Improving inclusive education in public schools: Synergising the institutions

Abstract

The study unpacks the complex nature of inclusive education and unearths a solution of multiagency synergy. Pre-service and in service teachers at a full service school (FSS) in South Africa demonstrate great resilience and adaptative ingenuity. The research demystifies the Education White Paper 6 of 1996, and by disentangling teaching and learning, provides an intervention for South African government post-apartheid. The ethnographic portrayal of lived experiences is shaped by a novice FSS manager/mentor who set out to conceptualise preservice teachers’ instructional support as mentees at Dukes Full Service School. The practical demands and unplanned occurrences that in-service and pre-service teachers face at FSSs are situated within the activity theory of resilience and adaptative ingenuity; the researcher has thus generated a professional toolkit that integrates skills for professional crafting of solutions. This theoretical approach facilitates the formation of a scaffolding stratagem that improves inter-curriculum management and mentor support structures of the Department of Higher Education with the Department of Basic Education. Recommendations are configured to plugs gaps in knowledge and ability for teachers-in-training at FSSs; the recommendations are aimed at deepening the reform of educational processes in institutions for positive inclusive education outcomes