DILEMMAS CONSTITUTED BY SOCIAL CONDITIONS

Floden (in Burbules & Hansen 1997: 11) states that reform is a perpetual condition of schooling, hence the continual pressure to change teaching in view of the many changes in societal knowledge about teaching and learning derives from social conditions. These social dilemmas are brought about by changes in the priorities for student learning and the effect of economic and market-related demands on education. Other deeper issues, such as learner character formation, developing national unity, empowering a democratic citizenry and building an educated community, are all social conditions that influence the educational goals, as change seems to present itself as a normative phenomenon. Shaping a deliberative leadership and management practice engendered by an understanding of a liberal-communitarian school practice focuses and directs my thinking towards a deeper sensitivity to the social conditions that influence the school practice as experienced when I engaged with the black primary school principal, mentioned earlier in this chapter. These social conditions are evident by the demographics of the school and its community. Hence the school

community informs the social context of the school. These social conditions create the pressure that manifests itself as dilemmas for teaching. As a result these social conditions draw me closer to understanding my school community in relation to six other school communities that I familiarised myself with. Once there is a deeper understanding of the conditions of a school community then citizenship education is being explored, within the best interest of the learners who stem from the social community. Hence I contend that irrespective of the squatter camp school community that my black principal colleague leads, his school reflected a deeper and transformed understanding of a democratic school environment shaped by a deliberative approach to, leading, managing, teaching and learning.

The advent of the Revised New Curriculum Statement (RNCS) and outcomes-based education (OBE) has required a change in the process of teaching. Teachers have not always understood such change, mainly because they have not been the initiators of the new curriculum, but only the implementers. Curriculum change without curriculum clarity has led to insecurity, mistrust and low morale among teachers. Shaping a deliberative leadership and management practice engages role-players in participatory engagement through deliberating, debating, discussing and arguing about the implementation of a curriculum with which they are unfamiliar. An imagined deliberative leader and manager would create opportunities for emerging leaders and managers amongst staff by developing a deeper understanding of the democratic principles and values embedded in our Constitution that influence our curriculum as a political (educational) drive for change.

Images of a deliberative leader and manager I imagine would socially engage teachers in the process of change by empowering them to take ownership of the curriculum. This social process of change is shaped through communicative engagement and dialogical interaction.

Such an emancipatory process empowers teachers to take ownership of their practice through sensitising and cultivating an understanding of the social conditions that impact directly on understanding the new curriculum and the teaching thereof within the context of the needs of the school community.

Creating space(s) for a deliberative teaching approach would lead to change through the construction of knowledge that is not only invested in the teacher, but that occurs through the communicative action and dialogical engagement of learners. Learners then become central

to the formation of new knowledge as a social construct for learning. A change in the approach to teaching becomes essential. This lessens the marginalisation of voices and includes the contribution of knowledge and unimagined possibilities through learners. This form of contributory knowledge, as respected knowledge shapes new knowledge contributors to a changed educational discourse. According to Floden (in Burbules & Hansen 1997: 17), rather than have the responsibility of providing answers, “teachers must know how to guide classroom discussions so that the participants build appropriate, grounded understanding”. In other words, Floden (1997) claims that, in order for critical teaching to manifest itself, knowledge should not be embedded in quantifiable or structured answers provided by teachers as sole providers of knowledge. Instead, it should be constructed through creating a deliberative learning environment that constitutes a culture of renewed educational practice.

In so doing, learners construct new knowledge, guided by teachers as facilitators, to generate discussion about the acquisition of new knowledge in generating knowledge, information, ideas and interest within their social learning settings and contexts.

Classroom practice now becomes an organisation of inquiry where communicative action is constituted by individuals. Not only is communicative action constituted but also collective decision-making, where classroom discussions lead to change in classroom pedagogy. In this case, deliberation performs the critical function of providing a plausible construct for critical engagement. Creating such a teaching situation engenders and cultivates classrooms into positive social settings, where better choices and new knowledge are constructed through the voices of all who are involved in classroom and school practice.

I contend that such a reconceptualised notion of social interaction has the potential to overcome the dilemmas generated by the changing social conditions that impair teaching and learning, but contribute to “enlarged understandings of that world” (Young 2000: 112).

Noddings (in Burbules & Hansen 1997: 29-42) claims that school education and teaching are embedded in the democratic principles of freedom and equality. In other words, political education plays a significant role in social classroom environments, because it is driven by the political objectives of social justice, renewal and redress in classrooms. With reference to John Dewey, Noddings (in Burbules & Hansen 1997: 35) speaks of preparing children for a life of rational autonomy: “Education is its own goal that we cannot create an education that

‘prepares’ children for a way of life they have not experienced in education itself”. For a

classroom education shaped by a deliberative discourse it aspires to engage learners with emancipatory thinking and actions. Such critical thinking and acting nurtures a rational autonomy within a social teaching context away from the teacher’s domination and the pressures of conformity and uniformity of teaching.