Abstract
M.Ed.
Since 1994, South African schools are increasingly becoming more diverse due to the implementation of new legislation to foster democratization in schools. Many schools whose communities were until 1994 defined along racial lines are increasingly becoming mixed in terms of learner, staff and parent bodies. Other external factors such as the increasing movement of people across the globe as a consequence of increasing globalization may also be contributing to the apparently growing diversity at schools. Such increasing diversity could pose challenges regarding fostering a culture of teaching and learning at these mixed schools. Therefore, school management and leadership, need to have the skills, knowledge and appropriate attitudes that are required in order to ensure that the culture of teaching and learning is advanced in ethnically diverse school.
Considering her experience as a teacher at both private and public schools in South Africa over the last ten years, the researcher has observed significant changes in learner population across many schools with resulting implication to teaching and learning. These changes have placed tremendous demands on school principals and teachers who have to deal with the challenges such as, culture mismatch between student-student and student-teacher interaction, social tension and antagonism, communication problems, misinterpretation of values and behaviors that thus influence the process of teaching and learning. Hence, the researcher opted to do an investigation into how school leadership and management in ethnically diverse schools will advance opportunities that encourage a culture of teaching and learning.
In order to do the investigation, the researcher firstly employed an extensive literature review to explore how the leadership and management of ethnically diverse schools advance opportunities that cultivate a culture of teaching and learning. The research design and methodology employed involved a mixed method approach consisting of quantitative as well as qualitatative methodologies. During the first phase of the empirical study, the researcher carried out the quantitative method of data collection where a set of questionnaires were filled in by the principal and the HoDs of the selected schools. In order to validate the findings of the quantitative survey, the researcher employed in-depth individual interviews with the teachers and students of the selected schools.
Through qualitative analysis of the data, the research findings confirm that the diverse culture of schools in Johannesburg North includes characteristics of both traditional and liberal multicultural education. Also, societies are becoming more complex in terms of social, economic and political needs. Therefore, the implication of the findings are that, in addition to teaching the basic skills of reading, writing and math, school leadership and management should advance a culture of teaching and learning that will involve social justice issues where students will learn to become reflective, moral, caring and active citizens as is inherent in liberal multicultural education. Finally, the researcher recommends that regular survey on different aspects should be carried out in ethnically diverse schools in order to get such schools to open up to the demands of liberal multicultural education.