Para el Comité de Gestión

The study took as its point of departure the assumption that many ways exist to make meaning of the world. Based on this assumption, I located my study within a qualitative approach. My intention was to explore how secondary school children construct care and support in a rural school context, especially care and support aimed at those rendered ‘vulnerable’ by HIV and AIDS. Ontologically qualitative research affirms multiple perspectives that are socially constructed (Babbie & Mouton, 2010; Creswell, 2009). The qualitative approach gave me an opportunity to gain access to the subjective constructions regarding care and support as perceived from the school children’s point of view. In order to come to know these realities, I personally interacted with the school children. Borrowing from Babbie and Mouton (2010) I had to “stay close” (p.53) to the school children throughout the research process.

The importance of context is emphasised in qualitative research since the study should be conducted in the natural setting of the social actors. In the view of a number of researchers (Babbie & Mouton, 2010; Creswell, 2009; Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Henning et al., 2004; Marshall & Rossman, 2011) attitudes, behaviours and experiences of people are best understood inside a natural setting as opposed to an artificial one. This is based on the fact that people are more comfortable in their immediate context and as a result they are likely to provide, as far as possible, information that is accurate and honest. They can refer easily to relevant examples from the context (Maree, 2007). This approach meshes with my study since my intention was to find meaning within social interactions, with the context being foregrounded as a significant aspect that influences the meaning the secondary school children make about care and support. Therefore, my data was generated by interacting with the research participants in their natural setting.

87 In view of Marshall and Rossman’s (2011) elucidation that qualitative methods focus on process and are flexible ways of finding out what people do, know, feel and think, a qualitative approach gave me an opportunity to acquire information through a variety of flexible methods with school children in their own context. I also concur with Creswell (2009), that qualitative research is based on the belief that knowledge is not only constructed by relying on a single data source, but also relies on image data and explanations of people’s intentions, reasons and self-understanding. Taking the purpose of my study into consideration my desire to include the school children’s voices allowed an opportunity to pursue an iterative process bearing in mind that the qualitative research process could change in response to what I perceived to be the needs of the school children. As the researcher I allowed the design to be adapted as it progressed, since this allowed me to engage with the school children’s multiple responses through methods such as drawing, photovoice and collage within the school-community context with events occurring naturally but within clearly defined boundaries (Babbie & Mouton, 2010; Henning et al., 2004).

Furthermore, the intention of a qualitative approach is to understand social actions in terms of its specific context rather than attempting to generalise. Construction of meaning continues as the researcher converts raw empirical data into thick description (Henning et al., 2004). The whole process is often inductive and allows the researcher to construct a detailed picture of the problem or issue under investigation (Creswell, 2009; Marshall & Rossman, 2011; Merriam, 2009). Therefore, by choosing a qualitative approach, I was aiming to deepen my understanding of school children’s constructions of care and support and the meaning they give to themselves and others through paying attention to the specific kinds and quality of spoken, written and visual arts-based texts produced in their responses to the critical questions. Data in my study is reported in a literary way, rich with the school children’s commentaries in order to establish a holistic picture of the study. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

The study took its point of departure with the assumption that school children, especially those from rural schools, are capable of making sense of their worlds. Based on this assumption, I located the study within a critical research paradigm. In other words, school children’s voices and participation in search of meaning is central to a critical paradigm as I explain in the next section.

88 4.3.2 Critical paradigm

The compositional structure of the design is anchored in and guided by the critical paradigm. Creswell (2009) describes a critical paradigm as being primarily directed towards the needs of groups or individuals in our society that may be marginalised or disenfranchised. Henning et al. (2004), in fact, highlight certain assumptions as indicative of framing the research within a critical paradigm. As generally happens, the critical paradigm as used in my study pointed and acknowledged that

 research develops critical consciousness of those involved;

 human beings identify and deal with their problems and find solutions, accomplished through an educative process; and

 the basic general meanings arise from active participation in and out of interaction with a community.

In other words, a critical paradigm allows marginalised and isolated perspectives and voices to become centre stage. Thomson (2008) too, positions the critical paradigm as one that provides space for voices to be heard. Rural communities and people infected with HIV or affected by HIV and AIDS, for example, have previously been overlooked in program development aimed at them (UNICEF, 2013b). In other words, their voices were unheard and they were not seen as active partners in finding solutions. Mainstreaming awareness of and knowledge about HIV and AIDS calls for developing strategies that are holistic, inclusive and integrated, and that embrace and include what the participants, such as school children in rural school contexts, have to offer (DBE, 2010a; Tshoose, 2010).

Knowledge is seen to be subjective and is built on experiences and interpretations and can be fully understood only from the point of view of the individuals who are directly involved, and, where relevant, through active participation of the underserved populations (Thomson, 2008). The intention is to raise consciousness since such awareness enables people to reflect, challenge, act, and react and, in the process of doing so, realise their own potential to lead social change (Creswell, 2007; Henning et al., 2004). Part of this paradigm is the desire to de/reconstruct one’s own world (Henning et al., 2004). School children might reflect about the existing interactions in their school in relation to care and support and then, in a dialectical process, deconstruct and

89 reconstruct care and support as experts of what counts in their own worlds and also because they can “engage critically and imaginatively … about complex issues facing their societies”, according to Taylor and Medina (2013, p. 12).

Implications of a critical paradigm include collaboration and active participation “with others rather than on others” (Creswell, 2009, p. 9). My study was fundamentally concerned with engaging secondary school children in a rural school context so as to explore their constructions of the care and support aimed at those rendered ‘vulnerable’ by HIV and AIDS in the school context and how the use of participatory arts-based research could enable agency in the lives of ‘vulnerable’ secondary school children in this age. I therefore opted for a participatory methodology since it suits the assumptions of a critical paradigm.