SCHOOL-BASED SUPPORT TEAMS’ TRAJECTORIES IN RURAL CONTEXTS OF SOUTH AFRICA: THE TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The challenges in the school-based support team members’ execution of their duties have been focusing on their roles as teams and the roles of school management and its teachers in supporting the teams. However, literature is silent about the significance of involving all stakeholders who are at rural campuses and employed by the South African Department of Basic Education. The current paper concentrates on determining the challenges in the implementation of the schoolbased support team in rural areas, with a view to suggesting solutions. We opted for Ubuntu as a theoretical framework. To complement the conceptualization of the above, group discussion was used to generate data from the selected participants. Fifteen teachers employed by the DoE and enrolled as BEd honours students at a rural campus from one of the universities in South Africa were selected using the convenient selection technique. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data and the findings indicate that implementation is not easy because of the lack of resources; parents are not aware of their children’s disabilities, and a lack of support from the district-based support teams. However, adequate educational resources, a literacy programme for rural dwellers, most especially parents, to enable them to be aware of their responsibilities as parents towards schools and the development of functioning and effective collaborative relationships among all education stakeholder in rural locations were recommended.