A case study of GADRA’s community-engaged praxis for educational transformation
- Authors: Msomi, Nqobile Nomonde
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Non-governmental organizations South Africa , Community psychology , Afrocentrism , Foucauldian discourse analysis , Education South Africa , Transformative learning South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/464864 , vital:76552 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/464864
- Description: Although South Africa has achieved considerable steps in development over the last thirty years, post-apartheid South Africa is characterised by widespread poverty, high unemployment and systemic inequality. According to the country’s National Planning Commission, education is central to achieving the overarching democratic goals of eliminating poverty and reducing inequality. This positions education as an important site for the liberation and well-being of our country’s majority. This case study takes a community psychology perspective on education; more specifically the education-development nexus wherein Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are centrally positioned. NGOs are contentiously positioned in the development discourse. Nonetheless, they have played a key role with regards to siding with the poor, the excluded, persistently marginalised and oppressed majority and to bringing about social justice, following South Africa’s colonial and apartheid histories, as well as in the current democratic dispensation. This study situates a local NGO, GADRA Education, within the country’s socio-political and educational landscape. Founded in the 1950s and located in Makhanda, it has been operating in the rural Eastern Cape province for more than sixty years. In the present-day, GADRA Education positions itself at the centre of a dense network of education institutions in Makhanda, including Rhodes University, and collaborates with a number of education stakeholders in the small city. The case study consisted of two consecutive phases: a Foucauldian discourse analysis of GADRA’s annual reports between 2012 and 2021, followed by individual narrative interviews with 13 organisational members. An Africa(n)-centred community psychology orientation, revealed counter-discourse to the national “crisis in education” discourse surrounding the NGO. The discourse of crisis produced the legitimation for GADRA Education’s continued existence, action and embeddedness in Makhanda. The discourse of transformation informed their modes of support across primary, secondary and higher education. The discourse of access and participation constructed the NGO as a bridge and link between phases of education. The discourse of collaborative partnerships enabled solidarity between state and non-state actors towards educational change. Finally, the discourse of development positioned development at a grassroots level. These constellations formed GADRA Education’s counter-discourse, which produced the Organisation’s apparatus of resistance, formulated as situated praxis. The 5 organisational members’ narratives revealed the apparatus’s impacts on the subjectivities of youth in Makhanda in engendering hope and driving educational change in the city. In contrast to conceptions of education NGOs who work in the public schooling sector making little progress in dismantling educational inequity, this study illustrates the techniques of resistance leveraged, in the context of collaborative partnerships, by the local NGO. These techniques have wider applicability for education-development practitioners concerned with transformative change in their educational locales. It illustrates the principles and modes by which NGOs can operate in solidarity with the persistently marginalised majority, and thus contribute to shaping our imagined educational futures. I argue that psychology is a useful site to think about justice. Critical psychological theory can enable a deeper understanding of practice that contributes to impactful community organisation, intervention and resistance in the country’s education sector. The operationalisation of the values and principles of community psychology can make important contributions at the nexus of theory and practice in working towards educational, and ultimately social, change. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
- Authors: Msomi, Nqobile Nomonde
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Non-governmental organizations South Africa , Community psychology , Afrocentrism , Foucauldian discourse analysis , Education South Africa , Transformative learning South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/464864 , vital:76552 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/464864
- Description: Although South Africa has achieved considerable steps in development over the last thirty years, post-apartheid South Africa is characterised by widespread poverty, high unemployment and systemic inequality. According to the country’s National Planning Commission, education is central to achieving the overarching democratic goals of eliminating poverty and reducing inequality. This positions education as an important site for the liberation and well-being of our country’s majority. This case study takes a community psychology perspective on education; more specifically the education-development nexus wherein Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are centrally positioned. NGOs are contentiously positioned in the development discourse. Nonetheless, they have played a key role with regards to siding with the poor, the excluded, persistently marginalised and oppressed majority and to bringing about social justice, following South Africa’s colonial and apartheid histories, as well as in the current democratic dispensation. This study situates a local NGO, GADRA Education, within the country’s socio-political and educational landscape. Founded in the 1950s and located in Makhanda, it has been operating in the rural Eastern Cape province for more than sixty years. In the present-day, GADRA Education positions itself at the centre of a dense network of education institutions in Makhanda, including Rhodes University, and collaborates with a number of education stakeholders in the small city. The case study consisted of two consecutive phases: a Foucauldian discourse analysis of GADRA’s annual reports between 2012 and 2021, followed by individual narrative interviews with 13 organisational