Issues of Researcher Role and Subjectivity in Research on
Educational Change in South Africa
Diane L. Brook
University of Georgia
This paper examines a range of issues related to
subjectivity, experiential knowledge, and researcher roles in
case study research on the dynamics of educational change in
South Africa's private and public schools. What roles does the
researcher assume? What dilemmas face the researcher? How does
subjectivity constrain and strengthen the research? First, some
background is provided on the research setting and the phenomena
under study.
Background
The reflections in this paper relate to case study research
in public and private schools of the Johannesburg area that have
been at the forefront of the movement to abolish racial and
cultural segregation in schooling and to lay the foundation for a
new multicultural society in South Africa. My research focused
initially on a single site in a 1990 field season. A formerly
all-white private Catholic school that was one of the first
schools in the country to become an "open school" by admitting
students of all races in defiance of official policy, the school
became the model for what could be achieved in all schools in the
country (see Brook, 1991). During a second field season in 1991
I continued my research at this school, examining the processes
of curriculum reform and building a multiracial learning
environment. I also extended the study to two other sites,
suburban white public schools that had been closed by the
government, then reoccupied by private groups and opened as de
facto multiracial institutions. Each of the schools was selected
for this multiple site case study because they reflected some of
the complexity of the rapidly changing educational arena in which
various private and corporate groups mobilized to organize
non-racial schools at the same time as the government was
beginning to succumb to liberal public pressure to allow some
integration of the rigidly segregated public schools.
This is a highly dynamic and politically volatile research
setting with change occurring on several fronts, influenced by a
variety of groups and organizations whose perspectives on
schooling and its role in building a new society emerge as
important variables in the study. There are currently some 15
different departments of education in the country; only
approximately ten percent of white public schools have taken
advantage of the government's 1991 offer to allow some racial
integration of public schools; and most of the significant change
has occurred in a variety of private schools. By the early 1990s
many of the older, established private schools were racially
integrated. A collection of "alternative schools" appeared too,
addressing the demand for education by non-white students created
by the disruption of schooling in the townships such as Soweto
where many schools were not operating due to the protests and
violence. Schools in my study are high-profile sites of
conflict in what has become a nationwide initiative to
renegotiate socio-cultural, political, and educational
opportunities for the non-white majority of students. In each
case, the schools are located in white suburban areas. Non-white
(African and Asian) students who attend the schools live in the
outlying townships and other residential areas for non-whites.
Consequently these students attend school in a multiracial
environment by day, then return to segregated society after
school hours. The sites in my study have received much media
attention as their sponsors and administrators have struggled to
obtain legitimacy in the face of government pressure to close.
My research focuses on the processes of racial and cultural
integration in these schools, and the implications for the
curriculum. I have interviewed administrators, teachers,
students, and other stakeholders for their different perspectives
and for insights into the issues involved in the attempts to
create multiracial educational settings and programs in the
changing sociopolitical climate of the country. Issues of
researcher role, experiential and cultural knowledge, and
subjectivity emerged as important influences on the research, as
is characteristic of naturalistic inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
However, my biography was an additional important factor in the
research, giving me roles both as an outsider and partial
insider. Although I had been raised in the country and had had
experience of its segregated schools, I have lived abroad for two
decades which made it necessary for me to become thrice born as
Spindler (1987) portrayed it. I have had to be reborn into the
research setting, and then be reborn again upon leaving and when
attempting to make the study understandable to outsiders.
The Importance of Experiential Knowledge
Several forms of experiential knowledge are necessary to
attempt understanding of the complexities and peculiarities of
the educational reform processes at work in these settings.
Cultural knowledge is needed of the racial, cultural, and
sociopolitical contexts being studied. Schooling has been
administered in four separate racially segregated and inequitably
funded systems--European, African, Asian, and Indian. My
knowledge of the history of residential and educational
segregation is necessary to understand why attending the few open
schools in central city and suburban areas was so desirable for
the vast numbers of non-white students living in remote area
townships in which schooling has been underfunded and inferior to
that offered white students. Admission to these schools has
become increasingly competitive, and students compete for places
assigned on entrance examination results. Experiential knowledge
of the administrative structure and functioning of the school
systems is also necessary in this study for me to make sense of
the open schools' efforts to enact change from within, by
integrating and reforming their programs, relative to policies
imposed from outside, such as government restrictions on the
degree to which they could integrate without losing subsidies. I
need to be sensitive to issues such as home-school discontinuity
and the absence of a single host community for these schools that
draw students of many races and cultural backgrounds from several
widely scattered racially segregated residential areas. The
study also requires my keeping up with political developments
such as the rescinding of the Group Areas Act that ended official
residential segregation, and the new policies that have emerged
under the De Klerk government such as in permitting minimal
integration of public schools.
