ergamon ht. 1. Educationai Development, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 65-73. 1994

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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ACTION RESEARCH IN TOWNSHIP PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN SOUTH AFRICA

MELANIE WALKER

University of Western Cape, Private Bag, 17 Bellville 7535, South Africa

Abstract - The paper examines an action research project, the Primary Education Project (PREP), located in African primary schools in Cape Town, South Africa between 1987 and 1989. The main aim of PREP was to evaluate action research as a means of improving educational processes and outcomes. Drawing on my own action research case study as the facilitator of curriculum and research development in PREP, I explore action research as a strategy for teachers’ professional development. This latter concept is problematised as meaning on the one hand, narrow vocational skilling of teachers, and on the other, reflective practice. Further, I argue that the concept is value-laden and thus fundamentally political. Improvements in teachers’ practice are recounted, and the teachers’ first order action research and my own second order action research evaluated along a continuum from reflection to research.

INTRODUCTION

The crisis in South African education is well known and has been copiously documented. Suffice to note for the purposes of this paper that the legacy of decades of systematically starving black schools of funds, of deliberately stifling the intellectual development of genera- tions of young people, of student resistance and state repression, are all elements of ‘a complex, multi-dimensional crisis of legitimacy, relevance and provision’ (Hofmeyer and Buckland, 1992). But state education systems change slowly (Archer, 1984). Hence, it is likely that it will take us decades to reconstruct a system underpinned by new social values of democracy, justice, equality, liberty, human dignity and national development.

Yet we cannot delay. Two points need to be emphasised. The first is the World Bank’s (1990), recent emphasis that effective primary education ‘is a rock-bottom necessity of development’. While one does not accept their prescriptions about all education priorities, this one is decisively true. The second is that decisions made in this period of transition will shape long-term policy. It follows that efforts to reconstruct the schooling system need to build now for what we wish to see in the future, and to see this action as policy-oriented

learning - a process of conceptualising alter- native policy possibilities as one of the critical early phases of promoting real policy change (Sabatier, 1989). One of the ways of increasing policy-oriented learning without holding up change is action research.

This paper thus focuses on action research as a strategy for professional development oriented to reconstructing new forms of INSET for quality schooling in South African primary schools. The paper starts by introducing an action research project, goes on to problema- tise the concept of professional development, relating this to work in the action research project, and then finally raises the issue of what counts as action research.

THE PRIMARY EDUCATION PROJECT (PREP)

From 1987 to 1989, I worked as a university- based researcher in the Primary Education Project (PREP) with 34 teachers in four township primary schools under the control of the Department of Education and Training (DET).l The project was housed in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and had as its primary aim to evaluate the potential of action research to improve educational provision. Access to the four

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66 MELANIE WALKER

project schools was negotiated in the first instance with each school principal, followed by meetings with the whole school staff. Most teachers identified reading development from year two to year seven as a key area needing improvement, while a small group chose to look at history in years five and six. In 1987 the DET gave unofficial permission for work in the pilot school, but even this was withdrawn in 1988 as repression intensified, organizations were banned and conflict periodically erupted into violent clashes not only between high school pupils and the police, but also between rival youth gangs. These struggles were the ever present backdrop, shaping in part my work over three years in the schools.

The 1987 project design reflected an opti- mistic, even naive, view of action research, anticipating that through the research process teachers would be ‘empowered’ and their prac- tice ‘transformed’, PREP had three further aims:

(9

(ii)

(iii)

to explore a pedagogy for a future non- racial and democratic South Africa, while recognising what was educationally pos- sible within current school frameworks;

to place the professional knowledge and insight of the teacher at centre stage so that teachers become confident enough to innovate in their practice;

to design a model for the professional development of teachers in-service.

PREP was informed thus by a particular set of assumptions, values and beliefs which defined what was to count as worthwhile change or improvement. These included values of teacher empowerment, democratic practice, enlighten- ment, and emancipation. Secondly, teachers in PREP were seen as key players in change in classrooms, and in the development of quality primary schooling. Thirdly, teachers were to be active producers of pedagogical knowledge, shaping the curriculum through their engage- ment in reflection on their practice.

My own initial interest in action research for professional development arose from a belief that it offered an approach to educational research which reflected my own democratic political and educational principles. Firstly, I was concerned to research whether my own practices in working with teachers challenged authoritarian and oppressive education rela- tions and empowered teachers themselves to change their teaching. Secondly, I hoped to

contribute to educational knowledge in the sphere of in-service work.

