3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Exploring a culture of reading: a case study in an under-resourced South African primary school(2023-09) Claire, Biesman-SimonSouth Africa faces an undeniable literacy crisis. Since 2000, there have been increasing calls for the creation of a culture of reading to address this crisis. This has been on the part of the South African government, academia and civil society. However, this has occurred without clear consensus on the term’s meaning and with little explanation of how a poorly-defined concept with its origins in the Global North would achieve this outcome. How this term has achieved such national prominence and the ways it affects school practices motivated this research. The first phase of the study investigated how the term “culture of reading” functions in national government education discourse, and its impact on the country’s reading landscape. This was followed by an ethnographic-style case study exploring the factors that shaped a culture of reading at a no-fee primary school, situated on the Cape Flats in Cape Town. Drawing on a review of more than 400 South African, African and global texts that reference “culture of reading”, this study provides a definition of a culture of reading that is appropriate for the African context, and central to the analysis of this study. To investigate how the term “culture of reading” functions in government discourse, I performed a textual analysis of a corpus of 58 publicly available texts produced by the South African government from 2000 to 2019. The analysis reveals an uncritical faith in a culture of reading as fundamental to improved reading levels despite there being no clarity on the term’s meaning or evidence of tangible outcomes in learners’ reading achievement. Bourdieu’s notion of doxa is drawn on to demonstrate how the government’s consistent return to an ill-defined Global Northern ideal is indicative of a misunderstanding of what reading is and can achieve, and of a need to further grapple with the complexities of South Africa’s reading landscape. Approaching reading from a socio-cultural perspective, the ethnographic-style case study investigates how habitus, capital and field (Bourdieu, 1990b) interact to shape school reading practices, and how the resulting culture of reading is reflected in one school’s reading practices. The case study shows the contextual realities and conditions in the field that affect the promotion of a culture of reading. Data was generated from interviews with 51 participants, classroom and schoolwide observations, photo elicitation, and document reviews which were subjected to a thematic analysis. Findings indicate that despite the evident value that staff and most learners attribute to reading and their positive dispositions towards reading (i.e. their habitus), the school’s culture of reading is undermined by external and internal forces. This is most notably with regard to inappropriate curriculum demands, a multilingual learner body restricted to learning in English, the impact of a community fraught with violence, as well as a dysfunctional culture of teaching and learning that has resulted in a divided staff body and poor discipline. Bourdieu’s attention to how no field exists in isolation is demonstrated by educators’ battles to promote reading in an education field that does not account sufficiently for social, cultural and economic contextual realities. Data generated in the Grade 5 classroom evidenced that agentive educators, equipped with the necessary cultural capital, can construct a sub-field that supports a culture of reading in spite of these constraints. However, this is precarious, and findings from the Grade 1 classroom demonstrated how overlapping fields and a dysfunctional culture of teaching and learning constrained an experienced educator, impacting on her wellbeing. The study highlights that there are many ways in which schools and educators can navigate and overcome institutional constraints that threaten South African learners’ reading development. The research highlights the need for closer alignment between government’s expectations of schools and their contextual realities, with educators’ professional and emotional wellbeing needing to be prioritised. Recommendations for research include further investigation into learners’ home and community language and literacy practices and how these practices can be built on at school.Item The symbolic dimensions of wartime rape : a case study of Kamanyola Community, Bukavu/South-Kivu Province (Democratic republic of Congo).(2014-06-13) Karhikalembu, Alice MushagalusaTo understand the persistence of wartime rape that the DRC has experienced during the sixteen years old civil war, this study undertakes a critical analysis of the concept of ‘symbolic violence’ as proposed by Bourdieu. I have suggested that this concept [symbolic violence] as developed by Bourdieu needs other dimensions of definition in order to be applied to other social crises outside the western world. Shaping a link between wartime rape and its symbolic dimensions enables us to clearly articulate that the symbolic order brought through the practice of wartime rape by perpetrators does not remain unchallenged by the dominated who are direct and indirect victims of wartime rape. For this purpose, data were collected from ordinary community members, community leaders; a doctor and nurse form Panzi Hospital, an army General, a lawyer and some NGOs members working in the area of study (Kamanyola)through in-depth interviews. Observation and document analysis have also been used in the process of data collection. As a result the study found that wartime rape, at first, is a threat that perpetrators use to impose their own symbolic power upon males from the enemy groups through the rape of females from the same enemy groups. Therefore, this physical attack [war rape] against females impacts the victims as individuals, the community and the whole nation. This helps to suggest that physical violence is also symbolic violence. This is rendered possible through social and cultural patriarchal norms shared by both victims and perpetrators. As a result, family and community ties as well as marriage – as constitutive elements of the community’s symbolic order – are directly fractured by wartime rape. Forcing women to be economically unproductive was another strategy to undermine community ties which were built through community-based activities. Secondly, the strategic use of war rape comes to counter the idea of symbolic violence as being just soft or an invisible violence but under some circumstances a symbolic violence might produce physical harm.Thirdly, the study found that, patriarchy as the dominant social and cultural order is resisted by the dominated (women respondents in majority) now that it is associated to wartime rape. Because of this, I proposed that symbolic orders are not always taken for granted; they maybe resisted by the dominated. Based on the findings, this research report advocates for a more gender inclusive policy to encourage women to participate in the making of decisions which concern their lives as main victims of wartime rape in DRC generally and in Kamanyola in particular.