Tipos de Fondos de Inversión

The first day of fieldwork started by meeting the teachers of the participants, Miss Veronica, who taught the Standard Two class, and Miss Ariana, who taught the Standard Three class. I had already arranged with Mrs Suzy for the teachers to be released for half an hour during which I explained my research to both and discussed how I would proceed. I informed them about who the participants of my study were and how I intended to proceed and spread out the time I had at my disposal to start the initial phase of my observation. I explained that this would be done only so that the learners could get used to my presence in the classroom and for me to get acquainted with the participants, since I did not know them beforehand. It was very clear to me that although I reassured them that I would try to make myself as unobtrusive as possible, and not interfere in any of their activities, the very fact of having me around from morning till afternoon with a recorder in hand was not something they looked forward to. I made a note so as to make sure not to bother them too much with my presence, seeing that they were clearly reluctant to having me around in their classroom but could do nothing else but comply with Mrs Suzy’s instructions. With time, Miss Ariana – in whose class I spent more time during my fieldwork than in Miss Veronica’s – got used to my being there and at times would acknowledge my being in her classroom by even inviting my participation when she was interacting with the children during the classes. Initially, she got the students to share their cakes with me if they offered it to her and acknowledged my presence in the classroom with politeness and respect. At a later stage, during her teaching, she would invite interaction from me in certain instances and I would be happy to indulge. Yet, by the end of my fieldwork, although Miss Ariana had accepted my presence in her classroom and was extremely cordial with me, it was still very clear to me that my presence had been accepted because they had no choice but accept the order given by the Headmistress. However, neither Miss Ariana nor Miss Veronica – in whose class I spent lesser time – showed any resistance during my data production stage and I was able to produce data in their classrooms.

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I could unfortunately not meet the KM teacher of the pupils as the school had not yet got the additional KM teacher it needed. There was only one KM teacher and six classes of approximately twenty-five pupils who had opted to learn KM as a language. As the ministry was having to handle the issue of the increasing number of pupils opting for the language and fewer staff – some of whom having reverted back to being GP teachers as they had a two-year contract which allowed them to go back to the teaching of the core subjects once the contract was over – the Ministry had not yet solved the problem of allocating KM teachers to the different schools over the island. Most of the staff they had recruited were still following training at the MIE and would not be done with their training until the end of 2014, in some cases middle of 2015. Hence, the sole KM teacher who worked at St-Marie primary school was having to spread out the time that she had at school over the various KM classes on a daily basis, which meant that there were days when the learners were left unattended, as some classes were run at the same time everyday.

This was a problem that Mrs Suzy had to handle at the beginning of the term. In one of the discussions I had with her in regard to when the participants I was observing would be allotted a KM teacher, she mentioned that the decision to introduce KM as a language in the educational system, despite being a sound one, had been done without any planning as such. In the 1970s, she had been involved in the struggle to introduce Kreol within the educational system, as she felt that the teaching of the mother tongue could only be advantageous to the children in their development and she grieved over the fact that the language had been introduced in such an unplanned way. As mentioned in Chapter Oneand Korlapu, the introduction of KM within the educational system was very much a political move to cater for the needs of a particular ethnic community rather than a pedagogical move (Jean-François and Korlapu-Bungaree, 2012). Moreover, Mrs Suzy was also quite disappointed that her best KM teacher, that is my ex-trainee student with whom I had got in touch initially, had reverted back to being a GP teacher and that the one who had opted to remain a KM teacher in the school was not as motivated to teach the subject. She mentioned that she was there only because of the additional allowance that the government provided to KM teachers as an incentive.

In a paper presented at the 45th British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Conference, Mahadeo-Doorgakant (2012), in a study conducted on the language attitudes of trainee educators who had opted for the special training to teach KM to primary school pupils and were the first batch to teach KM in 2012, argued that many of the trainee educators shared mixed views about

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the language they had chosen to teach. Despite having positive attitudes towards KM, there were mixed reactions concerning its teaching and its use within the classroom and many advanced that the reason why they had opted to teach KM was because of the number of incentives that had been given to them, notably the additional allowance, the advantage to travel from one school to another and the fact that they had to teach only one subject and not a number of subjects, contrary to the General Purpose teacher. One possible interpretation therefore is that the introduction of KM was not done with much systems and human resources planning and the lack of trained staff to cater for the increasing demand of those children who wanted to study KM as an optional language was one of the main issues that schools had to face with its introduction in the educational system. To deal with this problem, the MOEHR had posted those full-time trainee students who were following a two-year training course at the MIE as full-time educators in schools despite the fact that they had not completed their training. Hence, most of the KM trainee educators that had been recruited by the MOEHR in Mauritius since 2013 had to juggle between teaching in schools on a full-time basis and being at the MIE one day per week to follow their training.

At the beginning of the semester, very often the children would find themselves free during the slot that was allotted to the teaching of KM or alternatively, their GP teacher would use the slot to do a Catechesis class with them. This issue was only solved by the end of February, a month before the first term ended, when a second KM teacher was finally allotted to the school and who ended up becoming one of the secondary participants of my study.