Quite what this process of reflection and action research might look like in practice was not clearly understood at the outset. Nor should this necessarily be seen as a problem. Rather, the continuing exploration of action research as a process, the shifting and changing understanding that emerged, all contributed to the development of a situated form of action research compatible with the egalitarian and exploratory intentions of the methodology (Somekh, 1991). Broadly, the project had in mind a process of refining understanding through the implementation, documentation and analysis of strategic change.

Two levels of reflective practice were thus involved - my own second-order action re- search into my own educational practice as a university-based facilitator, and the first order reflective practice of the teachers, with each level of research shaping and being shaped by the other. Teachers’ responses to my inter- ventions led me to develop appropriate strategies so that teachers in turn began to experiment in their teaching. Such teacher action shaped the way in which I understood my role, engaged with the literature around issues thrown up by my practice, and acted further. Change and development at both levels of reflective practice were therefore dialectically related, revealing the limits and possibilities of research-based professional development both for teachers and teacher educators.

WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

One of the arguments advanced for action research is that it contributes to teachers’ professional development (Stenhouse, 1975). But the concept of professional development is not uncontested. Recently, Elliott (1991) has trenchantly criticised attempts to ‘hijack’ action research for the purpose of controlling teaching practice in the interest of technical rationality. Briefly stated, in this means-end view, teacher development becomes a process of acquiring low-level technical/instrumental skills. By contrast, Elliott (1991) advocates a form of action research which develops ‘practical wisdom’, that is ‘the practitioner’s capacity for discrimination and judgement in

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ACTION RESEARCH IN SOUTH AFRICA 67

particular, complex and human situations’. In this view technical skills knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for professional development. The point here is that skills are important, but Elliott’s view of professional development arguably unde~ins the development of quality schooling. Schon’s (1987) indeterminate zones of practice, and Elliott’s (1991) particular, complex and prob- lematic states of affairs’ thus constitute the heart of professional practice.

Such a model also means bridging the theory-practice divide:

Education refers always to a theoretically conceived ideal . . . [and] ‘education’ always requires some form of interpersonal effectiveness . . . . ‘Education’ is thus always both theoretical practice and practical theory.

(Winter, 1987, p. viii)

It follows, then, that teachers do not need experts to intellectualise for them, although they may need support in theorising their practice. The point is the importance of their theoretical understanding of classroom prac- tice. Access to and control over theory situates practice, developing understanding and not just technical skill. As Fullan (1991) has noted, sustainable deep-level educational change needs to happen along three dimensions: new materials, new methods, and changed theories of learning. The implications for INSET in South Africa are important for it must surely mean that the professional development of teachers involves far more than simply a reformist patching up the legacy and problems of the past - it requires ideals - driven, authentic and forward looking reconstructive action as well.

Nor is professionalism value free. It may as easily support the status quo as challenge it, depending on a shared meaning of the ‘good’ (Grundy, 1989). Grundy (1989) claims that ‘true professionalism re-establishes respect for persons, and re-enshrines human judgement as a legitimate basis for action’. If we accept this notion of the ‘good’, it must then mean encouraging teachers not only to intellectualise about their work and to exercise wise judgement, but also to practice educational values which respect and realise human dignity.

All this turns on also understanding the political dimensions and implications of pro- fessional practice. What professional practices

(including what research practices) support an ethnic, gendered and classist status quo? What practices contribute to transformative educa- tional changes that exhibit a preferential concern for the exploited and oppressed? The point is for teachers, and teacher educators, to be in a position to make informed choices, knowing the implications of such action for others. Understood this way, attempts to develop teachers’ professionalism would be counter-hegemonic to the official view of teachers as instruments of state policy in black South African schools, a view which neither respects persons, nor demonstrates concern for their judgement. It needs to be emphasised that the view of profession~ism conceptualised here represents an ideal image. That it was not always realised in PREP is to miss the point that such an image represents values not reality (Campbell, 1985).

Furthermore, this view of professionalism generates a crucial dilemma for INSET practitioners. On the one hand, the tension arising from the immediate need for the mass skilling of black teachers with narrowly vocational skills knowledge. On the other hand, the issue of the future driven need to develop a view of teaching as flexible reflective practice in the interests of educational and social transformation.

