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:
- 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:
A formative evaluation and critical analysis of an alcohol and pregnancy intervention in the Eastern Cape of South Africa
- Authors: Graham, Nicola Susan Jearey
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders South Africa Eastern Cape , Foucauldian discourse analysis , Conversation analysis , Women Social conditions South Africa Eastern Cape , Sex role South Africa Eastern Cape , Cultural hegemony
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432541 , vital:72879 , DOI 10.21504/10962/432541
- Description: Some communities in South Africa have the highest documented rates of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in the world. Interventions to reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy are crucial, but evaluations of such interventions are sparse. Formative evaluations are indicated to assist in the development of interventions. Harmful alcohol consumption during pregnancy is undergirded by a range of social injustices, including those imposed by colonisation and patriarchy; a feminist, decolonial approach to evaluations is, therefore, important. A research project, consisting of three arms, examined alcohol use during pregnancy in an under-resourced urban area of the Eastern Cape, and this research was one of those arms. An intervention was being rolled out in this area and I gathered a range of data from it. I engaged in a formative evaluation of it, and I reflect on the difficulties that I encountered in this endeavour. In the bulk of this thesis, I examine the power apparatuses and technologies that were used during the intervention to discursively position pregnant women. My analysis was guided by Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian theories, using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and simplified Conversation Analysis (CA). Power apparatuses of coloniality, patriarchy, and pastoral power were used in the intervention to construct positions for pregnant women who drink alcohol as ignorant children, sinners, criminals, or “Mommies”. The foetus was constructed as a precious, vulnerable baby, while the person with FASD was constructed as the defiled Other, responsible for societal dissolution. The intervention used various disciplinary techniques to exhort women to follow their dictates. Women were generally compliant with being positioned as ignorant children, which absolved them from any blame for pre-natal drinking. However, some resistance was evident. I then introduce an ethics of care and justice, and I argue that pregnant/newly parenting women need to be positioned within such an ethics, which acknowledges both the universal resources that they require for reproductive freedoms, as well as their particular care needs. I highlight the few times when women were positioned in this way in the data, and I look at how the common positions could be altered or expanded to promote such an ethics. I conclude by arguing that alcohol use during pregnancy cannot be separated from the larger context of the cultural hegemony of alcohol use in some communities, and the social injustices that potentiate this use. I provide suggestions for country-wide policies and interventions, as well as specific FASD prevention programmes, and I argue that a feminist decolonising approach, within an ethics of care and justice, should guide interventions at all levels. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Authors: Graham, Nicola Susan Jearey
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders South Africa Eastern Cape , Foucauldian discourse analysis , Conversation analysis , Women Social conditions South Africa Eastern Cape , Sex role South Africa Eastern Cape , Cultural hegemony
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432541 , vital:72879 , DOI 10.21504/10962/432541
- Description: Some communities in South Africa have the highest documented rates of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in the world. Interventions to reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy are crucial, but evaluations of such interventions are sparse. Formative evaluations are indicated to assist in the development of interventions. Harmful alcohol consumption during pregnancy is undergirded by a range of social injustices, including those imposed by colonisation and patriarchy; a feminist, decolonial approach to evaluations is, therefore, important. A research project, consisting of three arms, examined alcohol use during pregnancy in an under-resourced urban area of the Eastern Cape, and this research was one of those arms. An intervention was being rolled out in this area and I gathered a range of data from it. I engaged in a formative evaluation of it, and I reflect on the difficulties that I encountered in this endeavour. In the bulk of this thesis, I examine the power apparatuses and technologies that were used during the intervention to discursively position pregnant women. My analysis was guided by Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian theories, using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and simplified Conversation Analysis (CA). Power apparatuses of coloniality, patriarchy, and pastoral power were used in the intervention to construct positions for pregnant women who drink alcohol as ignorant children, sinners, criminals, or “Mommies”. The foetus was constructed as a precious, vulnerable baby, while the person with FASD was constructed as the defiled Other, responsible for societal dissolution. The intervention used various disciplinary techniques to exhort women to follow their dictates. Women were generally compliant with being positioned as ignorant children, which absolved them from any blame for pre-natal drinking. However, some resistance was evident. I then introduce an ethics of care and justice, and I argue that pregnant/newly parenting women need to be positioned within such an ethics, which acknowledges both the universal resources that they require for reproductive freedoms, as well as their particular care needs. I highlight the few times when women were positioned in this way in the data, and I look at how the common positions could be altered or expanded to promote such an ethics. I conclude by arguing that alcohol use during pregnancy cannot be separated from the larger context of the cultural hegemony of alcohol use in some communities, and the social injustices that potentiate this use. I provide suggestions for country-wide policies and interventions, as well as specific FASD prevention programmes, and I argue that a feminist decolonising approach, within an ethics of care and justice, should guide interventions at all levels. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
