School-level ICT Adoption Factors in the Western Cape Schools

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Miller ◽  
M. Naidoo ◽  
J.-P. van Belle ◽  
W. Chigona
Keyword(s):  
School Level ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Adoption Factors ◽  
Ict Adoption

Provincial Governance of Education—The Western Cape Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Robert ◽  
Brian Levy
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Political Party ◽  
School Level ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Education Department ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Public Education System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Bureaucracy

The focus of this chapter is the management and governance of education at provincial level—specifically on efforts to introduce performance management into education by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), and their impact. Post-1994 the WCED inherited a bureaucracy that was well placed to manage the province’s large public education system. Subsequently, irrespective of which political party has been in power, the WCED consistently has sought to implement performance management. This chapter explores to what extent determined, top-down efforts, led by the public sector, can improve dismal educational performance. It concludes that the WCED is a relatively well-run public bureaucracy. However, efforts to strengthen the operation of the WCED’s bureaucracy have not translated into systematic improvements in schools in poorer areas. One possible implication is that efforts to strengthen hierarchy might usefully be complemented with additional effort to support more horizontal, peer-to-peer governance at the school level.

scholarly journals Hastening slowly: insights about teacher development from an evaluation of courses at the WCED’s Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Meyer ◽  
Lydia Abel
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Teacher Development ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
School Level ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Leadership Institute ◽  
Service Training ◽  
Education Administrators ◽  
The Impact

In the area of teacher professional development, South African education administrators face the challenge of reconciling two imperatives that have entirely different implications for programme time frames and budgets. On the one hand, there is an urgent need to improve the pedagogic content knowledge of many teachers to improve the overall standard of teaching and learning in the public school system. Considering the scale and urgency of the matter, centralised course-based in-service training seems to be the only affordable alternative. On the other hand, researchers have long warned that once-off course-based training on its own has limited impact on teachers’ practice, and has to be accompanied by further professional support in the school and classroom, or be abandoned in favour of more enduring professional learning communities. The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has grappled with this dilemma in the Department’s various professional development initiatives for teachers, a mainstay of which is the training offered by the Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI). This paper presents some of the data and findings from an external evaluation that ORT SA CAPE conducted in 2011–2012 of courses offered by the WCED at the CTLI. The hierarchy of INSET outcomes proposed by Harland and Kinder (1997) was applied to record changes in the practice of 18 teachers at eight schools. The progress of five of the teachers is discussed to illustrate the interplay between school-level factors and the experiences of individual teachers which influenced the impact of CTLI training on their teaching.

Adoption of Mobile Technology by Public Healthcare Doctors

2011 ◽  
pp. 773-789
Author(s):  
Nesaar Banderker ◽  
Jean-Paul Van Belle
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
Quality Of Healthcare ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Public Healthcare ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Adoption Factors ◽  
Public Healthcare Sector ◽  
Information And Communication

Doctors working in the South African public healthcare sector are faced with the unique resource constraints prevalent in a developing country. Mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) hold the promise of improving the quality of healthcare, but this potential can only be unlocked if individuals decide to adopt the new technologies. Understanding the factors that influence the doctor’s adoption of a technology is therefore vital. This chapter reports on an investigation into the factors influencing the adoption of mobile devices by doctors in the public healthcare sector in the Western Cape, South Africa. The research methodology was shaped by qualitative enquiry and described through thematic analysis. The authors confirmed the key adoption factors identified in prior research: job relevance, usefulness, perceived user resources and device characteristics. However, some additional adoption factors were uncovered in this research, namely patient influence, support structures from national government and hospital administration, and unease in respect of malpractice legal suits.

Political Transformation and Education Sector Performance in South Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-131
Author(s):  
Brian Levy ◽  
Robert Cameron ◽  
Ursula Hoadley ◽  
Vinothan Naidoo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
School Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Political Patronage ◽  
Public Bureaucracy ◽  
Policymaking And Implementation

This chapter explores how political and institutional constraints influenced education policymaking and implementation in South Africa at national, provincial, and school levels. Stark differences between the Eastern and Western Cape provinces offer a natural experiment for exploring how context matters. The Eastern Cape’s socio-economic, political, and institutional legacy resulted in a low-level equilibrium trap—one where multiple political patronage networks were mirrored by a factionalized, fragmented bureaucracy. The Western Cape, by contrast, enjoyed a more supportive environment for the operation of public bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy need not be destiny. The research also found that strong hierarchy can result in formal compliance and a low-level equilibrium of mediocrity. Participatory school-level governance potentially can improve outcomes. Whether this potential is realized depends on the relative strength of developmentally oriented and predatory actors, with the outcomes not foreordained by local context, but contingent and cumulative.

scholarly journals Case Study and Narrative Inquiry as Merged Methodologies: A Critical Narrative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 160940692093788
Author(s):  
Amshuda Sonday ◽  
Elelwani Ramugondo ◽  
Harsha Kathard
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
Professional Role ◽  
School Level ◽  
Role Transition ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Specialized Education