PRACTISING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

While PREP aspired to a model of INSET encapsulating the latter view, the process was never easy nor uncontested by teachers whose own biographies included an impoverished educational background, experience of the structural power of a centralised education authority, and state repression. All of these factors contributed to a teacher corps, especi- ally in primary schools, unwilling to challenge authority, and a dominant view subscribed to by teachers themselves as well as by the education authority of teachers as technicians.

Unlike the British experience, I found that teachers were not only unfamiliar with any notion of themselves as curriculum shapers, at times they actively resisted such a role, requiring of me that I demonstrate what and how to teach so that they might ‘copy’ me. As one teacher explained: ‘At first I couldn’t understand what you were trying to do because

68 MELANIE WALKER

when you called us together you wanted ideas from us . . . I thought you were going to give us ideas’ (Veronica Khumalo, interview 17 October 1989). This was further complicated by teachers’ limited content knowledge and their restricted exposure to different methods of teaching. Their own college education is uneven but mostly of poor quality, reinforcing rather than interrupting a view of educational activity as being to replicate what is given. Thus teachers in African schools, lacking models of quality practice, mostly rely on drill and practice and rote learning, diligently implementing the official syllabus.

Nonetheless, the reflective curriculum de- velopment process in PREP sought to go beyond well-intentioned outsiders simply de- signing new curriculum materials for, rather than with teachers, a common practice at that time amongst progressive educators and one not necessarily resolved by workshopping of such packages. Rather, I hoped for teacher participation in curriculum development and their developing a theoretical understanding of new practices of teaching and learning. The process of introducing teachers to new ideas thus involved working alongside - a power with model of educational process? Workshops to introduce new methods explained the theoretical rationale for the new practices, while teachers were supported in trying new ideas in their classrooms, and in reflecting afterwards on what they had done.

There is evidence of teachers taking owner- ship of the new ideas, and of pupils working more independently, as these comments by teachers illustrate:

It’s not always you that should tell the pupils what is what . . now most of the talking is done by the pupils, they get a chance to give their own ideas.

(Veronica Khumalo, interview 17 October 1989)

I think the teacher must give the pupils a chance to work for themselves. Then they understand.

(Beatrice Dlamini, interview 11 October 1989)

You know sometimes I make them to be shy, Pm harassing them. So when they work in groups they co- operate very well.

(Jennifer Mdoda, interview 8 September 1987)

At first I had no idea how to start, how to make the children understand the lesson but now my pupils gained a love of history because it was not so difficult for each person because they were discussing in class, helping each other.

(Lumka Molotsi, interview 27 November 1989)

[The methods] made the pupils think, asking questions which they feel they need answers to, not questions that you think they have to answer.

(Ruth Ndude, interview 30 September 1988)

This project has shown me that there is not just one way of tackling the work, not in the same monotonous way where you just become frustrated and think of changing jobs.

(Norman Ntsane, interview 5 October 1989)

Teachers’ growing confidence and developing theoretical understanding encouraged some of them to review their relationships with DET inspectors. The most striking example involved Veronica Khumalo confidently advocating a different teaching approach from that of a DET inspector. She recounted:

Miss Nama [the inspector] said we must group the pupils and then you give different activities and different subjects. And I said, no, it won’t work out. If you are doing English and you give another group a maths activity, no, it won’t work. That is confusion for the pupils. If you are doing English you must give pupils English activities. If you are doing maths you must give the pupils different activities for their abilities . . . The other teachers there congratulated me! They said we must do it like they are doing at Phakamisa.

(Interview 17 October 1989)

There is evidence of some teachers develop- ing collegial working relations which, research elsewhere (see Fullan, 1991) suggests, contri- butes to sustained change by altering patterns of work in a school. Furthermore, democracy involves participation, and teachers who are not themselves committed to participatory ways of working with colleagues, will find it difficult to facilitate similar processes in classrooms (see, for example, Urch, 1989). Veronica, for example, commented:

I was just a self-centred somebody. I just go to my classroom, I teach, I go out, I go home. Now I’ve discovered that, no! You must go to other people, to other teachers. And you must also give help to other teachers.

(Interview 17 October 1989)

Her colleague, Elizabeth Magwebu, added that as a teacher ‘you must mix with people because sitting alone there you won’t gain anything’ (interview 16 October 1989). Alice Moisi, noted the impact on her school of a continuing conversation stimulated by project teachers:

Even our school, this PREP project upgraded our school. Even the work with other teachers, even if they

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ACTION RESEARCH IN SOUTH AFRICA 69

were not involved. We always discuss about the project, about this work. We are talking about what we do.

