OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Hoadley, Ursula"

Browsing by Author "Hoadley, Ursula"

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Open Access
A sociological analysis of phonics lesson plans across four structured pedagogic programmes in South Africa
(2022) Boyd, Colleen; Hoadley, Ursula
Nationally, there has been widespread acceptance that South Africa's schooling system faces a literacy crisis. In response to this, school improvement efforts have taken the form of structured pedagogic programmes – “a triple cocktail” of interventions that offer teacher training, resource provisioning and lesson plans in an attempt to alter teacher's pedagogy and improve learning outcomes. Focusing on lesson plans (also referred to as teacher guides) that attempt to structure phonics pedagogy, this study uses a Bernsteinian framework located in the sociology of education to analyse the various ‘controls' the lesson plans place on pedagogy. It considers how these controls relate to the literature on effective phonics instruction as presented by the International Literacy Association. In addition, the study considers the various controls alongside an analysis of the level of scripting within each case, locating the discussion within current debates on the appropriate degree of scripting in lesson plans. The study finds that there are differences between the lesson plans in terms of the controls offered particularly as these relate to notions of effective phonics instruction and levels of scripting. In conclusion, this research argues for expanded lesson plans that further exteriorise the phonics curriculum by offering more explicit evaluative criteria and increased scripting that further supports teachers in enacting effective, and contextualised, phonics programmes.
Open Access
Addressing the 'leadership conundrum' through a mixed methods study of school leadership for literacy
(2019) Taylor, Nick; Wills, Gabrielle; Hoadley, Ursula
This paper explores methodological insights from a mixed methods study that aims to understand how school leaders promote literacy development in their schools. The study findings consider both the complementarities and the challenges of the qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring leadership practices and their linkages with learning across schools. We begin by identifying a conundrum in school leadership and management (SLM) research – strong effects found in qualitative studies and weaker effects in quantitative studies. From the literature we identify some of the central challenges that account for these differences. We then show how these challenges were and were not addressed in the mixed method research we conducted in an SLM study of South African primary schools in challenging contexts. We consider why the central aim of the study – to develop a scalable instrument for measuring SLM – remains elusive.
Open Access
An investigation of ‘powerful knowledge' in the drama curriculum: a comparative document analysis of the FET caps dramatic arts and the international baccalaureate theatre guidelines
(2022) Senekal, Nicole; Hoadley, Ursula
This study sets out to investigate the notion of ‘powerful knowledge' in the Dramatic Arts curricula by comparing two curriculum documents: The Internationale Baccalaureate Theatre Guidelines and the FET CAPS Dramatic Arts Guide. Michael Young's (2010) notion of ‘powerful knowledge' has been at the heart of many research studies, curriculum theories, and educational debates in recent years, evolving into a seminal concept within the wider academic and theoretical discourse of curriculum studies. It is within this paradigm that my interest was piqued to examine the knowledge structures within the Drama curriculum and more specifically this notion of ‘powerful knowledge' within Drama as a subject. Currently there is little research to draw on from a Drama education and ‘powerful knowledge' perspective which created the gap to investigate the epistemology of the Drama curriculum and whether the notion of ‘powerful knowledge' could be connected to Drama as a subject. The study is based on a qualitative document analysis comparing two distinct Drama curricula: The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) Curriculum and assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) Dramatic Arts FET Grades 10-12, and the Internationale Baccalaureate Theatre Guidelines. The study draws on the work of Michael Young (2010, 2013) and his concepts of ‘powerful knowledge' as the key theoretical foundation along Basil Bernstein's (1975) work on ‘voice', classification and framing. The study was developed further through an additional analysis utilizing Graham McPhail's (2017) analytical dimensions. McPhail's three analytical dimensions labelled the experiential, the aesthetic and the epistemic has been developed as an analytical tool for further investigation in the Drama curricula to highlight dramatic principles that could be related to the notion of ‘powerful knowledge'.
Open Access
Differentiation and mediation: An investigation in early-grade mathematics pedagogy
(2020) Shipman, Megan; Hoadley, Ursula
This thesis explores differentiating practices within the context of an early-grade mathematics intervention. Through qualitative research, the study looks at pedagogic interpretations of differentiated instruction. Situating mediation as a central feature to differentiated instruction, this thesis investigates two key features. Firstly, mediation requires differentiating in terms of grouping – in both cognitive development and classroom organisation. Secondly, mediation requires consideration of the form of pedagogy between teacher and learners. In an effort to consider mediation systematically, I explore the productivity of a Bernsteinian framework through which the data can be measured. Through control relations in the selection, sequence, pace, evaluative criteria and hierarchical rules within the pedagogic structure, my intention is to illustrate how mediation ‘happens' in different ways. Locating this study within three Grade 3 classes in the same school, the analysis reveals a trajectory in the pedagogic structure across tasks within lessons. Certain patterns emerge in the data and, with mixed control relations in evaluative criteria and weakened control of hierarchical rules in particular, a framework is developed with which mediation can be measured. Ultimately, the analysis provides a micro-lens into mediation within a differentiating pedagogy and a framework through which mediational patterns might be explored in a larger or more varied sample.
