Abstract
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.