The culture of learning in Khayelitsha secondary schools: teachers' perspectives

This research project focused on teachers' perspectives on improving the culture of learning in their schools. The 'culture of learning' is a term which has achieved widespread popular usage, serving as a catch phrase to describe the overall crisis in education. Broadly defined, the 'culture of learning' refers to the attitudes and behaviors demonstrated by members of a school which foster a particular orientation towards learning. This culture is critical to the educational success of students, who must be motivated before learning can occur. Within South Africa, the culture of learning has largely disintegrated in African schools. This project seeks to gain a better understanding of the culture itself as well as to identify strategies for its improvement. The 'culture of learning' is a term which has received little or no critical analysis in the South African education literature, despite its frequent use. The first part of this thesis locates the culture of learning within a theoretical context, using international literature of school cultures which promote negative attitudes towards learning. Additionally, the history of South African education is reviewed to trace the events which may have contributed to the erosion of the culture of learning in African schools. On the basis of these theoretical and historical accounts, I conclude that structural inequality is fundamental to the deterioration of the culture of learning. Once these structural inequalities are resolved, however, the restoration of a learning culture does not necessarily follow. Instead, direct school-level interventions are necessary to facilitate changes in the attitudes and behaviors of students and teachers. This thesis does not attempt to provide an overall analysis of the culture of learning but focuses on the perceptions of one group of people: teachers. Teachers from four Khayelitsha schools were included in this study. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data was gathered, with 23 teachers participating in in-depth interviews and 56 teachers filling out questionnaires. All participation was solicited on a voluntary basis. Teachers' perspectives on how to improve the culture of learning in their schools covered a wide range of issues. While both material resources and human resources were considered highly important to the restoration of a learning culture, teachers overwhelmingly stressed the importance of human resources, including the motivation of students and teachers. According to respondents, the motivation of students, the defining feature of the culture of learning, is highly contingent on · the motivation level of teachers. In this respect, the 'culture of teaching' is the critical component of the broader 'culture of learning' and one which warrants serious attention. The low motivation and morale of teachers can be indirectly measured in many ways. Teachers reported high levels of absenteeism, truancy, 'laziness', substance abuse and subversion of assessments, as well as the frequency of leaving the profession, as signs of low motivation among their peers. Teachers offered varied explanations for this phenomenon, including the historical degradation of teaching as well as the present dilapidated conditions in schools. A number of strategies for improving teacher motivation were offered by respondents, ranging from improved working conditions to stricter discipline. The most commonly discussed strategy was an increase and improvement in the provision of in-service training and workshops for teachers. According to teachers, workshops would serve both to increase the skills of teachers as well as to provide a forum in which to support one another and revive their interest in the profession. If in-service activities are planned and implemented with active participation and guidance from teachers, the process can serve not only to reform current teaching behaviors but also to transform attitudes and capacities towards future upgrading. Based on the present findings, a participatory and democratic approach to all levels of education decision-making is recommended. Teachers' views of the culture of learning do not mesh neatly with the understanding that underlies current policy initiatives. Major national and provincial policy to date has focused primarily on the organizational and administrative issues central to the restructuring of the national education system. These policies have not yet addressed school-level concerns beyond ideological commentaries. The major initiative focusing on comprehensive school-level reform, the RDP Culture of Learning Programme, has focused almost exclusively on the physical renovation of schools. If teachers are right, these material improvements will have little long-term effect on the overall culture of learning. The emphasis must be placed, instead, on human resource issues, namely, the upgrading and encouragement of teachers

Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment

Decades of racial progress have led some researchers and policymakers to doubt that discrimination remains an important cause of economic inequality. To study contemporary discrimination we conducted a field experiment in the low-wage labor market of New York City. The experiment recruited white, black, and Latino job applicants, called testers, who were matched on demographic characteristics and interpersonal skills. The testers were given equivalent resumes and sent to apply in tandem for hundreds of entry-level jobs. Our results show that black applicants were half as likely to receive a callback or job offer relative to equally qualified whites. In fact, black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds fared no better than a white applicant just released from prison. Additional qualitative evidence from our testers' experiences further illustrates the multiple points at which employment trajectories can be deflected by various forms of racial bias. Together these results point to the subtle but systematic forms of discrimination that continue to shape employment opportunities for low-wage workers.race, field experiment, discrimination, labor markets

African Americans respond to labor market discrimination bysearching more widely for jobs, which in turn hurts their wages.

