Playing into gender stereotyping in a preschool theatre production

Imagine that you are seated in a school hall in a middle to lower socio-economic residential area. The lights are slowly dimmed and the music starts. You are the parent to a five year old, soon to perform in his first nursery school play. The curtain rises and the group of five-year-old boys sway to the music of a popular Afrikaans song, “Leeuloop,” (translated as “lion walk”) that celebrates rugby, a nationally popular sport, but also other male dominated ball sports

Understanding teacher identity from a symbolic interactionist perspective : two ethnographic narratives.

In this ethnographic inquiry we portray two teacher narratives reflecting educational change in the context of two South African schools. The study was conducted as part of a larger inquiry into ten schools in urban South Africa. A decade of democracy begs some attention to educational progress and reform, from the viewpoint of teachers and with the culture of their schools as the inquiry’s landscape. We present two ethnographic narratives, crafted of a typical ‘township/rural’ school, and an established Afrikaans school, with two teachers as the main social actors. Data were sourced from passive observations, interviews, informal conversations, and journal data. These field texts were analysed for content and narrative using, as methodological frame, the ‘Clandininian’ “metaphorical three-dimensional inquiry space”. Three data themes, teacher authority, commitment to the profession in terms of staying or leaving, and multitasking are theorised from a symbolic interactionist framework, using constructs such as situational, social and personal identity. The major finding of this inquiry speaks to the power of the working context, the educational landscape, which appears to be a much stronger force in the development of teacher identity than national educational policies

Positive adjustment to first grade despite divorce : lessons for school psychologists

Positive adjustment to first grade is an important milestone in children’s lives. Yet, it is sometimes further complicated by additional challenges such as parental divorce. Drawing on a social ecological perspective we explored how the systems rooted in social ecologies enable children’s resilience when their parents are divorced so as to result in their coping well with adjusting to first grade. We used a single instrumental case study that involved visual methodologies to uncover lessons from the story of a first grader whose parents divorced but who continued to adjust well to first grade. Our findings suggest leverage points for school psychologists (SPs) who wish to champion the resilience of first graders who are adjusting to formal school as well as their parents’ divorce. SPs can intervene by supporting the first grader’s processes of agency and meaning making; by working systemically to engage systems of support; and by mobilizing systems with task-sharing.The contributions of the first and second authors were partially supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa (UID 85729).http://journals.sagepub.com/home/spihj2019Educational Psycholog

'n Etnografiese studie van 'n skool in verandering

D.Ed.This study is my account, as an educational psychologist and newly educated educational ethnographer, of how a school community experiences major social political change. I had ventured into a school to inquire into matters related to educational psychology and found a culture in flux- a school in crisis. The notion of an ethnographic inquiry was conceived at the time when I realised that broader systemic changes were impacting the school to the extent where the institution became a concert, to some degree a Bakhtinian medieval carnival -thus the style and format, or design type of the study. The research, which had commenced as a conventional qualitative inquiry, metamorphosed into something of a critical ethnography, written up as an integrated account of research, narrative and also, ultimately, as a way of doing school counselling. The study is thus presented as an illustrated account of what I observed, interpreted, and came to understand at some levels. My interaction with children experiencing learning and developmental barriers in my private practice, led me to the decision to interrogate the impact that change has on their behaviour and their emotional experience. In my initial assumption, I considered the policy change with regard to the 'national' curriculum to be the major change confronting school communities. My interaction as a participant observer in a predominant white, Afrikaans primary school on the East Rand during the course of 1999 introduced me to their experience of chaos in a rapidly changing world as reflected in a changing education system. Curriculum 2005 seemed of little consequence in their struggle against redeployment, uncertainty, poverty, crime and a general sense of futility and isolation. During the course of the year, their preparation for the school variety concert, known in these schools as a "revue", commanded specific attention, due to the amount of time, energy and money invested in presenting a concert of outstanding quality. Through the use of an ethnographic methodology, I tried to capture their story, using the songs sung in the concert to present the framework of the ethnographic stage on which I was planning to present the findings emanating from the inquiry

Creative Arts Therapy as treatment for child trauma: An overview.

To address child trauma caused by events that affect children directly, such as abuse, or indirectly, such as divorce, creative arts therapies are used by creative arts therapists as well as psychologists and counselors. The purpose of this paper is to review such interventions and the research conducted throughout the last 12 years. We considered the methodology used, the population under study and theoretical frameworks, with specific attention given to the reliability, validity and trustworthiness of such research findings. The results showed that the majority of articles reported their findings narratively, with much emphasis placed on the process followed. It was recommended that therapists work closely with researchers to make creative arts therapies less of an outlier in the therapeutic approaches for traumatized children

Creative arts therapy for traumatized children in South Africa:an evaluation study

<div><p>Aim</p><p>To evaluate the feasibility and effect of a 10-session creative arts in psychotherapy group programme on posttraumatic stress symptoms, behavioural problems, and posttraumatic growth, in children who experienced a traumatic event.</p><p>Design</p><p>A multicentre non-randomized controlled trial with a treatment and a control condition conducted in South Africa (4 sites).</p><p>Methods</p><p>125 children aged 7 to 13 years were assigned either to the treatment condition receiving creative arts in psychotherapy or a control condition with a low-level supportive programme without treatment. Attrition rates were 63.4% and in total 47 children completed the programme and questionnaires assessing posttraumatic stress, posttraumatic growth and behaviour problems both at baseline and follow-up; 23 in the treatment group and 24 in the control group. Adjusted mean differences were analysed using ANCOVA with bootstrapping.</p><p>Results</p><p>Results showed that both hyperarousal symptoms (<i>d</i> = 0.61) and avoidance symptoms (<i>d</i> = 0.41) decreased more in the treatment group compared to the control group. There was no significant effect of the intervention found for reported levels of behavioural problems and posttraumatic growth.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>In spite of severe challenges implementing and executing this pioneering study in underprivileged areas of South Africa, support was found for creative arts in psychotherapy reducing hyperarousal and avoidance symptoms, but not for other symptoms. Valuable lessons were learned on feasibility of implementing this intervention in a developing context.</p></div