Research Findings

The initial three year funding cycle for this project has come to an end. We are waiting to hear whether the application for a new round of funding has been successful. In the meantime we have reported on this first cycle to the National Research Foundation. While we were busy with this first cycle there were high points, when it felt like our collaboration was making a real difference to our working lives and we were really getting somewhere. (The photos below give a sense that working together is fun, as well as a lot of hard work.)  But there were other moments when it felt we were so busy with our personal and professional lives, or so mired in a morass of data, that we were merely treading water. Now that I complete this report, I realize we have really achieved a great deal. The synthesis of findings is in the page on Report to NRF 2014, and the conclusion is the following:"The requirement by the National Research Foundation that proposals on education research be based on a collaboration amongst at least three institutions, one of which is rural, has stimulated a valuable mode of inquiry, one which could not have yielded the richness and variety of data, had it been conducted in one institution, or similar institutions.  The key finding of this not-as-yet concluded research project, is that there is a great need for attention to the teaching role in South Africa, and for capacity building of the institutional role-players, both management and professional developers, to support this role. Change at the level of the system (structural and cultural) are required to effect this."