Open Access
Evaluating the decolonisation of the Humanities curriculum at the University of Cape Town: Khanyisa courses as a case study
(2025) Phetlhu, Ontiretse; Morreira, Shannon; Hoadley, Ursula
This study sought to bring the conversation around the decolonisation of the curriculum to the fore by evaluating the decolonial work that the Humanities Faculty at the University of Cape Town has attempted to do with regard to the undergraduate degree programme through the introduction of a new suite of course, called the Khanyisa Courses. As such, this study establishes the various ways in which the Humanities faculty through the Khanyisa Courses (specifically the course called: Literature: How and why? – ELL1013F) has attempted to decolonise the curriculum in terms of the way the course is structured, the way it is taught and the way the course is assessed. The aim is to establish whether the course fulfils the decolonial project by means of disrupting and challenging the Eurocentric traditions of teaching and assessing the course. The thesis argues that the ELL1013F course does decolonial work in that it adopts a paradigm shift away from Eurocentric traditions within the discipline of literary studies. The course does this decolonial work by means of adopting epistemic disobedience as one of the approaches in how the course is structured and how the content is taught and assessed – with the idea of the students' positionality being at the at the centre of the learning process thereby disrupting existing hierarchies of knowledge. Furthermore, the thesis argues that the various modules also adopt different approaches in terms of Jansen's (2017) six conceptions of decolonisation and this varied from the different lecturers that taught the modules of the ELL1013F course. Lastly, this thesis shows how the course did not managed to fully decolonise the curriculum, at the level of assessment as it did not overtly disrupt hierarchies of western knowledge in any significant way.
Open Access
Opening pandora's box? Desegregation and Transformation in Six Elite Public Schools in the Western Cape Province of South Africa
(2022) Gordon, Timothy John; Hoadley, Ursula; Muller, Johan
In 1991, four years before race-based enrolments were outlawed in South Africa, 204 white public schools opened their enrolments to learners from 'other' population groups. Their desegregatory actions differed from international desegregatory precedent, however, and the schools appeared to act against the traditions of their own racial biographies (Jansen and Kriger, 2020). The questions arising from their atypical trajectories of transformation, together with a paucity of prior research on the topic, provided the impetus for the research. The study considers the desegregationist and transformational trajectories followed by six elite white public schools in Cape Town's southern suburbs - the “most untransformable area in southern Africa” (Jansen and Kriger, 2020, 2) - during the period 1990 to 2019. It identifies contextual factors which influenced change in the sample schools, and examines the impact of desegregation on their functioning and ethos over three decades. The main research question considers how and why public schools in similar communities, which followed identical laid-down desegregatory procedures in 1990, emerged with such contrasting demographic patterns and school ethos. The study considers racial and class demographics at learner, staffing, management and governance levels, transformation beyond demography, the post-desegregation marketisation of schools and the commodification of learning and learners. Initially the sample schools manifested pronounced similarities of ethos rooted in a 19th-century Arnoldian inheritance typified in the approaches of Britain's public and grammar schools of that time. During the course of the study period, however, markedly different patterns emerged. The most important findings to materialise are the following: By the end of the study period markedly different levels of learner desegregation - from 29% to 99% learners of colour - were manifest across the sample schools; Despite notable learner desegregation in four schools, the desegregation of the governance, management and educator components in all the sample schools was limited; Three distinct 'eras' surfaced around the schools' desegregatory and transformational trajectories: - an immediate post-1990 period characterised by a preponderant intent to break the legal prohibition on the enrolment of learners of colour, manifesting in the assimilation of the new intake, the preservation of ethos and the perpetuation of traditional approaches; - a second era, encompassing the period 1997 to 2015, characterised by consolidation and conservation; and accompanied by the modulation of race as the critical segregationist criterion through the increasing stratification of schools by class; - a third era, provoked by the pressures of #Fallism and characterised by changing mindsets and approaches to school attributes as divergent as ritual, learner leadership and the provision of bursaries.  The two latter eras saw the commodification of education instilling a change in the provision of schooling as a prescribed public entitlement for residents within reasonable proximity to a school, to a commodity for private consumption aimed at those able to 'purchase' it through a contribution to the school's financial, social or performatory capital.  