Project Description

Fulbright-Hays Seminar to South Africa 2008

Kendra L. Hearn, Ph.D.

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction (preK-12)
West Bloomfield School District

Project Title
Convergent Paths: Creating Equity and Opportunity through Education in the United States and South
Africa

Project Abstract
The educational histories of the United States and South Africa as impacted by issues of race and
segregation are clearly similar. This project will explore the policies, teaching and learning philosophies,
pedagogies, and programmatic initiatives adopted by the country of South Africa, its respective provinces
and their schools to create equitable and accessible learning opportunities for students of all races in their
post-apartheid era. Comparisons will be drawn to the same initiatives taken on by the United States in its
post-civil rights era. The project will seek to investigate how South Africa may have learned from the
Unites States’ initiatives (e.g. desegregation through bussing, mandatory integration, compulsory
education, NCLB – data disaggregation by subgroup, vocational education/Perkins, college readiness and
support programs, etc.), what approaches they may have purposefully avoided and new ones they may
have developed that the U.S. and/or its schools may be able to adopt. The project findings will be shared
in multimedia formats, including published papers, blogs, and digital stories. Particular focus will be paid
to the teaching of literacy.

Project Narrative

Convergent Paths seeks to uncover how and why separation and inequality in schooling persist in both
the United States and South Africa using the following inquiry questions as a guide:

• Have the people of South Africa found solutions to their racial and economic divides, particularly
as it pertains to education that we in America have yet to discover?
• In what ways are educators of South Africa attempting to mitigate the opportunity gaps that result
in performance and achievement gaps along racial and socio-economic lines?
• Do Black and White children attend and succeed in school together? If so, what characterizes
their coexistence and success?
• What is the epistemological stance of classroom educators and administrators to issues of equity
and access to disadvantaged youth? How are their philosophies employed in their daily practice,
school structures, programs, and policies?

The framework for my observations is based on seminal documents, policies, and laws of both countries,
including the U.S. Constitution and Brown v Board of Education, as well as the 1995 Constitution of the
Republic of South Africa, widely regarded as one of the most progressive and radical. Its accompanying
action plan emphasized the importance of education by stating,

“Everyone has the right: (a) to a basic education, including adult basic education; and (b) to
further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively
available and accessible.”

This project seeks to identify those reasonable measures and how they have been made available and
accessible progressively. It will embark to discover which parts of the action plan have come into fruition
and what remains to be realized. All the while, comparisons to the United States’ approaches to attempt
to create the same type of equity and access will be drawn.
Findings from this project will be published in a variety of media, including blogs, published papers, and
digital stories. These media will help to bring back to the students, teachers, administrators, elected
officials, parents and community members within my circle of influence:
• strategies to improve critical (higher order thinking), traditional
(reading/writing) and new (technological) literacies among students,
especially boys who seem to lag behind our female students in reading
and writing and our ESL population as compared to our native-born
population.
• programs or initiatives to increase equity and inclusion between the
racial and socio-economic groups in our schools and larger school
community;
• descriptors of effective instructional strategies, policies, or school
structures that are more culturally relevant and responsive, as well as
more engaging to learners with a variety of learning needs;
• characterizations of schools that are racially diverse with critical
attributes of their success for emulation;
• systemic approaches to increase participation of boys, ethnic minority,
poor, and language learning students in paths of study toward college
readiness and/or high-skilled work and technology-related paths; and
• a general awareness and appreciation for South African culture and the
similarities in their country’s civil rights struggle and ours.