The role of corporate social investments on teacher development in schools : a research study on mathematics initiatives in public schools supported by the Epoch and Optima Trusts.

[摘要] Improving learner achievement and performance remains a global challenge for manygovernments, especially in developing countries. Countries spend a sizeable percentage oftheir national budgets on education with the hope to achieve desired learner outcomes. InSouth Africa, legislation has made provision for companies to contribute 1% of their net profittowards social development, including education. It is within this background, that the Epochand Optima Trusts invested significant sums of money to improve the quality of maths resultsin secondary schools.The study investigates school level activities to ascertain whether and to what extent thesemay be implicated in improved teaching practices leading to improved performance. Weinterrogate the assumption commonly stated in the school effectiveness literature that teachingpractices in schools are stimulated and facilitated by activities occurring at that school level.The literature is inclined to the view that whatever happens in classrooms is influenced byschool level instructional leadership practices, professional development of teachers and themaintenance of internal accountability measures.We preferred to make use of case study research method in order to explore teacher practicesin schools because the purpose is to understand behavioural detail and impact mechanisms. Amatched pairs sampling technique was used to select four schools from a population of 78public schools which were continually supported by the Trusts over a period of two years.One pair was classified as former Model C schools (one high performing and one lowperforming), while the other pair consisted of two former Department of Education andTraining schools (one high performing and one low performing). This design reduces thesocio-economic and cultural differences between the two schools in each pair.A framework was derived from the literature to guide the collection and analysis of data. Theframework commences with the three categories of school level practices, disaggregated intoeight specific activities. A set of indicators was then formulated to assess the degree to whicheach of the specific practices was present in schools. Collective responses of four intervieweesat each school were rated and triangulated during this process.Given the nature and the size of the sample, we cannot generalise on the basis of four casestudies. However, the value of this report is that we have developed: a scheme for describing and analysing school-level practices that may facilitate andoptimise teaching and learning, and a set of hypotheses for accounting for improved school performance.In conclusion, we inferred that schools that institutionalised some practices and systems asidentified were able to increase and maintain the number of quality passes in mathematics andas such, meeting the objectives of the donors. The factors which appear to hold the mostpotential for optimising performance in the two high SES former Model C schools arecollegial practices on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. In the two low SES former DETschools performance advantage seems to be enhanced by the systematic use of assessmentdata and by an increased sense of intrinsic motivation on the part of teachers.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand