that I still lacked a marketable skill.  So I thought hard about doing a postgrad LLB and even teaching, but in the end I decided to start out on a PhD focussing on the role of education in South Africa’s economic development.  The advantage of this topic was the quality of supervision available and that it was an applied issue – something very relevant in South Africa and in which a lot of work is already being done.  It was only really during my PhD that I learnt applied research skills, especially how to do survey data analysis.  In the context of increasing availability of nationally and internationally representative education data, these skills were enormously empowering and opened up powerful ways to contribute to education research.  After finishing my PhD in 2010 I continued to work in the RESEP group at Stellenbosch until in September 2011 I got an invitation to work in the national Department of Basic Education as an advisor and researcher in the office of the Director General.  I have been there since then, and have really enjoyed the policy environment, being able to assist in building internal technical capacity and I seem to have managed to continue with interesting academic work as well.

2)   What does your average week look like?

 I probably spend about 2 hours a week training others with the DBE (especially on data analysis and evaluation methods); about 8 hours a week in meetings where my role is mainly to give technical advice on projects such as running surveys and working with external service providers on research projects; about 8 hours working with raw data to respond to specific information queries or to form the basis of more academic research; about 6 hours writing academic papers or policy-oriented reports/briefs; about 6 hours on more administrative things such as responding to emails; about 5 hours reading; about 3 hours disseminating research and recommendations through presentations; and also some time these days on research project design (writing proposals, applications for funding, etc).  I think that gets me close to 40 hours.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick two or three that have been especially influential for you which two or three would they be and why?

 I’ll say the combined work of Esther Duflo, Abijhit Banerjee and Michael Kremer (and their collaborators), who through many experimental research projects in developing countries have shed considerable light on what works and what doesn’t work in schools that are attended by the poor.  Their book “Poor Economics” is an accessible read and has an exciting chapter on education, drawing on many of their experiences and specific research projects.  For a very short but comprehensive account of the sort of lessons this strand of work is producing, see this paper in Science, here.

4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

Same as above: Esther Duflo, Abijhit Banerjee and Michael Kremer

5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

 We know incredibly little about what works to improve learning in the schools we have.  But let me pick one specific area:  What teacher support strategies actually work so that they change practice and consequently learning outcomes?

6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

 “A PhD is just an academic exercise.”  There is a temptation, especially with a PhD, to want to change the world through your research, but that can leave one feeling insignificant and actually keep you from making progress.  The important thing is to keep learning through doing research, and hopefully over time you will make a contribution.

7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

 Diagnosis:  The fundamental problem in the school system is that as children progress through the school system not enough learning is happening in each year.  Put differently, learning trajectories are too flat. The problem is especially acute in the early grades where basic literacy and numeracy skills are not being acquired in time.  This leads to massive learning deficits which is the main cause of dropping out of school in grades 10 and 11.

Solution: Part 1: Address the root of the problem by coming up with a well-researched intervention in the Foundation Phase, which addresses both teacher capability and motivation. The challenge will be to design an intervention that avoids the typical implementation trappings of working within the large and decentralised system, by for example involving support from non-departmental actors, but that can also realistically be implemented at scale.

Solution Part 2: The reality is that we will not solve the root problem overnight and we have many children in the Intermediate Phase and early secondary school who have accumulated learning deficits.  We need to address these deficits through effective remedial interventions in order to help them cope with the grade-specific curriculum, which assumes earlier foundations are in place.  Here one should design, evaluate and implement an intervention such as afternoon classes focussed on foundational skills like reading, holiday learning camps or waiving the curriculum for a term to administer an intensive catch-up programme.  I would also take the opportunity while sitting next to the Minister to express support for the three major interventions under her leadership – CAPS, Annual National Assessments and the DBE Workbooks – which were the kinds of recommendations many of us were making 4 years ago.  These interventions need to be built on.  There is much room for improvement in their implementation and in the ways in which they can be used further.

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

 Okay, here comes a change in tone.  I have often considered law as well as teaching in high schools.  But right now, I think I’d consider devoting more time to be involved in Christian church work, specifically in planting new churches.  Why?! I really do believe in God, as revealed in the Bible and in the person of Jesus.  I am convinced that the message about Jesus, which is essentially an invitation to know him, is just as important and relevant as ever. And I believe local churches are a primary way in which God has chosen to reach out to people with this message.

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

I’m a sceptic until I see a well developed concept that is feasible in terms of cost and the South African context, integrated into an instructional regime, and rigorously shown to positively impact on learning outcomes.

10) If you were given a R5million research grant what would you use it for?

I am currently trying to raise roughly this amount for a research project about how to improve early grade reading acquisition.  So to be consistent, I’ll say that I would use the money to implement this research project.  It uses a Randomised Evaluation methodology to rigorously measure the impact of 3 alternative reading interventions in combination with some qualitative research methods (mainly classroom observation) to answer the “why” questions.  You can read a short summary of this research proposal, which is already partly funded, here.