members. An Africa(n)-centred community psychology orientation, revealed counter-discourse to the national “crisis in education” discourse surrounding the NGO. The discourse of crisis produced the legitimation for GADRA Education’s continued existence, action and embeddedness in Makhanda. The discourse of transformation informed their modes of support across primary, secondary and higher education. The discourse of access and participation constructed the NGO as a bridge and link between phases of education. The discourse of collaborative partnerships enabled solidarity between state and non-state actors towards educational change. Finally, the discourse of development positioned development at a grassroots level. These constellations formed GADRA Education’s counter-discourse, which produced the Organisation’s apparatus of resistance, formulated as situated praxis. The 5 organisational members’ narratives revealed the apparatus’s impacts on the subjectivities of youth in Makhanda in engendering hope and driving educational change in the city. In contrast to conceptions of education NGOs who work in the public schooling sector making little progress in dismantling educational inequity, this study illustrates the techniques of resistance leveraged, in the context of collaborative partnerships, by the local NGO. These techniques have wider applicability for education-development practitioners concerned with transformative change in their educational locales. It illustrates the principles and modes by which NGOs can operate in solidarity with the persistently marginalised majority, and thus contribute to shaping our imagined educational futures. I argue that psychology is a useful site to think about justice. Critical psychological theory can enable a deeper understanding of practice that contributes to impactful community organisation, intervention and resistance in the country’s education sector. The operationalisation of the values and principles of community psychology can make important contributions at the nexus of theory and practice in working towards educational, and ultimately social, change. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
Trainee psychologists’ experiences of providing psychosocial support to educators during COVID-19 in South Africa
- Authors: Simonse, Allison
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Service learning , COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023 Influence , Teachers Mental health , Online therapy , Narrative interviewing , Community psychology , Counseling psychology
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465831 , vital:76657
- Description: The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the school going population in South Africa and Educators in the country were faced with several mental health challenges as a result. These mental health concerns coupled with the reality of living within the confines of a pandemic resulted in the need for psychosocial support. This resulted in formulation of workshops based on the needs of Educators, to be delivered via online means by Rhodes University postgraduate students in 2020 studying towards their Masters in Counselling Psychology. This study makes use of a case study approach to explore and examine the experiences of three of these students, so as to ascertain the implications of working online with groups amidst pandemic conditions. It explores how professional practice and the deployment of Community Psychologies have taken place during this period. Experiences encompassing the personal and professional development that occurred as part of engaging with Community-Based Service Learning during COVID–19 have been collected through the Single Question Inducing Narrative methodology, so as to enable the postgraduate student voice in the context of pandemic conditions to be added to the available literature, in an effort to position the application of Community Psychology critically within the South African context. It is hoped that the data generated from this study might assist in future programme planning and intervention, so as to encourage training standards to remain responsive to the times, whilst seeking insight into how value-laden praxis can be achieved through work at the intersections between theory and practice. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
- Authors: Simonse, Allison
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Service learning , COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023 Influence , Teachers Mental health , Online therapy , Narrative interviewing , Community psychology , Counseling psychology
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465831 , vital:76657
- Description: The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the school going population in South Africa and Educators in the country were faced with several mental health challenges as a result. These mental health concerns coupled with the reality of living within the confines of a pandemic resulted in the need for psychosocial support. This resulted in formulation of workshops based on the needs of Educators, to be delivered via online means by Rhodes University postgraduate students in 2020 studying towards their Masters in Counselling Psychology. This study makes use of a case study approach to explore and examine the experiences of three of these students, so as to ascertain the implications of working online with groups amidst pandemic conditions. It explores how professional practice and the deployment of Community Psychologies have taken place during this period. Experiences encompassing the personal and professional development that occurred as part of engaging with Community-Based Service Learning during COVID–19 have been collected through the Single Question Inducing Narrative methodology, so as to enable the postgraduate student voice in the context of pandemic conditions to be added to the available literature, in an effort to position the application of Community Psychology critically within the South African context. It is hoped that the data generated from this study might assist in future programme planning and intervention, so as to encourage training standards to remain responsive to the times, whilst seeking insight into how value-laden praxis can be achieved through work at the intersections between theory and practice. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
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