Abstract
In addressing the research question of this study, the aim was to give an account of the learning history of Mr. Tshepiso Tau (pseudonym) as part of his life history. I proposed that there may be some reliable answers to the research question, “What constituted the learning history of the long-term unemployment of a black adult male who grew up as a farmworker’s son.”
I argued that his portrait could provide insightful information about the high rate of youth unemployment in South Africa. I further surmised that as the son of black farmworkers, his learning history at a farm school would foreground education in a specific geographical, socio-economic- and political milieu.
The study was framed by Cultural-Historical and Activity Theory (CHAT), which developed from Lev Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical theory of learning and development. In CHAT, as formulated by Alexei Leontiev and later Yrjö Engeström, the notion of an activity system was introduced, in which a subject, such as Mr. Tau, would engage in activity in which community and society’s rules and division of labour would feature.
The literature study that I conducted for the thesis consisted of topics that I aligned with the theoretical framework. Therefore Chapter 2 consists of an explication of CHAT, the lives and livelihoods of farmworkers, the education of their children, the uncertain years of adolescence and identity development, educational and employment opportunities for black youth, and resilience.
The study was designed as a portraiture with an ethnographic angle, foregrounding the dominant culture of oppression and discrimination in much of the history of South Africa and how it impacted the farm school culture for generations. The analysis of interview data, as well as the inclusion of some bricolage material, proceeded with the activity system as unit of analysis, and in which Mr. Tau was the acting subject...