Instrumento: Pauta de valoración basada en evidencia

According to Rubin and Babbie (2013:152), “a researcher should take care that her/his initial discussions do not compromise or limit later aspects of their research”. My ‘impression- management’ (Silverman, 2013) thus began before the actual fieldwork. I recall debating how I should look during my initial contact with the school, which was to take place in November 2011. This contact was a follow-up meeting to the letter and telephone calls made to the school’s management, requesting permission to conduct my study. What was complicating my position, however, was that this was no ‘ordinary’ research site: it was my former high school, which was selected for several reasons. One of the reasons driven by the ‘charity begins at home’ idiom, was related to my current position as a lecturer in the School of Applied Human Sciences (social work discipline) at UKZN. I had identified this school as a site for my future community outreach project, which was one of my professional aspirations. I thus viewed using this school as a site for my research project, as the beginning of a long- term professional relationship with it.

During this initial contact (November 2011), I was going to meet my teachers who I had left behind 23 years ago (1988) when I completed my matric (grade 12). The self was problematised and a process of deconstruction began. Being aware of the dominant ideologies of success in a school environment and in an African context, I knew that my first contact was to make a strong statement and to avoid giving an impression that could have been an obstacle to access (Silverman, 2013). While I did not want to present myself as a powerful and superior being to my former teachers, given my status as a lecturer, I also did not want to present an inferior image that did not mirror the intellectual and social competences I possess.

In African contexts, success is not defined in terms of material possessions, but rather in terms of sustained competence exhibited by one’s ability to interact and contribute to one’s environment in the face of adversity (Pellabon, 2011; Asante, 2003; Graham, 1999; Mbiti, 1970). I needed to present a personal front which mirrored resilience, academic and emotional intelligence, and my intention to invest in the lives of the learners. I figured out

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that the opportunity presented by my first contact with the school, was threefold. First, I was coming to request their permission to conduct my study. Second, this contact was an establishment of a long-term professional relationship with the school. Third, this was the beginning of my efforts to contribute toward the psychosocial wellbeing of learners, in return for the school’s contribution towards my growth and development.

Educational researchers have commented on how schooling relations are hierarchical and power laden (Baxen and Breidlid, 2009; Renold, 2005; Allen, 2005; Bhana, 2002; Epstein and Johnson, 1998; Thorne, 1993). I knew that coming back to my former school in a researcher position, would challenge the power relations that existed. To present what Coffey (1999) terms a ‘talking disciplined body’, I decided on a business casual look. Babbie (2013) states that your appearance as a researcher may result in a warm welcome or in you being totally ostracised – or worse. I am also aware that I have a sense of presence and a loud voice. Since speech visualises the body, I knew that I had to work hard to tone my vocals down. I needed a soft voice to communicate that ‘I am here to learn and listen’.

Portraying an open, non- intimidating, accessible, yet sophisticated self, was important. With this presentation, I did not assume my teachers’ automatic interpretation of the messages I was communicating – but the process of self-management became central to how I understood and made sense of identity constructions. The process was also an affirmation that identity and reality are negotiated in everyday life, and are shaped by complex social processes. Jeremiah (2013:16) thus emphasises that “the purpose of research is to mediate between different constructions of reality, and doing research means increasing understanding of these varying constructions – among which is the researcher’s own constructions”.

The day of the meeting arrived. When I approached the school gate, the security guard was sitting in his small office that is part of the gate architecture. I parked right in front of the gate hoping to draw his attention – but I was unsuccessful. I got out of the car and waved to gain his attention. He slowly moved out of his office, stood just outside his door, and in an unfriendly manner, waited for me to speak. His silence made me feel so uneasy and unwelcomed, and also made me wonder since when school visitors, particularly a woman, is looked with such suspicion.

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Before I found words to greet and before I introduced myself, I temporarily paused and looked around the school gate. There were many movements around it. There were cars, including taxis, stopping in front of the school gate – dropping people off who were going to the new clinic situated directly opposite the school. Inside the school gate, there is a big notice board stating ‘no guns’, ‘no alcohol and drugs’ inside the school premises, and that permission to enter the school is reserved. These statements made me realise that much had changed since I left the school, and my first contact was the first of many lessons I was to learn about the current social dynamics of my research site.

Since I was not a parent of any child in the school, access was granted after responding to numerous questions, producing official identification, and signing the visitors’ register. Entering my former school wearing a researcher cap and being older felt strange and troubling. While the school buildings did not look much different from a distance, I tried to locate myself in the environment, but struggled to do so. I parked my car in the open space used as a parking lot. I stayed in my car for a few minutes – trying to catch my breath and get my confidence back, and also temporally resisting letting go off a familiar space (my car). I observed a high number of cars parked there which, which was not the case during my apartheid days of high school. I didn’t recall seeing more than three cars in the school yard during my school years. This brought up several questions: do these cars represent a changed socio-economic condition in post-apartheid South Africa; who are the teachers; what are their profiles; who are the car owners; are they men or women; and how will they receive me? These thoughts left many questions to be explored during my fieldwork.

On my way to the office of the school principal, I took a closer look at the school buildings and yards. I was hoping to see a familiar picture or to meet a familiar face. I did not anticipate the sense of strangeness that I was experiencing, and there were few movements within the school premises. Later I learned that it was examination time, and movements of learners in the school yard and noise were highly restricted. The school which during my high school years was considered the prime school (physically, academically, socially) in KwaMashu, was now looking so inferior and lacked appeal. Somehow, coming back to the school now, wearing the lenses of a middle-income PhD student with social and economic capital, questioned and troubled the authenticity of the mental pictures of this school that I had carried with me for more than 23 years. Again, the notions of multiple truths and context

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specificity in understanding human experiences and development, were asserted. It became clear that the path between familiarity and strangeness is far from straightforward (Atkinson, Coffey and Delamont, 2003).

I tried to examine the source of these conflicting pictures of my former school. Were they a result of my current ‘lenses’, or did they exist before, but being a school girl who grow up under apartheid – I did not know any better? Was it true that education in South Africa “has not been the dynamo at the centre of social transformation” (Weber, 2008: ix)? These questions were unsettling and offered an opportunity for co-constructing the self, in relation to my target study population. They brought forth memories of my activism as a young girl, and how the confines of apartheid limited my so-called ‘social and political agency’; how, for instance, our leisure time as youth was exchanged for active political involvement (Cebukhulu, 2013) and how the academic and political agenda in our schools was not set by our needs as the oppressed – but by the oppressor (Mandela, 1995). These memories reminded me why I will never judge my research participants, because one day I was in fact them, and this was why I needed to focus on them, give them a platform where they could set the agenda for discussing matters concerning their lives, and where I could look them in the eyes and take them seriously – because their voice mattered the way mine mattered, but it never got the attention, respect, dignity and honour. My commitment to learner-centredness was again revived.