Connecting-Africa | Find publications

Advanced search

Find:


Title Intercultural Arts Education: initiating links between schools and ethnic minority communities, focusing on the Kweneng West sub-district in Botswana
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29195
Date 2008
Author(s) Khudu-Petersen, Kelone
Abstract This study is based on the already established discovery that primary school children in the Kweneng West Sub District of Botswana, who are predominantly of BaSarwa and BaKgalagari ethnicity, show poorer academic performance and higher school dropout rates than the average pupils of the country. The study seeks to explore the possibility that in the Botswana education system, where the dominant culture determines the school's culture of dealing, failure to recognise and embrace the culture of the ethnic minority learners may contribute to the afore mentioned imbalance. In an effort to contribute towards positive change in educational practice, the study aims to investigate the feasibility and efficiency of implementing 'Intercultural Arts Education' (ICAE). ICAE is the collaborative intercultural teaching of Creative and Performing Arts involving adult members of the community who represent the local 'ethnic minority' cultures. The study seeks to evaluate the impact of the introduction of ICAE on pupils' attitudes towards school, cultural consciousness and academic performance and on teachers' attitudes towards their duties and the village community. - The findings reveal that peoples with non-Tswana background are disadvantaged in the education system of Botswana due to cultural non-recognition. Including CommunityBased Education, collaborative work based on dialectic reason, child centred approaches, community involvement in classroom teaching preferably in form of project teaching based on communities' cultural capital and interdisciplinary teaching, ICAE may provide a way to bridge the cultural gap between learners and the school, contributing towards the promotion of social justice through striving for equality and ontological security. Introducing ICAE as envisaged leads to more open and inclusive norms of discourse, lifting all involved to more powerful positions with an improved sense of self-worthiness. - Triangulation is applied in the data collection concerning sources of information, methods of data collection and persons carrying out observations and data-analysis. The analysis draws on the idea of critical realism. - The thesis recommends the implementation of ICAE in two phases: In the first immediate phase a redesign of the syllabus is promoted to include literary arts in the subject 'Creative and Performing Arts', to encourage the teaching of the arts as a truly integrated subject and to involve community members in teaching the arts based on the communities' cultural discourse. In addition teacher in-service training is recommended to prepare for teaching children with different linguistic and cultural background. In the second phase collaborative action research involving all stakeholders is envisaged to explore the inclusion of political aspects of Community Based Education and the extension of intercultural education towards other subjects.
Subject(s) Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2018 Block 17
Publisher The University of Edinburgh
Relation Already catalogued
Type of publication Thesis or Dissertation; Doctoral; PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Repository Edinburgh - University of Edinburgh
Added to C-A: 2019-04-10;09:57:34