My experiential knowledge of the traditional dominant culture
curriculum is helpful as I consider why the traditional
curriculum that maintains the status quo is under attack in the
open schools. It quickly became apparent that multicultural
curricula were needed to replace the external curriculum for all
schools set by the respective departments of education. This has
become particularly true in the teaching of history, with the
result that many schools have initiated programs to develop
interdisciplinary Integrated Studies courses that are more
multiculturally oriented (Brook, 1991). After initial
administrative reform to admit students of all races and creeds,
and sometimes even to secure the right to remain in operation,
these schools have also turned their attention to the curriculum
and to meeting the needs of students from many cultures and
socioeconomic backgrounds. The problems they face include the
need to attract multiracial faculty, obtaining and developing
suitable materials for new multiracial curricula, bridging
language gaps and learning style differences, reducing cultural
discontinuities, and preparing students for exit examinations
that are still set by the departments of education. Some schools
have had to deal with safety considerations such as how to
withstand bomb threats from radical opponents, and attacks on
students or on buses bringing students from the townships (L.
Macris, August 5 1991, personal communication). My years of
living in that country enable me to recall and understand the
depth of animosity among opposing groups in this struggle for
control of schooling. My knowledge of the local area
geography has been useful in locating key schools in the
integration movement, those most important to select as sites.
Hence, I have employed subjectivity in selecting sites and in
obtaining access to key informants (Peshkin, 1992; Honigmann,
1982). Without a long period of residence as a participant in
the educational arena under study, I would have lacked the tacit
and experiential knowledge that have assisted my site selection
and sampling, strengthening this multiple site case study (Miles
& Huberman, 1984).
Roles of the Researcher
As the researcher-as-instrument, I have assumed multiple
roles. I have had to reconcile insider and outsider roles, being
a researcher born and raised in the local setting but returning
to study the settings as an outsider (Jarvie, 1969). My
credibility as a researcher has been contingent upon my subjects'
acceptance of me as a partial insider with sufficient
experiential knowledge to understand the system and what I
learned. With both internal and external researcher roles to
play, I have had to span boundaries across groups, settings, and
cultures (Campbell, 1979; Goodenough, 1976). I have assumed the
role of participant observer, such as when asked to participate
in the evaluation of an innovative multicultural curriculum; at
other times my role has been primarily one of observer (Bogdan &
Biklen, 1982; Gold, 1958). In managing relationships with my
subjects, my experiential knowledge and acceptance as a partial
insider have allowed me to advance from "stranger to friend" with
some key informants (Powdermaker, 1966). I may be viewed as a
culturally sensitive stakeholder (Ciborowski, 1980; Cole &
Scribner, 1974) who is also committed to the "cause" of political
and educational change in South Africa, as opposed to being a
"hit and run researcher" with no stake in the process and being
unwilling to pay back for the knowledge and experience derived
from the research (Powdermaker, 1966). Reciprocity is
important in ethnographic research, perhaps particularly in
settings where the researcher is an outsider (Brislin & Holwill,
1979; Powdermaker, 1966). My subjects frequently urge me to
convey to outside audiences that there were indeed people and
groups in South Africa striving for change toward a more humane
society. They want people in the United States to know of their
efforts and of the overwhelming difficulties involved in
integrating schooling. For instance, African students bring to
school values and ideas about equality and prosperity learned
from watching American soap operas on television (L. Macris,
August 13 1991, personal communication). This creates
difficulties for teachers whose task becomes one of clarifying
values and of reducing unrealistic expectations generated by the
rhetoric of liberation and equality. They urge me to "go home
(the USA) and tell people how it really is" on such matters.
My role is to honor their requests where and how it is
appropriate. They also want my feedback on such matters as their
efforts to develop an integrated studies program, in how it
compares with American social studies.
On the other hand, my partial insider status and my acceptance
by informants brings risk to the study--my subjectivity has to be
managed so that it does not compromise my interpretations. One
must resist the tendency to overidentify with one's subjects; one
experiences conflicting emotions at the time of withdrawal from
the field (Gans, 1968). I have had to acknowledge my biases at
the outset, as recommended by LeCompte (1987), because my
personal views make me positively predisposed to the integration
efforts. I have had to balance my reactions to events with my
findings and with the emic perspectives of my informants
(Spindler, 1987).