Constructions of Ukuyalwa and marriage satisfaction: experiences of Xhosa couples in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Bikwe, Siphuxolo
- Date: 2023-03-30
- Subjects: Xhosa (African people) South Africa Eastern Cape , Xhosa (African people) Marriage customs and rites , Black psychology , Couples therapy , Interpersonal relations and culture , Communication in marriage , Satisfaction , Foucauldian discourse analysis
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/408805 , vital:70527
- Description: Marital satisfaction may be described as the extent to which one’s expectations, desires and needs are being satisfied in their marriage. Studies that concern marital satisfaction provide us with crucial insights into factors that support or compromise the longevity of long-term, committed relationships. Little work has been done in understanding the role of cultural practices in marital satisfaction particularly in Africa, and South Africa more specifically. Ukuyalwa is a Xhosa ritual that takes place during a Xhosa traditional wedding, whereby the bride is introduced to the (traditional) guiding practices of her new home by the women of the family together with her sisters-in-law. This study informs the practice of African psychology as formulated by Ratele (2017b).Critical African psychology as a framework recognizes the construction of culture alongside political, socioeconomic, and historical matrices. These are acknowledged as an important element in psychological theories, methods, and explanations. This research project aimed to identify the discourses that circulate around ukuyalwa as a Xhosa cultural practice and consider the implications for the marital satisfaction of amaXhosa couples. The study interviewed 3 Xhosa couples of varying ages who had been married for different durations to develop an understanding of their experiences of ukuyalwa and marital satisfaction. Data was analyzed using a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) which allowed for the identifications of the discourses that the couples used to construct ukuyalwa and marital satisfaction. The couples discursively constructed marriage as ‘divine unity’, ‘unification of families’ and ‘partnership’. Ukuyalwa was constructed as a ‘gendered process’, ideas of tradition and modernity, and a ‘foundation’ also became apparent. Satisfaction was constructed as ‘open communication’ and ‘work’. The couples’ positions shifted in their conversations, where in some instances they were 'learners’, ‘initiates’, and/or ‘passive’, and in other instances, they were ‘in charge’, ‘knowledgeable’, and ‘experts’. The discourses of culture, religion, and partnership circulated prominently in relation to marriage, ukuyalwa, and marital satisfaction. The findings of the study speak to how the couples’ constructions of marriage and cultural customs such as ukuyalwa are valuable as they often inform how couples behave in their marriage relationships and what they regard as satisfactory to them when it comes to marriage. These insights into what informs the couples’ ideas on marriage and satisfaction can be utilised in informing couples therapy interventions. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Authors: Bikwe, Siphuxolo
- Date: 2023-03-30
- Subjects: Xhosa (African people) South Africa Eastern Cape , Xhosa (African people) Marriage customs and rites , Black psychology , Couples therapy , Interpersonal relations and culture , Communication in marriage , Satisfaction , Foucauldian discourse analysis
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/408805 , vital:70527
- Description: Marital satisfaction may be described as the extent to which one’s expectations, desires and needs are being satisfied in their marriage. Studies that concern marital satisfaction provide us with crucial insights into factors that support or compromise the longevity of long-term, committed relationships. Little work has been done in understanding the role of cultural practices in marital satisfaction particularly in Africa, and South Africa more specifically. Ukuyalwa is a Xhosa ritual that takes place during a Xhosa traditional wedding, whereby the bride is introduced to the (traditional) guiding practices of her new home by the women of the family together with her sisters-in-law. This study informs the practice of African psychology as formulated by Ratele (2017b).Critical African psychology as a framework recognizes the construction of culture alongside political, socioeconomic, and historical matrices. These are acknowledged as an important element in psychological theories, methods, and explanations. This research project aimed to identify the discourses that circulate around ukuyalwa as a Xhosa cultural practice and consider the implications for the marital satisfaction of amaXhosa couples. The study interviewed 3 Xhosa couples of varying ages who had been married for different durations to develop an understanding of their experiences of ukuyalwa and marital satisfaction. Data was analyzed using a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) which allowed for the identifications of the discourses that the couples used to construct ukuyalwa and marital satisfaction. The couples discursively constructed marriage as ‘divine unity’, ‘unification of families’ and ‘partnership’. Ukuyalwa was constructed as a ‘gendered process’, ideas of tradition and modernity, and a ‘foundation’ also became apparent. Satisfaction was constructed as ‘open communication’ and ‘work’. The couples’ positions shifted in their conversations, where in some instances they were 'learners’, ‘initiates’, and/or ‘passive’, and in other instances, they were ‘in charge’, ‘knowledgeable’, and ‘experts’. The discourses of culture, religion, and partnership circulated prominently in relation to marriage, ukuyalwa, and marital satisfaction. The findings of the study speak to how the couples’ constructions of marriage and cultural customs such as ukuyalwa are valuable as they often inform how couples behave in their marriage relationships and what they regard as satisfactory to them when it comes to marriage. These insights into what informs the couples’ ideas on marriage and satisfaction can be utilised in informing couples therapy interventions. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
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