Creating linkages between private and public: Challenges facing woman principals in South Africa

No Abstract.South African Journal of Education Vol. 27(3) 2007: pp. 507-52

Do we see through their eyes? Testing a bilingual questionnaire in education research using cognitive interviews

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The paper aims to demonstrate the value of cognitive interviewing (CI) as a survey pretesting method in comparative education research. Although rarely used by education researchers, CI has been successfully applied in different disciplines to evaluate and improve question performance. The method assumes that observing people’s thought processes when they answer survey questions can detect response problems and point to possible solutions. To illustrate the merits of CI, we present the findings from eight cognitive interviews, which informed the development of a bilingual English/Georgian online questionnaire. The main objectives of our CI study were to (a) examine cognitive validity of survey questions, (b) determine semantic equivalence of the source (English) and translated (Georgian) versions of the questionnaire and (c) establish conceptual equivalence of survey measures across two cultures. We conducted two rounds of cognitive interviews, one in each language, using a combination of think-aloud and verbal probing techniques. Our analysis suggests that CI can help to identify causes of response difficulties and develop more accurate and comparable survey measures for cross-cultural education research.Published versio

Women secondary head teachers in England: where are they now?

The underrepresentation of women in secondary school headship in England and elsewhere is an early and longstanding theme in the women and gender in educational leadership literature. The purpose of this article is to report findings from a statistical survey of secondary school head teachers across England. Data available in the public domain on school websites have been collated during a single academic year to present a new picture of where women lead secondary schools in England. Mapping the distribution of women by local authority continues to show considerable unevenness across the country. This article argues that a geographical perspective still has value. It might influence the mobilization of resources to targeted areas and ultimately result in women’s proportionate representation in school leadership. Alongside this is a need for schools and academy trusts to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty

Gender, identity and institutional culture: women students' constructions of success at three South African universities

The Carnegie-South Africa Undergraduate Women's Scholarship Programme was set up in 2002 as a national scholarship programme targeted at young women wishing to study primarily in the fields of science and engineering at the undergraduate level. The study provides case studies of the diverse experiences of a selection of these young women at 3 universities: University of Cape Town, Kwa-Zulu-Natal and Pretoria. The chapters reflect on the university institutional cultures from the perspective of these young women and, through analysis of context, voice and discourse, attempt to cast light on their experiences and constructions of academic and social integration and success

Gender, success and institutional culture

Prepared for the Carnegie-SA scholarship programme, Augus

A comparative analysis of intersections of gender and race among black female school leaders in South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States

In this chapter we use intersectionality theory to do a cross-cultural analysis of three black women leaders’ experiences of leadership in relation to their gender and race in the leadership of schools from three different contexts: England, South Africa and the United States. Through a life-history methodology, black women leaders were interviewed using a set of topics that focused on the interviews and allowed some flexibility to follow up interesting unexpected contextual patterns. The findings suggest that women’s constructions of success are strongly shaped by their gender and race and are deeply rooted in their cultural and familial histories as sources of courage, inspiration and values. These deep-rooted values compel them to practise leadership that is inclusive, fair and socially just. We conclude that the intersectional role of race and gender is significant and needs to be understood alongside the intersection with other aspects of identity such as culture, ethnicity and family background in order to bring stories of black women’s successful leadership to the fore