Browsing by Author "Koopman, Karen"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A phenomenological investigation into the lived experiences of selected high school principals focussing on the school as a learning organisation
    (Universty of the Western Cape, 2024) Long, Keith William; Koopman, Karen
    This study explores the lived experiences of principals carrying out their strategic leadership responsibilities in leading their schools towards becoming learning organisations. The rationale of the study is to deepen our knowledge about the lived experiences of high school principals in attempting to develop their schools into learning organisations through strategic leadership. The literature review focuses on phenomenology as well as Senge’s learning organisation. This study draws on the foundational principles of Husserl’s transcendental (descriptive) phenomenology and Heidegger’s hermeneutical (interpretive) phenomenology. These two distinctly different schools of thought in phenomenology provide insight into developing an understanding of the lived experiences of the principals. The five disciplines of Senge, namely, personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning, and systems thinking provide the theoretical framework of the study. These disciplines play an important part in understanding whether a school is truly a learning organisation, or on the pathway of becoming such an organisation.
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    A phenomenological investigation into the self-efficacy of selected campus managers at TVET colleges in the Western Cape province towards academic goal achievement
    (Univeristy of the Western Cape, 2023) Ndaba, Thembelani Elvis ; Koopman, Karen
    This phenomenological research aims to develop an understanding of the self-efficacy of selected campus managers in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges and its influence on their approach to management and decision-making, specifically in relation to improving academic outcomes. The main research question is: How does the self-efficacy of selected campus managers at TVET colleges in the Western Cape relate to their achievement of academic goals? To answer the main research question, the research involved selecting six research participants and employing a Husserlian phenomenological approach for the data construction process. To elicit rich descriptions of campus managers’ subjective experience, this study conducted in-depth semi-structured phenomenological interviews augmented with fieldnotes. The self-efficacy of campus managers was explored in the study, with a focus on factors such as personal characteristics, past experiences, social context, and vicarious experiences. The scholarly work of Edmund Husserl's 'lifeworld' theory and Martin Heidegger's notion of Dasein formed the theoretical superstructure for the data-explication frameworks. To present the findings, descriptive narratives based on Husserl's 'lifeworld theory' were crafted for each research participant. The descriptive narrative was followed by an interpretive narrative crafted by infusing Heidegger's notion of Dasein and William Glasser's Choice Theory. This was done to gain a deeper understanding of how campus managers' beliefs and choices influenced their self-efficacy and effectiveness in their roles to improve student academic results.
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    A curriculum of inclusivity: Towards a “lived-body” and “lived-experience” curriculum in South Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2019) Koopman, Oscar; Koopman, Karen
    Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s “lived body” theory, we argue for a shift towards a lived-experience and body-specific curriculum in South Africa. Such a curriculum would view learning as a lived, embodied, social and culturally contextualised field. Its central aim would be to draw the learner into a plane of consciousness conducive to being awakened to the act of learning through an attitude of full attention. We specifically use the term “body-specific” to imply, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all curriculum model, one in which lived experience and the “body” form the conceptual basis on which the curriculum is built. Consequently, we reject the orthodox cognitive conception of the curriculum which views learning as a mental exercise oriented towards the acquisition of pre-designed knowledge that is “outer fixed” and “inner constructed”. In contrast, we propose that learning should be outwardly constructed through lived experience and inwardly fixed (embodied) as knowledge develops against the pre-noetic background of the lived world. Underpinning this is the essentially Merleau- Pontian notion that the knowledge we hold originates from (i) our relationships with this world that are embodied in experience, and (ii) our engagements within society and culture. The “inner” and “outer” shift in learning infers a switch from pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-led, supplydriven, hierarchical, peer-reviewed and almost exclusively university-based learning to experiencebased, applied, problem-centred, trans-disciplinary, heterogeneous, hybrid, demand-driven learning. In such a curriculum, the role of the teacher would be to focus on how the world arranges itself around the learner and to guide learners to see how the world reveals itself to them through their personal lived experience.
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    The lived experiences of grade 12 life sciences teachers conducting practicals during the covid-19 pandemic in selected high schools in the Western Cape Province
    (Universty of the Western Cape, 2024) Hendricks, Wayne Oswall; Koopman, Karen
    This study aimed to search for phenomenological truth about the daily realities of Life Sciences teachers as they engaged and completed the prescribed practical work within the curriculum. The main research question was: ‘What were the lived experiences of selected Grade 12 Life Sciences teachers in conducting the prescribed practical work during the COVID-19 pandemic?’ It further aimed to explore how teachers' pedagogical practices align with a learner-centred approach, emphasising their role as co-constructors of scientific knowledge alongside their learners within the science classroom. To gain deeper insight into the teachers’ pedagogical practices, an additional conceptual framework, named the ‘COVID-19 Practical Implementation Framework’, was devised. This model encompasses external factors impacting the execution of practical work, teacher-related factors that impede its effective implementation, and curriculum factors that drive teacher actions and decision-making processes. This conceptual framework integrated a phenomenological philosophical lens. This lens hinges on the ideas of Edmund Husserl’s lifeworld theory and Martin Heidegger’s notion of Dasein.