Lesley Wood | North-West University (original) (raw)

Papers by Lesley Wood

South African journal of childhood education, Apr 12, 2024

Introduction: Background Early childhood education (ECE) covering birth to 5 years has been, unti... more Introduction: Background Early childhood education (ECE) covering birth to 5 years has been, until relatively recently, a neglected component of public policy in South Africa. As a result, private ECE centres and playgroups have mushroomed in informal settlements and other impoverished areas. These provide much-needed income for some 200 000 (Department of Basic Education [DBE] 2022) mainly black, unqualified and underqualified women and opportunity for many more to enter the labour market. Despite ECE contributing in this way to the economy and to the future social well-being of the country through early education of the poorest children, the practitioners who work in this field receive less than minimum wage, no benefits and work in under-resourced facilities (Wood & Neethling 2023). Parents in these communities cannot afford to pay even modest fees although almost half of such centres receive no government funding and depend on fees to survive. In a country where unemployment is over 30% (Stastistics South Africa 2023), the ability of parents to pay for education is severely impacted, and so the sustainability of the sector is threatened. Those centres who are registered with government only receive enough to cover around 27% of their operational costs (DBE 2022). The government recognises the importance of ECE for the economic and social well-being of the country and aims to provide universal access for children aged 0-5 years to quality ECE (Republic of South Africa [RSA] 2013; RSA 2015). The decision was taken in 2019 to move the responsibility for ECE from the Department of Social Development (DSD) to the DBE in an attempt to better meet the developmental and early learning needs of children from birth to 5 years (Ebrahim et al. 2022) by moving towards professionalisation and gradual absorption into the public sector. This transfer of responsibility is referred to as the function shift. Background: The recent migration of early childhood care and education function brought with it many changes that affect the workplace well-being of practitioners and centre managers, yet little research has reported on the voices and experiences of those working on the ground. Aim: To find out the current state of well-being of practitioners working in resourceconstrained contexts to help us theorise how might they take action to improve it. Setting: Early childhood care and education centres in rural and township areas in six different provinces. Methods: The first author conducted 10 semi-structured focus group interviews with 80 practitioners recruited by collaborating researchers at various universities. All ethical protocols were adhered to. The focus groups were audio-taped, transcribed and thematically analysed independently by the two authors before reaching consensus. Results: Two themes were identified: (1) participants experienced negative emotions arising from both internal and systemic aspects that were affecting their well-being. (2) Several factors promoted the well-being of practitioners despite their difficult circumstances. Conclusion: Based on the findings, it appears that close collaboration among practitioners within centres and, with other external stakeholders, was an important factor for enhanced well-being. Drawing from action learning theory, we suggest how practitioners can collaborate to sustain their well-being while addressing the challenges they face. Contribution: This collaborative action learning approach can be applied not only by ECCE centres, but to any organisation wishing to improve the well-being and practice of their members.

Sex Education, 2014

ABSTRACT Sexuality education forms part of the national school curricula of most sub-Saharan Afri... more ABSTRACT Sexuality education forms part of the national school curricula of most sub-Saharan African countries, yet risk-related sexual behaviour among young people continues to fuel the HIV pandemic in this part of the world. One of the arguments put forward to explain why sexuality education seems to have had little impact on sexual risk-taking is that existing curricula have neglected to take into account the complexity of the social, cultural and gender norms that influence the behaviour of school-going young people in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past few years, the Department of Basic Education in South Africa has recognised the need to provide guidance to teachers on the content, pedagogical processes and messages that are relevant to their specific context. This paper critically reflects on findings from a literature-based study conducted to identify the cognitive and social factors influencing the behaviour of school-going young people in South Africa and the risk and protective factors that might be particular to their circumstances. The findings provide helpful guidelines about the development, content and implementation of sexuality education curricula more likely to be relevant in contexts of serious poverty and disadvantage. Although based on the South African literature, the findings may also offer useful lessons for curriculum designers in other developing countries.

Service-learning has been shown to be effective in preparing students to live and work in a diver... more Service-learning has been shown to be effective in preparing students to live and work in a diverse and rapidly changing society, especially when it is based on a democratic partnership between university students and community participants, resulting in mutually beneficial learning. Yet, in cases where the community is often regarded as less equal due to debilitating socioeconomic circumstances, there is a real danger the engagement turns into more of a charity rendering experience, rather than promoting deep learning for all involved. This article reports on our attempts to create a service-learning experience that allowed students and community youth to learn with and from each other. Data were generated in four cycles of a participatory action research design, using visual, art and text-based strategies. The thematic analysis indicated that the process gave participants a better understanding of each other's lived realities; that it helped to level out unequal power relation...