How do women and minorities respond to discrimination in hiring? In new research, Devah Pager & David S. Pedulla find that African Americas search more broadly for jobs because of their experience of racial discrimination, while women search more narrowly because of the often highly segregated nature of occupations by gender. They write that African Americans’ broader job search strategies are often associated with lower wages and poorer career trajectories, and that women’s narrower job search helps reinforce existing patterns of gendered labor market inequality

Medir a discriminação

Debates about the contemporary relevance of discrimination have been clouded by a lack of rigorous measurement techniques. How can we disentangle the effects of race from the many other sources of social inequality? What are the obstacles to developing reliable measures of racial discrimination? This article addresses the state-of-the-art approaches to measuring discrimination, including studies of perceptions, attitude surveys, statistical analyses, laboratory and field experiments, and provides a brief overview of the varying approaches, examining their unique strengths and limitations. While no research method is without flaws, careful consideration of the range of methods available helps to match one's research question with the appropriate empirical strategy.Os debates a respeito da relevância contemporânea da discriminação são obscurecidos pela ausência de técnicas rigorosas de mensuração. Como separar os efeitos gerados pela raça das várias outras fontes de desigualdade social? O artigo examina as abordagens normalmente empregadas para medir a discriminação, como estudos de percepção, levantamentos de atitudes, análises estatísticas, experimentos de laboratório e de campo. As várias abordagens são resumidas e o alcance e a limitação de cada uma delas são avaliados. Embora nenhum método de pesquisa seja isento de falhas, a análise cuidadosa dos métodos disponíveis ajuda a estabelecer a correspondência entre o problema da pesquisa e a estratégia empírica adequada

Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages

The extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive subjects in the social sciences. Using a newly available dataset, this paper develops a simple empirical test which, under plausible conditions, provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market. Taken at face value, our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black-white wage gap. We argue that the patterns in our data are consistent with a search-matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers, but learn about their marginal product over time. However, we cannot rule out other forms of discriminationdiscrimination; wage gaps; race

Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages

The extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive subjects in the social sciences. Using a newly available dataset, this paper develops a simple empirical test which, under plausible conditions, provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market. Taken at face value, our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black-white wage gap. We argue that the patterns in our data are consistent with a search-matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers, but learn about their marginal product over time. However, we cannot rule out other forms of discrimination.

Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages

The extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive subjects in the social sciences. Using a newly available dataset, this paper develops a simple empirical test which, under plausible conditions, provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market. Taken at face value, our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black-white wage gap. We argue that the patterns in our data are consistent with a search-matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers, but learn about their marginal product over time. However, we cannot rule out other forms of discriminatio

Medir a discriminação Measuring discrimination

Os debates a respeito da relevância contemporânea da discriminação são obscurecidos pela ausência de técnicas rigorosas de mensuração. Como separar os efeitos gerados pela raça das várias outras fontes de desigualdade social? O artigo examina as abordagens normalmente empregadas para medir a discriminação, como estudos de percepção, levantamentos de atitudes, análises estatísticas, experimentos de laboratório e de campo. As várias abordagens são resumidas e o alcance e a limitação de cada uma delas são avaliados. Embora nenhum método de pesquisa seja isento de falhas, a análise cuidadosa dos métodos disponíveis ajuda a estabelecer a correspondência entre o problema da pesquisa e a estratégia empírica adequada.<br>Debates about the contemporary relevance of discrimination have been clouded by a lack of rigorous measurement techniques. How can we disentangle the effects of race from the many other sources of social inequality? What are the obstacles to developing reliable measures of racial discrimination? This article addresses the state-of-the-art approaches to measuring discrimination, including studies of perceptions, attitude surveys, statistical analyses, laboratory and field experiments, and provides a brief overview of the varying approaches, examining their unique strengths and limitations. While no research method is without flaws, careful consideration of the range of methods available helps to match one's research question with the appropriate empirical strategy