Case study and narrative inquiry as merged methodological frameworks can make a vital contribution that seeks to understand processes that may explain current realities within professions and broader society. This article offers an explanation of how a critical perspective on case study and narrative inquiry as an embedded methodology unearthed the interplay between structure and agency within storied lives. This case narrative emerged out of a doctoral thesis in occupational therapy, a single instrumental case describing a process of professional role transition within school-level specialized education in the Western Cape, South Africa. This case served as an exemplar in demonstrating how case study recognized the multiple layers to the context within which the process of professional role transition unfolded. The embedded narrative inquiry served to clarify emerging professional identities for occupational therapists within school-level specialized education in postapartheid South Africa.

scholarly journals The Politics and Governance of Basic Education

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
School Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Public Bureaucracy

This book brings together scholars from multiple disciplines to explore how political and institutional context influences the governance of basic education in South Africa at national, provincial, and school levels. A specific goal is to contribute to the crucial, ongoing challenge of improving educational outcomes in South Africa. A broader goal is to illustrate the value of an approach to the analysis of public bureaucracies, and of participatory approaches to service provision which puts politics and institutions at centre stage. Stark differences between the Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces offer something of a natural experiment for exploring the influence of context. The Eastern Cape’s socio-economic, political, and institutional legacy resulted in a low-level equilibrium trap in which incentives transmitted from the political to the bureaucratic levels reinforced factionalized loyalty within multiple patronage networks, and which is difficult to escape. The Western Cape, by contrast, enjoyed a more supportive environment for the operation of public bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy need not be destiny. The research also shows that strong hierarchy can result in ‘isomorphic mimicry’—a combination of formal compliance and a low-level equilibrium of mediocrity. Participatory school-level governance potentially can improve outcomes—as a complement to strong bureaucracies, or as a partial institutional substitute where bureaucracies are weak. Whether this potential is realized depends on the relative strength of developmentally oriented and predatory actors, with the outcomes not fore-ordained by local context, but contingent and cumulative—with individual agency by stakeholders playing a significant role.

Adoption of Mobile Technology by Public Healthcare Doctors

2010 ◽  
pp. 368-383
Author(s):  
Nesaar Banderker ◽  
Jean-Paul Van Belle
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
Quality Of Healthcare ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Public Healthcare ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Adoption Factors ◽  
Public Healthcare Sector ◽  
Information And Communication

Doctors working in the South African public healthcare sector are faced with the unique resource constraints prevalent in a developing country. Mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) hold the promise of improving the quality of healthcare, but this potential can only be unlocked if individuals decide to adopt the new technologies. Understanding the factors that influence the doctor’s adoption of a technology is therefore vital. This chapter reports on an investigation into the factors influencing the adoption of mobile devices by doctors in the public healthcare sector in the Western Cape, South Africa. The research methodology was shaped by qualitative enquiry and described through thematic analysis. The authors confirmed the key adoption factors identified in prior research: job relevance, usefulness, perceived user resources and device characteristics. However, some additional adoption factors were uncovered in this research, namely patient influence, support structures from national government and hospital administration, and unease in respect of malpractice legal suits.

Adoption of Mobile Technology by Public Healthcare Doctors

2011 ◽  
pp. 209-225
Author(s):  
Nesaar Banderker ◽  
Jean-Paul Van Belle
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
Quality Of Healthcare ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Public Healthcare ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adoption Factors ◽  
Public Healthcare Sector

South African doctors working in the public healthcare sector are faced with the unique resource constraints prevalent in a developing country. Mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) hold the promise of improving the quality of healthcare, but this potential can only be unlocked if individuals decide to adopt the new technologies. Understanding the factors that influence the doctor’s adoption of a technology is therefore vital. This article reports on an investigation into the factors influencing the adoption of mobile devices by doctors in the public healthcare sector in the Western Cape, South Africa. The research methodology was shaped by qualitative enquiry and described through thematic analysis. The authors confirmed the key adoption factors identified in prior research: job relevance, usefulness, perceived user resources and device characteristics. However, some additional adoption factors were uncovered in this research, namely patient influence, support structures from national government and hospital administration, and unease in respect of malpractice legal suits. [Article copies are available for purchase from InfoSci-on-Demand.com]

Case Studies of School-Level Governance Dynamics in the Western Cape

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Hoadley ◽  
Brian Levy ◽  
Lawule Shumane ◽  
Shelly Wilburn
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
School Level ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter details four case studies of school-level management practices in the appointment process of school principals. The school-level processes are used as a lens through which to refract local governance dynamics, and thereby gain insight into the broader multi-stakeholder contexts within which the principal is embedded. The contrasts between the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces provide an ideal opportunity to explore a central theme of this book, namely how ‘good fit’ works—how preferred approaches to policy design and implementation might vary according to the contexts in which they are being undertaken. The chapter suggests that rather than viewing the interaction between hierarchical and horizontal governance as zero-sum, the task for practitioners is to find ways to make more effective the ‘both/and’ balance, with an emphasis on impersonal forms of decision-making.

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