Palgrave Studies in Education Research Methods

Journal of Education

To provide a more socially engaged learning environment for preservice teachers in art education,... more To provide a more socially engaged learning environment for preservice teachers in art education, the first author engaged them in a critical service-learning project. In five cycles of action and reflection on the engagement process, she generated evidence about student learning through observations, reflective notes, and visual images to support her self-study on how she could influence preservice art teachers to become educational leaders by adopting socially engaged practices. Qualitative analysis revealed that, after completing the module, students considered including socially engaged art in their teaching and showed qualities of becoming critical, accountable, and transformational leaders-and better prepared for teaching inclusively and in diverse contexts. The model developed from the first author's learning serves as a praxis-orientated instrument to guide pedagogies to increase social responsiveness amongst preservice art teachers to make their future practice more contextually relevant.

Action Learning and Action Research: Genres and Approaches

While on a recent visit to NorthWest University in South Africa hosted by one of the editors of t... more While on a recent visit to NorthWest University in South Africa hosted by one of the editors of this volume, Professor Lesley Wood, I had the opportunity to visit some local schools. We arrived at the school in Rustenburg to find that classes had been dismissed because there was no water. But while we were visiting the school, a community volunteer, John, arrived with two huge plastic tanks of water and the children who were still nearby gathered around to fill their bottles. Water shortages like this are a serious challenge for schools in this part of the country, but school leaders are working to address the problem through creative solutions like including systems for gathering rainwater in new school developments. And children are engaged in learning about the environment, working together on school gardening projects and monitoring weather stations located on the school grounds. These schools are the site of a Participatory Action Learning (AL) and Action Research (AR) project and are my partners in a global climate change education initiative. AL and AR are also at the centre of a campaign to protect local beaches on Panglao Island in the Philippines, to develop a social enterprise partnership between a motorway services site and local non-profit organizations in Southwest England, and in the creation of a new teacher mentoring program in my own hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. All of these projects reflect the core tenets of AL/AR described in this book. And for the researchers and practitioners involved in these projects, and all those like them around the world, this volume is an important and timely contribution to finding more effective ways of engaging in community-based education, research and activism. Key points raised by the editors and authors of this book concern what these strategies have in common as forms of AL/AR and what distinguishes them from one another. By sharing a focus on creating opportunities for community participation in order to address pressing economic, social, cultural and environmental issues, all these forms of AL/AR are founded on the understanding that human relationships and a shared commitment to serving as agents of positive change underlie everything we do in AL/AR. Adaptability and willingness to innovate and embrace the emergent nature of knowledge and understanding are additional

The diversity of South Africa’s population calls for authentic and contextually relevant particip... more The diversity of South Africa’s population calls for authentic and contextually relevant participation in research that is community based. For novice researchers and researchers transitioning to participative methods, it can be challenging to facilitate a community-based research (CBR) project if they lack the necessary facilitation skills or experience. These skills are crucial to enable collaborative and participative learning. In this paper, I explain how I learnt to facilitate a participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) project through critical reflection on self and process. I generated data from my personal reflective journal entries and transcripts of our action learning group sessions, and I validated my claims to knowledge by recoding the data with two critical friends, my coauthors of this paper. The claims to knowledge I share in this paper are twofold. Firstly, I have come to know how to improve my facilitation skills and, secondly, I have learnt to use ...

Perspectives in Education, 2014

IntroductionSelf-study action research such as that propagated by Jean McNiffand Jack Whitehead i... more IntroductionSelf-study action research such as that propagated by Jean McNiffand Jack Whitehead in their joint and separate writing (see, for example, Whitehead & McNiff, 2006; Whitehead, 2009; McNiff, 2013) is conceptualised as a means of enquiry, whereby practitioners investigate, interrogate and evaluate their practice in order to improve what they are doing and to influence the learning of others. As a tertiary researcher committed to the critical self-reflection of my own practice, I employ research methodologies that encourage participants to do the same. I judge the validity of my work and any claims to knowledge against my values which then become "living standards of judgment" (Whitehead, 1989: 49).I proceed from a critical, emancipatory paradigm of action research (Carr & Kemmis, 2003) that aims to attain social change by creating space for people to critically reflect on, and problematise their current circumstances and thinking, with the ultimate aim of encoura...

Introduction 2 Education scholarship internationally

Copyright: © 2015 WoodThis is an open-access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative... more Copyright: © 2015 WoodThis is an open-access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.IntroductionThe obligation for universities to take on community engagement as a core activity (Council for Higher Education, 2010) presents an opportunity to conduct applied research that is responsive to societal needs (Favish, 2010). I proceed from the viewpoint that this requires the adoption of democratic and participatory paradigms that promote engagement with people, involving them as coresearchers, rather than taking knowledge from them to create theories about how they should deal with their problems. Participatory action learning and action research (PALAR; Wood & Zuber-Skerritt, 2013) is one such methodology that allows academic researchers to partner with people to help them learn how to i...

The aim of this journal is to offer a platform for disseminating research that promotes social ch... more The aim of this journal is to offer a platform for disseminating research that promotes social change. As an editor of the journal, I believe the ultimate purpose of education is to improve quality of life for all, and this aim must entail moving towards a more socially just society. Educational research should make important epistemological and ontological contributions to social improvement through theories and practices that make a real difference in the lives of people. In theory, academics in higher education can influence social change by integrating the core academic tasks of teaching, research, and community engagement through community-based research and/or service learning. In practice, the process is not so simple.The aim of this themed edition is to share research that promotes participatory forms of community engagement that seek to "break down the distinction between researchers and researched" (Gaventa, 1991, pp. 121-122) to enable collaborative generation o...