(Interview 4 October 1989)

Finally, there is evidence of teachers conceptualising their work as more than just the application of new techniques, but as a flexible process involving continuous learning and teacher judgement:

As a teacher I think you must not stand at one point, you must change as times change. Education does not stop. That’s what I’m discovering

(Beatrice Dlamini, interview 11 October 1989)

You see at times we are just given some method, [and told] when doing this lesson you can apply this, but when it comes to the practical situation you have to be flexible to be able to change that method when you see, no, the kids don’t follow you and then quickly change it.

(Ruth Moisi, interview 30 September 1988)

If you cannot evaluate yourself you won’t know if you are a good teacher or not.

(Bulwela Kgase, interview 20 October 1989)

I feel quite happy and free and there’s nothing that seems to be difficult, because everything now seems to be a challenge to me.

(William Thula, interview 5 October 1989)

I know that it’s not an easy thing to use the [new] methods perfectly, you know 100% from the word go, but if you take them and use them you will see how they work and then, afterwards, you are going to evaluate them . . . now you are trying to improve by using your own thinking.

(Gladstone Mashiyi, interview 28 September 1988)

I’ve changed . what you wanted was we had to do the work and you. were only here to help, not to show us how to do it, but researching our own teaching.

(Cynthia Bengu, interview 12 October 1989)

None of this is to argue that development was neat and linear. It was instead, complex, recursive and messy, and old practices con- tinued alongside the new. Theoretical under- standing was uneven at best. It was often frustrating to stand back in the face of poor practice, while coming to terms with the balance between direction and non-interven- tion in my own practice as facilitator was an ongoing, intensely experienced dilemma. But the point is that teachers’ confidence in their ability to take successful action for change, in their developing practical knowledge, and the recognition of the validity of their personal knowledge, are all developments in the direction of a reworked notion of themselves as professionals. There is evidence that teachers were empowered through a process of support,

respect, shared understanding and ownership of the curriculum development process.

Whether the process of reflective conversa- tion in PREP, the collection and discussion of data in the form of videotape, audiotape and participant observation notes constitutes action research, however, will be explored in the next section.

TEACHERS AS RESEARCHERS

As noted earlier, action research has developed in educational contexts very differ- ent from those in South Africa. Given that there were no precedents in South Africa at that time, the British tradition of action research in education developed by Stenhouse (1975), Elliott (1982), and others strongly influenced the design of PREP. What was not understood at the time in PREP, was Elliott’s important assertion that, far from being imposed on teachers by academic researchers, action research developed organically from an existing teacher culture receptive to innovation and notions of reflective practice. Indeed, Elliott emphasises that the development of action research presupposed such a culture.

Yet, far from there being an existing culture on which to build such research and develop- ment endeavours in township schools, the dominant teaching culture, as noted earlier, has been shaped by the legacy of Bantu education and the authoritarian working relations characteristic of the DET. Retro- spectively, multiple innovations in a less than receptive teaching culture were simply overly ambitious.

This brings me to the issue of teachers as participants in action research at two levels - my second order action research and their first order action research. In the pilot study in 1987, the language and practice of action research had not been a key feature of work with teachers, although there was some promising teacher reflection on practice (Walker, 1988). I first introduced the idea of ‘action research’ early in 1988 at the first school meetings, emphasising the idea of teachers as researchers, saying things like ‘through re- searching your own practice, through investi- gating what happens in your classroom you can become a better teacher, a more critical and creative teacher’ (fieldnotes, 27 January 1988). Two successive handouts explained the process

70 MELANIE WALKER

of action research, visually illustrating the action research cycle, with a simple account as to how this might work in action. The workshops and one-to-one discussions were characterized by similar attempts to encourage teachers to collect evidence on their teaching for reflection, and to introduce a research discourse. But for most of 1988, the focus of my work was much more in the area of changing methods and supporting teachers in making these changes.

Nor did any of this open up the black-box mystery of my own action research, or involve teachers as co-researchers in my second order action research, and even less, shift into teachers identifying their own research ques- tions and designing small scale research projects. Even data collection in the end was mostly at my prompting, this being exacer- bated by the initial reliance on videotape, the equipment and expertise for which was located at the university. Thus I would not claim the existence of a ‘single community of interested colleagues’ (Winter, 1989) especially if, as McTaggart (1989) does, one differentiates between ‘participation’ and ‘involvement’:

Authentic participation in research means sharing in the way research is conceptualised, practised and brought to bear on the life-world. It means ownership responsible agency in the production of knowledge and the improvement of practice. Mere involvement implies none of this; and creates the risk of co-option and exploitation of people in the realisation of the plans of others. (author’s emphasis)

On this basis, it would seem that teachers were participants in the process of curriculum change, but only involved in the process of my own research.

