Against the background of concerns around teaching and learning outcomes in primary school mathematics in South Africa, this article presents two studies conducted in American Samoa and seeks to draw implications for the teaching and learning of mathematics in South Africa. American Samoa has a very similar educational context to South Africa. The…

This paper gives prominence to rural children's accounts of their journey to school. Twelve children (male = 6; female = 6) from three different rural villages in Lesotho participated in the study. Individual and focus group interviews were used to generate data, and these were preceded by three participatory research techniques: family drawings,…

This paper draws on literature that has theorised child participation within the sociology of childhood framework to examine how children participate in governance within school spaces. Four children aged between 13 and 17 (in grades six and seven) who serve as prefects at a primary school in Lesotho were participants in this study. Data was…

This article examines the complex ways in which teacher constructions of their experiences of teaching in a rural, disadvantaged context shape their taken-for-granted understandings of barriers to basic education. This article attempts to deconstruct these value-laden understandings of barriers to education. We draw on Foucault's notion of…

The international recruitment by countries of the North of teachers from less developed countries has become a controversial aspect of the problem of "brain drain". As a political and economic issue, the argument is that it reduces human capital within the education system and leads to the movement of highly skilled teachers from countries that…