Cultural capital of learners in disadvantaged communities: towards improved learner achievement

[摘要] English: The aim of this study was to consider how school practices can mediate and integrate the life world knowledge of learners with the existing cultural capital of schools in historically disadvantaged rural Coloured communities towards learner achievement. The study was informed by Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, Critical Race Theory and Latina/Latino Critical Race Theory (CRT and LatCrit), and the Generative Theory of Rurality. Bourdieu's insight was used to offer an account of why the culture of the working class is, in effect, out of alignment with the middle-class cultural or knowledge capital that guarantees school success. Additionally, CRT and LatCrit theory was not only used to obtain an understanding of the educational subjectivity of learners in historically disadvantaged communities in the South African context, but also to provide insight into their everyday life struggles in relation to their educational endeavours. Lastly, the thesis draws on the Generative Theory of Rurality, which is based on concepts such as forces, agencies and resources, and how people in historically disadvantaged rural environments could make use of resources available to them. It is understood that the relational nature of these concepts has a determining effect on rural people, including the subjectivities of learners attending semi-urban schools far from their home environments.Framed within the South African context, I explored the school knowledge codes embedded in the theoretical underpinnings of recent and current South African school curriculum statements. A literature review was conducted in order to offer the theoretical underpinnings of Outcomes Based Education (1998) and the National Curriculum Statement: Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (2011). To further the democratic debate in curriculum development, options for alternative curriculum mandates for the current curriculum statements were also foregrounded as a key focus in the pursuit of social justice for marginalised learners.Following a critical qualitative methodology driven by the apparatus of bricolage, data was generated through semi-structured interviews to advance a critical and interpretive understanding of the perspectives of various role players regarding schooling in historically disadvantaged rural Coloured communities. The data revealed that various existing school practices in historically disadvantaged environments incorporate the life world knowledge of these learners, in other words these learners' particular ways of being. It was through the lens of understanding those factors which reinforce the reproduction of inequalities that the findings of this study opened up new possibilities for school practices that could bring about a more just environment for improved learner achievement by marginalised children.This study concludes by advocating for the strengthening and extending of community initiatives at the school, establishing renewed relations between the child, parents and the school, and embracing transformational role models and mentors in schools and the community as examples of school practices for the integration of the life world knowledges of marginalised learners along with scientific forms of knowledges. Such an integration should serve as part of an attempt to universalise different types of knowledge. Although suggestions with regards to particular practices have the potential to improve learner achievement, it remains important that curriculum debates should consider a different kind of curriculum that acknowledges and incorporates the assets of rural areas and communities, and the life experiences of historically disadvantaged and marginalised people. The contention is that when diverse knowledge in historically disadvantaged rural Coloured communities is linked to scientifically powerful knowledge, a focus on ethics could bring about social justice in society.

[发布机构] University of the Free State