Sistema de tratamiento aerobio

Vulliamy et al., (1990:22) pointed out that:

Qualitative research methodologies are often viewed as posing particular problems of political acceptability, because they tend to probe sensitivities which can safely be avoided or buried in the apparent neutrality of numbers (Vulliamy et al., 1990:22).

Vulliamy’s statement reverberated in my mind when I was about to start negotiating access to the schools and participants in the study. By all means, the education sector is a political and contestable area; it is one of the yardsticks for measuring the success of political regimes. Public condemnation of the quality of education being provided by the state may be construed as covert condemnation of the government of the time.

There were a number of issues that bothered me while I planned for my field work. Some of these issues were caused by the negative publicity of the education sector in Malawi bordering on abuse of donor funds. The major allegation of abuse of funds involved a cabinet minister who had allegedly signed fraudulent contracts with several building contractors to construct school infrastructure. The amount of money that was lost in the scam was huge. The case was currently in court and a prominent official in the department of education was convicted and sentenced to prison. Another scam involved another former education minister and the supply of books in which K187 million was unaccounted for. This case is still being heard by a court of law. The other major issue that has been affecting the MoEST was to do with poor performance of pupils in the MSCE national results. For a number of years since the dawn of multiparty democracy in 1994, the number of candidates doing well at national examinations had dramatically gone down. There was also a public condemnation of the quality of education at both primary and secondary levels especially in government schools. This has been largely blamed on impromptu implementation of the FPE policy. The impromptu implementation of FPE became clear when the government recruited unqualified teachers to take up teaching positions in primary school as a result of the large numbers which enrolled in the first year of the inception of the policy.

I must point out that I planned to go to Malawi for the empirical study a year after a change of government leadership. Although the incumbent, Bingu Mutharika, had previously belonged to the United Democratic Front (UDF), a party of former president, Bakili Muluzi, he decided to leave the party and form his own party called the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Most of the alleged financial embezzlements within the MoEST had happened in the Muluzi era. The Muluzi regime was not very receptive to criticisms in education. For instance, it was rumoured that the government meddled with a course that was offered in the University of Malawi because it was perceived to be critical of some of the educational policies that the government was implementing.

The other issue that bothered me was that the youth in Malawi have been instrumental in questioning policies or actions that government and education institutions make. Now and

again, students in colleges have protested against their own conditions. For instance, there was a protest in 2004 which was instigated by fourth year student teachers at one of the constituent colleges of the University of Malawi. The students protested that they had to proceed for teaching practice immediately after the end of the semester while the college administration were said to have wanted them to wait longer so that they could conduct teaching practice at the beginning of another school term. This meant that this cohort of student teachers would not graduate the same year they finished course work. Student teachers were understood to be unhappy with that and protested vehemently leading to closure of the college. I thought that some people would misconstrue my research as a forum of protest against the failures of the educational system and subsequently, the broader political system because it would involve some of the students from one of the teacher education colleges.

Teaching practice is conducted in the third term which is the final term of the secondary school calendar. During this term, there are two national examinations taking place in schools, namely, Junior Certificate Examinations (JCE) and MSCE. A number of teachers leave their secondary schools to invigilate these examinations. As such student teachers would be left with very few members of staffs in the school. Those teachers who remained in the school may be busy with assisting in the conduct of national examinations in schools and also taking over responsibilities from teachers who embark on invigilation duties.

There is a tendency to reduce teaching activities and concentrate on the examinations during this period. In schools where there are shortages of classroom space, teaching may have to be conducted outside classrooms and this disturbs teaching and learning. During the examinations period, school heads also tend to be quite busy. Head teachers tend to be busy with examinations and rarely find time to talk to student teachers. Student teachers may be left to take full responsibilities of teaching during this period. The third term is also critical for pupils in forms one and three as they work hard to move to examination forms of two and four respectively. At the same time student teachers were expected to conduct their lessons in forms one and three. I had to consider how this was going to affect student teachers’ experiences as well as pupils in the secondary schools.

On another level, I had to consider the bilateral relations that existed between Great Britain and Malawi as a potential source of anxiety in the study. Politically, Malawi was a former British colony. The country continues to enjoy good relations with Britain to the extent that Britain is the largest single donor to Malawi. I was studying at a university in Britain and had

to do empirical data collection in Malawi. I felt that some individuals in Malawi, especially the ruling politicians would not be entirely pleased with my study whose results would be presented in England. I thought that this would be the case because I would be seen to be highlighting ‘social problems’ in education that politicians may want to hide from donors especially where the donor had made tremendous investments in the education sector.

6.1.2 Negotiating and obtaining access