Teachers who work in economically and socially disadvantaged environments have first-hand knowled... more Teachers who work in economically and socially disadvantaged environments have first-hand knowledge of the challenges that can impede teaching and learning, yet their voices are often ignored when researchers and policy-makers attempt to address such issues. In this article we describe how we attempted to make teacher voices audible via an intervention based on participatory visual methodology. A two-day participatory research-as-intervention workshop enabled twelve teachers from economically and socially disadvantaged township schools to produce videos that examined some challenges applicable to their praxis. The process of producing the participatory video offered the teachers the opportunity to learn more about themselves and their educational contexts, and to position themselves as “teachers who care”, as they collectively identified pertinent issues affecting their practice, decided on how to represent those issues visually and how to further use the finished product as a tool ...

Learners living in challenging socio-economic circumstances face limited opportunities for furthe... more Learners living in challenging socio-economic circumstances face limited opportunities for further education and employment. In this context, formal career guidance which merely provides information about specific jobs and how to access them may be of little use. This article explores the usefulness of participatory visual strategies as a pedagogical tool for teachers to help learners think more critically, realistically and hopefully about their future life opportunities. Analysed through a resilience lens, findings indicated that the strategies inspired hope in learners; helped them identify assets and barriers in their social ecologies; develop a sense of agency and responsibility for deciding on their futures; and care more for other people, all of which will help them make more constructive choices for life after school. The findings might help teachers make their career education more relevant for children who live in contexts of adversity.

Service-learning has been shown to be effective in preparing students to live and work in a diver... more Service-learning has been shown to be effective in preparing students to live and work in a diverse and rapidly changing society, especially when it is based on a democratic partnership between university students and community participants, resulting in mutually beneficial learning. Yet, in cases where the community is often regarded as less equal due to debilitating socio-economic circumstances, there is a real danger the engagement turns into more of a charity rendering experience, rather than promoting deep learning for all involved. This article reports on our attempts to create a service-learning experience that allowed students and community youth to learn with and from each other. Data were generated in four cycles of a participatory action research design, using visual, art and text-based strategies. The thematic analysis indicated that the process gave participants a better understanding of each other’s lived realities; that it helped to level out unequal power relations; ...

Currently there is very little integration of HIV and AIDS into curricula at higher education ins... more Currently there is very little integration of HIV and AIDS into curricula at higher education institutions. The Higher Education AIDS Programme piloted a module at a national level to address this gap. This report presents the findings of a qualitative investigation of the experience of one university that chose to implement the module with a group of 60 postgraduate students in education. The findings suggest that, although the students found the module to be interesting and indicated that it offered them new perspectives on the educational consequences of the pandemic, there was little evidence of an in-depth understanding of how to practically adapt pedagogical processes and curriculum content to integrate HIV and AIDS meaningfully into their teaching. The report provides lessons relevant to the design of future HIV and AIDS education. MIV en VIGS-onderrig in voorindiensname-onderwysprogramme Daar is tans bitter min integrasie van MIV en VIGS in die kurrikula van hoer onderwysins...

Qualitative Research in Education

Rural schools in South Africa face many social and environmental challenges which impact negative... more Rural schools in South Africa face many social and environmental challenges which impact negatively on learner wellbeing and performance. Given the severity and history of these problems, the situation is unlikely to change in the near future. Yet, schools are supposed to be enabling environments, providing holistic support to learners from communities plagued by severe economic, health and social challenges. A different strategy is clearly needed to promote the health and wellbeing of learners. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) appears to offer a plausible approach to kick start improved, health-promoting responses from within the school. We facilitated a YPAR process with volunteer learners from Grade10 to find out how they could begin to transform their rural school. Using arts-based methods, the learners were successful in raising awareness of the negative effects they were suffering as a result of the poor social-emotional climate in the school, the unsanitary faciliti...

South African journal of childhood education, Apr 12, 2024

Sex Education, 2014

Palgrave Studies in Education Research Methods

Journal of Education

Action Learning and Action Research: Genres and Approaches

Perspectives in Education, 2014

Introduction 2 Education scholarship internationally

Service-learning has been shown to be effective in preparing students to live and work in a diver... more Service-learning has been shown to be effective in preparing students to live and work in a diverse and rapidly changing society, especially when it is based on a democratic partnership between university students and community participants, resulting in mutually beneficial learning. Yet, in cases where the community is often regarded as less equal due to debilitating socio-economic circumstances, there is a real danger the engagement turns into more of a charity rendering experience, rather than promoting deep learning for all involved. This article reports on our attempts to create a service-learning experience that allowed students and community youth to learn with and from each other. Data were generated in four cycles of a participatory action research design, using visual, art and text-based strategies. The thematic analysis indicated that the process gave participants a better understanding of each other’s lived realities; that it helped to level out unequal power relations; ...

Qualitative Research in Education