My subjectivity manifests itself as a desire for the
integration and reform efforts in each school to succeed. By the
same token, despondency and disappointment have set in when I
have discovered problems and constraints in the process, in
implementing new curricula and in the accounts by teachers of
difficult interpersonal relations among students of different
backgrounds. Here there has emerged a need to seek out and
analyze the paradoxes inherent in the situation as recommended by
Peshkin (1988, 1992) and to separate the problems from the
progress made. I have had to consider my "null research
behavior" too--am I missing important questions and issues,
blinded by my personal perspective? At other times I have had to
deal with anger, such as when I heard how one of my sites, one of
the oldest schools in the city, had been closed and stripped
because there were too few white students to attend it. In the
same year, 1990, there was a shortage of more than 150,000 places
for African students in the city and townships. In this
situation, I was compelled not to focus too emotionally on a
single incident, instead to reorient my thinking and regain my
perspective. When I draw conclusions from the research
findings my subjectivity again needs to be reviewed as premises
and predelictions that have shaped the study. In this form of
ongoing, long-term research it is necessary to place in
perspective the findings of any given field season, and not to
succumb to despondency over the magnitude of the tasks involved
in integrating and restructuring the country's school systems.
For balanced conclusions to be drawn, my subjectivity needs to be
documented and "tamed" (Peshkin, 1988, p. 20). The euphoria of
my initial field season, when I first learned of the far-reaching
changes afoot, was replaced by a more realistic appraisal at the
end of the next field season, that the educational integration
process has only just begun and that many problems are to be
addressed. Subsequent work will allow follow-up on how some
of these problems are being addressed at different levels, by
different groups, and in different settings.
Lessons Learned About Subjectivity
The research under discussion prompted me to consider
whether reflection on one's subjectivity is mere self-indulgence
or necessary and desirable in qualitative research. In this
study, the need for monitoring of and reflection about my
subjectivity became very apparent since there was no denying that
it influenced my initial desire to embark on the study, and it
shaped the study in matters such as site selection and sampling,
questions posed, and conclusions drawn. My use of experiential
and cultural knowledge to shape and redirect the study allowed me
to increase the external validity or fit of the study to the
local contexts (Guba & Lincoln (1981). Thus my biography and
experiential knowledge were key ingredients in the research as
was my involvement as an educator and a stakeholder in the cause
for sociopolitical change in South Africa. Experiential
knowledge has facilitated my attempts to understand the
complexities and multiple dimensions involved in the study, such
as the interplay of race, religion, and culture. The complete
understanding of such complexities is still inadequately served
by my experiential and tacit knowledge. The study highlighted
for this researcher the difficulty of doing research alone, when
subjectivity is a powerful issue. One is assisted by developing
reciprocal relationships with one's subjects and by separation
from the research setting that allows the return of a more
balanced perspective (Whyte, 1955). Regardless, one is left to
wrestle with conflicting emotions. I learned lessons about
the niceties of boundary spanning and reciprocity, and in how
I have had to negotiate my insider and outsider roles. It is
necessary to differentiate between one's research and
interpretations as private, and the study conclusions that are
to be made public, including the presentation of information that
informants wanted conveyed to outside audiences about the
dilemmas they face and the realities of the situation from a
variety of perspectives.
Time constraints are a lesson in themselves, as in any
research. During the second field season events were occurring
in such rapid succession that it was easy to be overwhelmed at
the rapidity of change. Weekly, there were new developments:
announcements by officials as to the possibilities for allowing
some integration of public schools; illegal occupations of empty
schools by various groups pressing for equal access to schools;
and incidents of bomb blasts in integrated schools. My desire to
document "all" that was happening and to be "on the scene" needed
to be curbed. I felt more like an investigative reporter than an
educational researcher. This underscored the importance of
focusing on one's research questions or on an "orienting concept"
as recommended by Peshkin (1992).
In conclusion, this research illuminates for me the
importance of Peshkin's (1992) recommendations that as a
qualitative researcher I need to be honest with myself, and I
need to know who and what I am as a researcher. These
recommendations are particularly pertinent because of the role of
subjectivity in this research in my home country in which I, the
researcher-as-instrument, am thoroughly immersed in the research
setting, I use cultural and experiential knowledge to direct the
research, and I have an emotional commitment to the cause of
educational change.
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