Abstract
M.Ed.
Education in South Africa has entered into an era of radical changes and transformation. New policies regarding staffing and promotional requirements constitute but a few of the new developments.
Despite these changes, however learners still fail, and their future in the labour market seems more and more bleak as teachers find less time under heavier workloads and in ever-larger classes to render them any assistance.
In order to assist teachers in helping learners who have failed, it is necessary to lay down guidelines for them to follow.
The principal aim of the present study is firstly to determine how failing is viewed by teachers and what measures of assistance are currently being taken in this regard. Secondly, the study is aimed at determining to what extent teachers are prepared to assist these learners and, lastly, at laying down guidelines from an educational-psychological perspective with respect to assisting failing learners.
The study comprises a literature study and an empirical study. The literature study is focused on the failing learner and his/her experience of and reaction to failure, as well as on the teacher's role in educating the failing learner. The empirical study is carried out by means of a questionnaire and a statistical analysis of data.
Results obtained indicate that teachers, regardless of their sex, years of teaching experience, qualifications, subject field and class size, recognise failing to be a problem at school and that they have a clamant need of guidelines that would assist them in helping failing learners. A need was also expressed for training in how to follow such guidelines.