Whereas historico-political and racial discrimination has not been eradicated from school choice and learner selection processes, the study postulates that levels of desegregation and transformation are also influenced by features of the urban landscape like transport nodes and conduits; catchment area and feeder school demographies; racial configurations in contiguous suburbs; and the social drawing power or 'aura' (Tatar, 1995) of the schools.  Indeed, geographical location emerged as a considerable factor in desegregatory developments in schools. Factors such as physical locality and proximity to public transport routes, and urban geographic developments such as commercial encroachment into the residential spaces in close proximity to schools surfaced as among the strongest determinants of the ways transformation unfolded in South Africa's desegregating suburban schools. The schools' individual catchment areas, aligned feeder schools and unique social drawing powers were also influential, manifesting in both their widely differing demographic patterns and an own unique ethos in each school. Much of the 'sameness' had dissipated. In arriving at its conclusions, the study focussed on the decisions, responses and reactions of leadership, management and officialdom rather than canvassing the opinions of learners and parents. The latter have no executive or decision-making powers in their individual capacities, and their collective opinions were canvassed by means of interviews with representatives of the schools' governing bodies, wherein both groups have representation
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The politics and governance of basic education: A tale of two South African provinces
(2016-11) Levy, Brian; Cameron, Robert; Hoadley, Ursula; Naidoo, Vinothan
This paper synthesises the findings of research on the politics and governance in South Africa, undertaken at multiple levels, and using multiple methods. The research explored two core questions: how politics and background institutions influence educational bureaucracies; and the relative merits of hierarchical and horizontal governance. South Africa’s institutional arrangements provide a ‘natural experiment’ for analysing these questions. While policymaking, the regulatory framework and resourcing are uniform nationally, responsibility for implementation is delegated to the country’s nine provinces, which differ substantially from one another, both politically and institutionally. The Western Cape emerges as a strong performer relative to other South African provinces. However, econometric analysis confirms that, notwithstanding strong bureaucracy and abundant resources, its outcomes were below those achieved in Kenya. The institutional arrangements also assign substantial responsibilities ‘horizontally’ to school governing bodies, where parents are in the majority. School-level case studies detail how in the Western Cape a combination of strong bureaucracy and weak horizontal governance can result in unstable patterns of internal governance, and sometimes a low-level equilibrium of mediocrity. In the Eastern Cape, pro-active engagement on the part of communities and parents sometimes serves as a partial institutional substitute – supporting school-level performance even where the broader governance environment is dysfunctional.
Open Access
Radical visible pedagogy and specializing the everyday
(2022) Joubert, Leandri; Hoadley, Ursula; Muller, Johan
Studies in pursuit of understanding a pedagogic practice to optimise learning across socioeconomic classes have taken various forms, with classroom-based studies ranging from focussing on single pedagogic elements to Bernsteinian-type studies allowing for the investigation of the relationship between elements. What has been less prevalent is understanding the relationship between knowledge and pedagogy within the pedagogic discourse. In this study the aim was to explore this relationship as it operates within an apparent optimal pedagogy, especially in relation to a classroom comprising learners from mixed socio-economic backgrounds. The study was done via classroom observations of two teachers at a high achieving high school serving learners of mixed socio-economic status. In high school the subjects are more specialised and the selection of two different subjects, with different knowledge structures, was done to foreground and optimise the knowledge component. Teacher competence was selected for using qualifications and experience. The analysis was done in two parts: first, developing the concept of a teaching episode to generate units for analysis, and second, coding each episode in terms of strength of classification, framing and the purpose of the horizontal discourse, where present. Analysis showed that both teachers used a dynamic variable pedagogy, which constituted of a dominant traditional visible pedagogy, but moments of weakened framing occurred where it temporarily took the form of a mixed pedagogy. Investigation into these moments revealed, firstly, that they were intentionally used, and secondly, the weakening was enacted by the strategic and managed introduction of the horizontal discourse. The latter was recruited for different purposes in the different subjects but operationalised in the same manner through “specializing” the everyday by relocating it into the meaning structure of the vertical discourse. The impact thereof resulted in the differentiation of the class rather than the individual and generating a cultural connectedness via a new common specialised discourse, thus potentially showing in operation Bernstein's radical visible pedagogy.