Not surprisingly, when the project evaluator asked teachers from three of the four schools in November 1989 whether they thought they had done ‘action research’, responses varied. At two of the schools, teachers did not understand her question but when she went on to explain what she meant by action research they all thought they had done ‘research’. It would seem then that teachers had some sense, albeit rather vague and poorly expressed, of them- selves as ‘researchers’. A teacher from the third school articulated more coherently what she understood by action research:

I think what Melanie put across to us was teachers researching their own teaching, with maybe UCT providing us with materials, or the teachers themselves

trying to develop the methods that would be helpful to them and help the kids, and the teachers growing in their teaching.

(Cynthia Bengu, interview 22 November 1989)

Teachers did not comment at all on my second order action research.

Ideally, teachers should have been part of a critical community but this would be to gloss over the real power and skill differences. Teachers knew, (but I think imperfectly understood), that I was a ‘researcher’ - that I was ‘researching’ my own practice, that I would write it up and share it with a wider audience. But differences of context, including the perceived power relations between a university researcher and township teachers, research skills, and job description (teachers defined as teachers, myself defined as a researcher), in the end meant that I worked with them for curriculum change, but I tackled the second order research alone. What was a research project for myself, was a curriculum development project for teachers, providing resources, expertise, support and reflective teaching.

Furthermore, it is now clear to me that systematic training in research methods is needed - handouts and reflective conversa- tions were not sufficient to train teachers as classroom researchers. Nor were conditions supportive of research - time constraints, the absence of certification for all their effort, the dominant teaching culture, and their own educational background should all be taken into account. Nonetheless, I believe Stuart’s (1991) appraisal of the possibility and relevance of action research in developing countries still to be apposite. She writes:

It is a grassroots, development oriented approach, dialogic rather than didactic, which might encourage the growth of endogenous models rather than uncritical acceptance of imported ones.

Arguably, we began such a developmental conversation in PREP.

SO WHAT COUNTS AS ACTION RESEARCH?

Given that the project’s original aim was to facilitate action research, I grappled over three years with what this meant in terms of my own and teachers’ practice. Through my involve- ment with teachers, and my own action

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ACTION RESEARCH IN SOUTH Ap’RICA 71

research, I came to conceptualise a continuum of different levels of ‘research’, rather than a sharp break,between ‘research’ and ‘reflective conversation’.

But this still leaves unresolved the question of what counts as research. Stenhouse (1981) is clear about what he would define as research: ‘systematic enquiry made public’. Similarly, Elliott (1985), Ebbutt (1985) and McNiff (1988) all say that it is teachers making public their claims to knowledge that defines their classroom enquiries as research. Stuart (1991) usefully conceptualises the progression from reflection to research:

Through action research teachers are helped to make the process [reflection in action] more conscious, more explicit, and more rigorous to the point where, if made available for public critique and discussion, it can be called research.

Essentially the former would involve individual professional development, the latter a contri- bution to public knowledge.

Using the criteria of Stenhouse, Stuart and others I would claim that my own second order research qualifies as action research, in its contribution to a shared body of public knowledge about educational practice and research methodology. Through my own action research, I have been able to generate practical wisdom of how to work with teachers. On this basis I claim to know my own educational development. As importantly, my own action research pointed up the gap between the adoption of a project and the difficulties of implementation, and the com- plexity of change in educational settings. Furthermore, my own understanding of action research has developed so that the insight I now have is not the same as that with which E began my work with teachers in 1987. Thus deciding how to go about action research in my particular situation has been the source of much of my learning about the theory and practice of action research.

Yet if one emphasises public scrutiny of written reports, it is difficult to argue that teachers in PREP did action research. Nor, as mentioned earlier, did they pose research questions or participate in the design of research projects. Indeed, no discourse was developed around what research is, nor did an understanding develop of the process of research. But change has to start somewhere, and if less was achieved than was hoped for,

this is not to say that the envisaged change - action research for professional development - should be abandoned. Rather, it needs to be reformulated in the light of local conditions. Reflective teaching is a first and important step along the reflection-research continuum. Furthermore, I would want to claim that teachers were beginning to engage with the idea of teacher-research in their attempts to develop methods and materials approp~ate to their own situation, in collecting evidence on these attempts, and in individual and collective discussion of this evidence. In this sense their reflection was made public. Indeed, under- standing publication only as written reports may unnecessarily straightjacket attempts to develop action research in South African primary schools.

