What are the aims of the lessons on role models? : Teachers and pupils’ understanding of the theme in South African comprehensive school classes.

Role models was one of the themes for lessons in the Foundation Phase in the South African Revised National Curriculum Statement of 2002 (RNCS; Department of Education, 2002). The focus of the article is to discuss how teachers understood, interpreted and presented the theme to their pupils and how their pupils responded to it. The study is based on policy texts, observation of lessons and textbooks. Foucault’s concepts of normalisation and normalising judgment and Connell’s concepts of masculinity and sex roles are used to analyse results. The results of the study show similarities and differences in understanding and preferences of role models by teachers and pupils. While teachers emphasised officially known people as role models, some pupils considered family members and other people in their neighbourhood.Mandela was a favoured role model in most classes. Even if the theme of the lessons was role models, I argue that the covert agenda is normalising pupils to the existing dominant social norms of the society.