Mirror of a nation in transition : case studies of history teachers and students in Cape Town schools

Bibliography: leaves 163-169.How do history classes reflect the ways in which teachers and students in Cape Town schools are dealing with their nation in transition? I ask through this research. To address this question, I developed a methodology based on ethnographic methods in the belief that I could gain a unique perspective by being in the history classrooms and in schools themselves for sustained periods of time. I spent three weeks in each of four schools with different histories: Peninsula High, Transkei High, Plain High, and Central High. I have presented my representations of these schools each as a separate case study. Through extracts from interviews with teachers and students, moments of classroom lessons and discussions, and descriptions of informal interactions in various school settings, I have constructed narratives to explore what is going on in schools in a time of transition. I have used the textual devises of narrative and rhetoric to highlight the situations of teachers and students in schools and to contextualise and to problematise the different ways in which they were dealing with an education system in transition. I trace the common threads that ran through history teaching in each school and juxtapose the thoughts and actions of teachers and students. In so doing, I have attempted to create conversations between teachers and students from different schools. These conversations seek to mirror first how teachers and students were dealing with education and history teaching in a time of transition, not only in isolation, but also collectively; and, secondly, to examine what was working, what wasn't, and why. It is an endeavour to provide an always unfinished, yet thought-provoking, discourse about where education and history teaching might go from here