Professor Jonathan Jansen Education expert Professor Jonathan Jansen from Stellenbosch University. Picture: Supplied.
There is a direct relationship between the culture of a school and the academic results that it can attain, says education expert Professor Jonathan Jansen from Stellenbosch University.
Jansen, who is a curriculum theorist whose research focuses on the politics of knowledge in schools and universities, was speaking at Citizen Leader Lab’s School Leadership Forum talk titled “Leading Self Before Leading Others: Shaping Positive Change from the Inside Out” at Stadio Higher Education in Durban on Wednesday.
During the talk, he lamented the state of some schools in the country and shared anecdotes of his experiences at a dysfunctional school that he assisted.
He described how he felt after visiting the dysfunctional school for the first time and he questioned how, 30 years after apartheid, there were good schools a few kilometres from broken working-class poor schools.
“How is this possible 30 years after apartheid? How do you sleep at night as a government that has done nothing about this?” he asked.
He said the situation could be changed if there was willing leadership. “I don't care how dysfunctional your school is, but if you have leadership who is willing to change it, you can do that quickly,” he said.
He said you have to be in a school in order to effect change, and this change cannot be brought about from the top down with the leadership but also had to take place from the bottom up.
Describing what he first encountered at the school, Jansen said he went to a classroom where, while the teacher was teaching, a pupil had headphones on with his feet on the desk, two other pupils were kissing in the back, two boys were physically fighting, and a group were waiting at the door deciding whether to leave or not.
Jansen said he realised that this school was in trouble and that he could immediately understand why their results were so poor.
He said that he advised the school that it would take two years to turn things around.
He then recommended the changes that had to be made including a strict 8 am gate closing time, initially resulting in many late students but eventually leading to punctual attendance.
He further started to greet pupils at the gate, this was initially met with scepticism due to their lack of habit of greeting parents at home. He recognised that the cultural issue extended beyond the school and made greeting a habit.
Jansen further explained that the problem cannot just be solved on a macro level but needed to be solved on a micro level in the classroom. To do this, he asked to teach a class.
He said he took seven hours to come up with a periodic table lesson for a science class that lasted 50 minutes because he had to figure out how to break it down and make it digestible for a 14-year-old.
Jansen said that teachers use constructivism when teaching, assuming prior knowledge. However, he discovered that when there is no prior knowledge, teachers should resort to memorisation to initiate the constructivist teaching process.
“At the end of that lesson on a boring topic, a boy got up and said to me, ‘Sir, please don't send us back to our regular classes’,” said Jansen, adding that half the problems in management go away when you teach a good lesson, but if you come unprepared and dish out the same lesson year in and year out, of course, pupils want to go to the toilet for no reason.
He said five minutes before his next class, the pupils were lined up, boys on one side, girls on the other.
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