Primary school educators' experiences of support from internal and external sources in a South African school district

Abstract

This study explored how primary school educators expect to be supported and how they experience support from internal and external sources in a South African school district. Support for educators is vital in order to improve basic education in terms of South Africa’s long-term development goals and particularly in light of the poor performance of primary school learners in universal benchmark tests. Furthermore, the myriad of curricular changes introduced by the Department of Basic Education have increased the need for educator support in South Africa. A qualitative approach, located in an interpretive paradigm was adopted and a case study research design was employed. The requisite data were gathered by means of interviews, document sourcing and non-participant observation in three public primary schools. The main finding of the study was that there is limited amount of technical support, aimed at improving the quality of education, while affective aspects, i.e., meeting the socio-emotional needs of educators appear to be neglected. A broad theme that emerged was participants feeling like they are under surveillance; perceiving district officials to be on fault-finding missions when they conduct school visits and classroom observations; and feeling like they are on their own once they return to school from attending offsite workshops. In addition, the participants who served as heads of departments (HODs) reported that their workload prevented them from providing adequate internal support. A key recommendation of this study is that more curriculum instructors and HODs be employed and that they receive adequate preparation in order to provide appropriate support to primary school educators. In addition, it is recommended that the provincial and district officials increase the frequency of their school and classroom visits in order to spend more time supporting primary school educators.