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Links to some of Stephen’s recent Working Papers are included below:

• Taylor, S & Coetzee, M. (2013) Estimating the impact of language of instruction in South African primary schools: A fixed effects approach
• Gustafsson, M & Taylor, S. (2013) Treating schools to a new administration. The impact of South Africa’s 2005 provincial boundary changes on school performance
• Taylor, S. (2013) The impact of study guides on matric performance
• Taylor, S & Spaull, N. (2013) The effects of rapidly expanding primary school access on effective learning: The case of Southern and Eastern Africa since 2000
• Spaull, N & Taylor, S (2012) “Effective enrolment” – Creating a composite measure of educational access and educational quality to accurately describe education system performance in sub-Saharan Africa
• Taylor, S. (2011) Uncovering indicators of effective school management in South Africa using the National School Effectiveness Study

Some of the other academics/policy-makers on my “to-interview” list include Servaas van der Berg, Martin Gustafsson, Veronica McKay, Hamsa Venkatakrishnan, Ursula Hoadley, Volker Wedekind, John Kruger, Eric Atmore, Linda Biersteker, Jonathan Jansen and Jon Clark. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.

The aim of the Q&A series is to get an inside look into some of South Africa’s leading education academics, policy-makers and activists. This is the second interview in the series. 

Brahm Fleisch is currently a professor at the  Wits School of Education and head of the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies center

1)   Why did you decide to go into education and how did you get where you are?

In my first year of university (in the USA), I studied mathematics.  It became clear midway through the year that although I had been a good mathematics student in high school, university was a different story.  At the same time I began to get involved in anti-apartheid politics and slowly gravitated away from the sciences, ending up doing more politics and philosophy courses, eventually majoring in history and philosophy.  During my final year I was a little anxious that I would graduate without a marketable ‘skill’.  I saw on one of the notice boards a flyer offering students an opportunity to earn a temporary teacher ‘license’ simply by successfully completing ten weeks of teaching practice.

I spent the first year teaching in an excellent high school in Ithaca, NY.  I found the town a bit small, and was keen to spend some time in the big city.  It seemed like a good idea at the time to enrol in a Masters programme, not really thinking about the longer term implications.  After getting a part-time  job in New York City in a policy unit dealing with education, I got really hooked into the field.

2)   What does your average week look like?

 A real mix.  I spend considerable time with administrative issues as the head of a division.  Mostly an hour sorting out emails in the morning and at least one meeting per day.  During the term, I spend up to three days a week teaching, preparing to teach, or consulting with students.  One full day is spent with my graduate students, and then I squeeze in research and reading and writing.  My best time of the year is January and early Feb, most productive research time.   One small note about the research time, a substantial number of hours goes into administrative aspects of research, eg. Fundraising, managing contracts, networking with stakeholders etc.

3)   While I’m sure you’ve read many books and articles in your career, if you had to pick two or three that have been especially influential for you which two or three would they be and why?

Impossible to answer.  Over the past few years I have been influenced by the work of David Cohen, Deborah Ball, Stephen Raudenbush, Richard Elmore.  They have fundamentally reoriented my thinking to pay attention to ‘instruction’.

4)   Who do you think are the current two or three most influential/eminent thinkers in your field and why?

The problem with the question is that while I read debates in the US, the issues and challenges in middle income/developing country contexts are substantially different.

5)   What do you think is the most under-researched area in South African education?

Overambitious curriculum, and the issues that Pritchett & Co have written about.  There continues to be a tendency to blame teachers, a lack of resources and learners background for educational failure, but my sense is that there are a host of issues related to ‘instruction’ that need careful and original study.

6)   What is the best academic advice you’ve been given?

While I was working in a soft-funded research unit in New York City, one of the senior researchers told me that I needed to think of academic life as thirds, one third fund-raising, one third doing the research and writing it up, and one third doing dissemination.  She didn’t do any teaching, but put research ‘work’ into perspective.

7)   If you ended up sitting next to the Minister of Education on a plane and she asked you what you think are the three biggest challenges facing South African education today, what would you say?

 She sits in First Class, and even if I did get an upgrade . . . . .

1. Getting the instructional programme right (instructional infrastructure, pitched at the right level with the right alignment and coherence)
2. Corruption (at school level, the buying of promotion posts, the requirement to pay cooldrink money to teachers, etc.)
3. Finding ways to create elite education within the public sector.

8)   If you weren’t in education what do you think you would be doing?

Farming

9)   Technology in education going forward – are you a fan or a sceptic?

 Sceptic.  Big sceptic.

10) If you were given a R5-million research grant what would you use it for?

I’d try to set up a small-scale Randomised Control Trial or counter-factual studies that provide robust evidence of initiatives or approaches that work.  R5m  would not go very far.

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Some of the other academics on my “to-interview” list include Servaas van der Berg, Martin Gustafsson, Veronica McKay, Hamsa Venkatakrishnan, Ursula Hoadley and Stephen Taylor. If you have any other suggestions drop me a mail and I’ll see what I can do.