Técnicas e instrumento de evaluación y diagnóstico de la variable:

4.12.1 Postal services

A strike by post office employees delayed the sending and receiving of the questionnaires. It took almost three to four weeks before some schools received the questionnaires. In historically rural and disadvantaged communities or villages, the situation was even worse. The researcher kept on telephoning the principals or teacher-librarians to verify whether the questionnaires had been received. It was expensive because the researcher was using his personal cell phone to telephone the schools. It must be noted that this study was not sponsored at all and the funds used to finance this study came from the researcher’s own pockets. It also took almost three to four weeks for self-administered

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questionnaires to reach the researcher. As the researcher collected his mail from a post office in Polokwane, he frequented the city regularly to collect the mail, sometimes in vain due to the post office strike and it was expensive travelling to and from the city.

Many schools in historically remote, rural and disadvantaged communities or villages collect letters or mail from post offices in townships, towns or cities. The reason given is that postal services in remote, rural and disadvantaged communities or villages are ineffective and unreliable. Another reason given is that principals prefer to use postal services in townships, towns or cities because they live there. However, details of their former local postal services are still reflected in the Limpopo Department of Basic Education Annual Update Master (2015). To get the reliable postal address, the researcher was bound to telephone the respondents to verify the working postal address and this had huge financial implication in terms of buying airtime. Some principals or teacher-librarians gave the researcher their own private postal addresses indicating that postal addresses for schools are slow, unreliable and ineffective.

As the Department of Basic Education was placed under administration by the national government because of possible maladministration and misuse of funds, one principal indicated that all letters were withheld or confiscated because the school did not pay for its postal services, as they did not receive a Norms and Standards Grant. The questionnaire was then sent to the school again, this time to a private postal address.

Some principals indicated that they did not receive questionnaires because of the post office strike, after which the researcher emailed questionnaires to them. It meant that the researcher had to go into town to send the questionnaires electronically because he could not send them from his house, as he did not have Internet connectivity and GPS coverage in the rural community where he lived. This had negative financial implications for him.

4.12.2 Chief education specialists and senior managers

The researcher travelled to the head office several times to make appointments with two chief education specialists and senior manager (Media and School Library and Information Services) for face-to-face interviews; however, they were not readily available because of meetings and the senior

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manager was on annual leave for two weeks. The researcher travelled to the head office to interview them on three separate days. It was expensive because the researcher used his personal vehicle for transport.

4.12.3 Circuit managers

Limpopo is a vast province consisting of three former homelands, namely, Lebowa, Venda, Gazankulu and the former Transvaal Provincial Administration. Because of the fact that the province consists of rural areas and the lack of telecommunications infrastructure particularly in historically rural communities, it was difficult to send circuit managers the permission letter (Appendix C) from the head of the Department of Basic Education to conduct the study. Most circuit offices did not have fax or e-mail facilities to receive the letter of approval. Some circuit managers gave the principals of the sampled schools’ permission to photocopy the letter of approval so that they could collect it when visiting schools. It was difficult to talk to some circuit managers personally because they were attending meetings. Furthermore, the Department of Basic Education in Limpopo was unable to provide the researcher with the contact details of circuit managers. The researcher got these from the principals. Once again, a considerable amount of money was spent on airtime to telephone principals to obtain contact details of their circuit managers and to phone them.

4.12.4 School principals or teacher-librarians

The contact details of some principals on the list of schools from the provincial Department of Basic Education were not updated. The list still contained the contact details of retired or former principals who were no longer at those schools. Furthermore, some telephone and cell phone numbers were no longer working. Some retired or former principals were cooperative enough to give the researcher contact details of the new principals of sampled schools.

However, some principals and teacher-librarians showed little or no interest in answering questions. They were ill motivated to respond to questionnaires because some felt that the Department of Basic Education was not taking school libraries seriously. Some principals were adamant that they did not have teacher librarians because they did not have well-resourced and functional school libraries. Some principals thought the study was for schools with purpose built central school libraries because they kept on saying that they did not have school libraries, referring to a purpose built central school library

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only as they did not know about other school library models. They were not aware that the term “library” is used generically to denote all forms of library provisioning facilities such as converted classroom libraries, staffrooms, storerooms, reading bags, cupboards, collections or boxes of books in classrooms and mobile trolleys. The researcher was obliged to explain all this, sometimes telephonically. As indicated earlier, some schools indicated that they did not have a teacher-librarian because they did not have a library. The researcher was again obliged to explain that a teacher-librarian is not necessarily a professionally qualified teacher with qualifications in library and information science, but can also be a teacher who is handling library matters at school. It seems that some teacher- librarians and principals did not understand some terms, such as the “weeding of library materials” and a “purpose built central library versus a classroom converted into a central library,” but nobody bothered to telephone the researcher for clarification.

The researcher met one principal personally to give him the questionnaire, because he indicated that they had not received them after approximately three to four weeks. The researcher was forced to travel to Polokwane to give the questionnaire to the principal, which also had financial implications for him. Some principals made appointments with the researcher to deliver the completed questionnaires to him in Polokwane when they were attending meetings or buying school stationery. This forced the researcher to travel to Polokwane to receive these questionnaires, with the accompanying financial implications.

4.12.5 Processing of questionnaires

Although the researcher requested principals or teacher-librarians in the accompanying letter to stamp the completed questionnaires to ensure the authenticity of the data, some questionnaires were returned unstamped.

4.13 SUMMARY

In this chapter, the reasons for choosing the research methodology for this study were outlined and discussed. Various research methods, which were used to find answers to the research questions, the conceptual framework underpinning the study and the target population of the study were also discussed. As it was not practically possible to obtain data from all units, which formed the target

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population of the study, sampling was preferred so that a small portion (a sample) was studied in-depth and intensively to get a better understanding of and insight into the phenomenon under investigation and to infer findings to all high schools in the province. To obtain an inclusive and representative sample, two sampling techniques were used – stratified and systematic sampling techniques. The researcher also outlined research instruments and the procedures for collecting data. The next chapter will present the data collected.

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CHAPTER FIVE

PRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA

5.1 INTRODUCTION

The previous chapter dealt with the research methodology that was used for this study. In this chapter, primary data collected during the empirical study or investigation is presented and interpreted at the hand of the research objectives. The empirical data were grouped into themes and will be presented and interpreted as such. Even though the researcher used two sets of respondents for the study, namely, principals or teacher-librarians and education officials, the objectives and the themes are the same. Therefore, the data is collated around each theme and objective in order to provide a consolidated analysis (Neuman 2006).