This would also be to miss the more impo~ant point that reflective curriculum practitioners would be centrally involved in the production of valuable practical educational knowledge. Furthermore, the experiential learning and personal knowledge production integral to teachers’ learning in this project was the direct antithesis of imposed knowledge and hierarchical relationships whether within schools, between schools and education au- thorities or between schools and universities. In turn, enhan~ng teachers’ own intellec~al abilities through experiential learning and reflective practice seems a prerequisite for their developing higher order cognitive skills in their pupils.

Nor should one overlook the possib~it~es as teachers progress along the continuum from. reflection to research. In an influential paper, Evans (1989, p. 4) points to the domination by whites of intellectual production and their monopoly of research skills in South Africa. Although his paper specifically addresses the issues of university-based researchers, his arguments can justifiably be extended to include action research when he makes a statement like:

blacks have not been trained in techniques and processes of serious research . . . one does not acquire research skills without engaging in research projects . . . the research environment in South Africa has been systemati~lly confined to white academics _ . . _

Faced with the effects of an intellectually sterile education system and historically un- equal access to intellectual training for black

72 MELANIE WALKER

students, one of the appropriate places to start intellectual training is in classrooms, exposing pupils and their teachers to a reflective and questioning view of teaching. Equally, of course, teachers should be participants in second order research as well.

There is a further significant point to be made. Rudduck (1985, p. 126) notes that it is precisely the concept of action research which opens up ‘the established research tradition and the democratisation of the research community’. It is for this reason that those of us in developing countries need to develop forms of research which support the develop- ment process in educational settings. Not that the notion of developing reflective practice is unimportant. It is critical, and should ideally underpin both pre- and in-service work. But the research development agenda is important as well, for two reasons in particular.

The first has already been alluded to in Stuart’s (1991) assertion that we need to build endogenous theories of teaching and learning. Only by systematically evaluating our actions can we both know what the real effects of these actions are, and cumulatively build a body of knowledge about teaching, learning and educational change.

The second point is succinctly captured in a report by the 1990 Commission on Health Research (cited in Lockheed, 1991, p. 3) which stresses that:

Strengthening research capacity in developing countries is one of the most powerful, cost-effective, and sustainable means of advancing [education] develop- ment. The overall goal of capacity building is to improve the capabilities of individuals and institutions to address educational problems through research.

Recognising the importance of developing local research capacity is not to argue that all primary school teachers should become action researchers! What is being suggested is that colleges of education and universities might usefully consider developing degree and diploma programmes with an action research component. The experience of the Action Research Masters programme at the Univer- sity of Western Cape, for example, suggests that such courses develop a core of teachers who go on to facilitate action research and project development in their schools. Clearly, further points can be made about the ownership of research production, the em- powering nature of the research process, and

so on. What we do not need is a new orthodoxy issuing from well meaning academics, or over- seas consultants for the ‘good’ of teachers. Kallaway’s (1984) point made in the 1980s still holds: ‘We delude ourselves if we think that educational policies can be formulated in air- conditioned conference rooms (or board rooms), where academics, statesmen and ad- ministrators meet, and simply imposed . . . .’

A final point should be made. It is likely that the South African education system will be characterised by a future contest over central- ised control to remove apartheid education, and a press for decentralisation, both from oppressed groups wanting a greater say in the policy process, as well as from privileged groups wanting to retain control (Hofmeyr and Buckland, 1992). This thrust for decen- tralisation may well open the space for a multiplicity of INSET projects at the local level, and hence for action research and reflective teaching as one model. Given the immediate need for vocational skilling of teachers, it seems unlikely that the action research model of INSET will be adopted on a large-scale in the present period of transition. Nonetheless, its promise of a self-critical, reflective, theoretically informed profession committed to continuous learning in a changing education world demands that action research be seriously considered in the development of a post-apartheid education system.

NOTES

1. The DET is the controlling authority for all African schools, excluding those in the ‘independent homelands’.

2. For a full account of my work with teachers over three years see Walker, 1991.

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