Open Access
Religion, solidarity and identity: a comparative study of four South African schools with a religious affiliation
(2018) Cawood, Anthony Robin; Hoadley, Ursula; Muller, Johan
This thesis explores how schools with a religious affiliation recruit religion in school culture and the formal curriculum (both curriculum content and pedagogic method) and how this relates to the pedagogic identities they project. An overarching concern of the thesis is to understand how the character of the affiliated religion relates to the privileging of particular forms of solidarity and identity. This explorative, multiple case study is located in four independent schools in South Africa, each with an official affiliation to a particular religious community. The sample comprises a co-educational charismatic Protestant school, a liberal Catholic school, a traditional-Orthodox Jewish school and a conservative Muslim school. The study foregrounds Bernstein’s (1990, 2000) suggestion that a sociologically important characteristic of religions is the way they constitute the relation between the 'inner’ self and the 'outer’ social world. The thesis looks to Bernstein’s (1975, 2000) theory that the ideology inherent in pedagogic discourse constitutes particular instantiations of power and control (related to Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing respectively) that structure a school’s curriculum and pedagogic methods. The analysis of school culture utilises Bernstein’s (1975) theory of ritual and identity is explored in relation to Bernstein’s (2000) taxonomy of pedagogic identities. Furthermore, Durkheim’s (1915, 1960) concept of mechanical and organic solidarity and his theory of the sacred and the profane provide the primary conceptualizations of social order. The qualitative analysis of interview data (obtained from students, teachers, principals and religious leaders), policy documentation and direct observation shows significant differences between the schools relating to the recruitment of the affiliated religion in curriculum, pedagogy and ritual. The analysis suggests that the schools affiliated to religions in which the inner and the outer are dislocated (the Protestant and Catholic school), recruit the affiliated religion in a way that predominantly privileges a moral order in which the student is weakly related to a collective and individualised values and relations are emphasised (organic solidarity). Conversely, the schools in the sample affiliated to religions in which the inner is not dislocated from the outer (the Jewish and Muslim school), recruit the affiliated religion in a way that privileges strong identification of the student to a collective (mechanical solidarity). However, the analysis suggests that the form of solidarity related to the recruitment of the affiliated religion at the schools is not always the only form of solidarity privileged. More specifically, the analysis shows that components of the instructional order 'unordered’ by the affiliated religion may result in a layering of different forms of solidarity within the same school. The analysis implies that the schools project different pedagogic identity modes enabled by particular instantiations of power and control related to the privileged form/s of social solidarity. The major finding of the thesis is that the character of the affiliated religion, in terms of its constitution of the inner and the outer, relates to the form of social solidarity privileged by the school’s recruitment of religion, which, in turn, enables the projection of particular pedagogic identities. This thesis makes a contribution to a growing body of literature that vi challenges the idea that 'religious schools’ are homogenous. It provides a theoretical methodology for exploring differences and similarities between 'religious schools’ across different religions and suggests a sociologically important source of variance in 'religious schools’ in general.
Open Access
The social regulation of literacy through teacher expectations
(2012) Wilburn, Shelly; Hoadley, Ursula; Muller, Johan
This study is motivated by the problematic of underdeveloped literacy skills, particularly the reading and writing skills of at-risk learners, and draws theoretical support from Basil Bernstein’s sociology of education linked with the ‘school effectiveness’ theory of teacher expectations. I suggest a relation between the social context or community of a school, the culture and order of the school, and forms of teacher expectations, to propose a school-level expectation orientation that suggests a particular theory of instruction. For my investigation of teacher expectations, I select two contrasting, relatively high-performing, primary schools in working-class contexts in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, and I interview grade 3 and grade 6 language teachers. Interview questions are based upon a novel conceptualization of expectations.
Open Access
"You give me a name that I cannot say": an investigation into the intelligibility of the criterial rules in the theoretical component of CAPS Grade 10-12 visual art
(2022) Palte, Lauren Nicole; Hoadley, Ursula
Previous work in the field of art education in South Africa has addressed the need to make explicit the requirements and valued criteria in the practical work (Bolton, 2006). However, systematic research into the theoretical component of the National Curriculum Statement Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for Visual Arts in the Further Education and Training Phase has yet to be conducted. This study teases out the relationship between knowledge and skills that remains under-theorised in the expression of visual literacy in the curriculum. Developed in fields adjacent to Art History and Visual Culture Studies, the literature defines visual literacy in generic terms that describe what a visually literate person can do. Visual literacy requires consideration when translated into a method for a subject that has its roots in a disciplinary tradition, in this case, Art History. The literature on visual literacy places emphasis on the positionality of the viewer and the tacit nature of acquisition which differs from specialised knowledge about the artist's context of production that is studied in Art History. The framing of knowledge and skills in the curriculum requires careful theorisation to determine whether subjective or specialised communication is privileged and the nature of acquisition. I conducted a document analysis to show the type of communication valued in two questions of the Department of Basic Education National Senior Certificate Grade 12 Paper 1 examinations and memoranda over three years. I considered the knowledge and skills transmitted by the CAPS curriculum for Visual Art Grades 10-12 and whether they align with the expectations of the questions and memoranda. I make recommendations for the curriculum, assessment and memoranda based on these observations to contribute to the conversation about pupil performance in Visual Art at Grade 12 level.

Browsing by Author "Hoadley, Ursula"

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