Friendship, collegiality and community in South African teachers’ lives and careers.

Volker Wedekind

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference, Cardiff

University, 7-10 September 2000

School of Education, Training and Development

University of Natal

P/Bag X01

Scottsville 3209

South Africa

and

Department of Sociology

University of Manchester

Williamson Building

Oxford Road

Manchester

M13 9PL

E-mail: wedekind@nu.ac.za

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Introduction

South African teachers have experienced a sea change in their places of work over the last decade

and the pressure for greater reform and development in the education system is likely to see changes

continue for some time yet1. As elsewhere the changes, and the failure to change, generate many

debates on the best ways of tansforming schools and teachers. Politicians have attacked teachers for

their lack of commitment, teachers express frustrations at the levels of interference, and universities

and non-governmental organisations seek out models for effective school and teacher development.

Within the latter area there is an increasing array of models of school development - be they school-

based, whole-school or leadership oriented - being imported, modified or developed afresh in the

South African context. One of the central concepts within these models is ‘community’. Reference is

made to professional communities, school communities or any number of other variations. This paper

is primarily concerned with how teachers experience community. By drawing on data from a series

of life history interviews, coupled with observation and survey data, the paper seeks to explore the

role that friendship networks can play in the development of a sense of community. It will be

suggested that friendships amongst colleagues can play a central role in the development of a

teacher’s sense of identification with an institution and his or her colleagues.

Teacher Development and School Communities

There has been a widespread interest in South Africa in developing strategies that can assist schools

and teachers to cope with and embrace change2. While state sponsored trickle-down initiatives have

largely foundered due to limited resources and conceptual difficulties, there has been much activity

in the non-governmental sector attempting to implement smaller scale and school-based initiatives,

drawing on models of school development and school reform from Britain and North America. These

models have tended to emphasise the need for whole-school approaches, stressing the role of

management in catalysing a new school culture that embraces change (Christie and Potterton 1997).

Notions of school consensus, school culture and school communities abound in both the South

African and international literature (see Guskey and Huberman 1995; School of Education 1998;

Westheimer 1998). In summarising much of the literature on school communities, Westheimer lists

1 A full discussion of the extent and nature of the changes is not possible here. There is a growing literature that documents and reviews the changes in terms of policy, curriculum and practice [see for example\ Wedekind, 2000 #65; Morrow, 1998 #63; Jansen, 1999 #64].2 Workshops are held, consultants flown in, and new degree programmes are launched with regularity.

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five constitutive features of community: 1) interaction and participation; 2) interdependence; 3)

shared interests and beliefs; 4) concern for individual and minority views; and 5) meaningful

relationships (Westheimer 1998: 17). One of the difficulties with much of the literature on school

communities is that it fails to adequately distinguish between the notion of community as a bounded

grouping “with specific modes of behaviour to one another” (Gluckman 1940/1958: 9) and the more

complex notion of community that is concerned with matters of identity. The former can be

employed as an external descriptor (interaction, participation and interdependence exist) while the

latter is concerned with the quality of the relationships (what meaning is attached to the relationships

internally). Westheimer’s summary illustrates the two dimensions well. Points one and two link to

Gluckman’s notion of community, usually defined in terms of some spatial metaphor3. However,

sharing a bounded space such as a school, and interacting within that space in some interdependent

form, does not imply that the members of the community have meaningful relationships, shared

interests and beliefs and a concern for individual and minority views. This latter qualitative

dimension can be better defined as something akin to having a ‘sense of community’, those

‘empathetic connections’ between people (Dominelli 1999: 442), or the concept communitas which

Turner employs (Turner 1969: 96).

Westheimer’s recent study showed how much of the literature on school communities failed to

adequately distinguish between different types of communities and he develops a model that

differentiates between liberal and collective communities4. However, Westheimer’s study was based

on case studies of two schools that had been reorganised with a strong commitment to building a

community5. Other cases of strong school-wide teacher communities tend to be those schools that

have a specific focus, be they religious, ideologically or pedagogically distinctive, or defined in

terms of their curriculum (see Talbert 1993). The reality of most schools, if personal experience and

a wealth of international ethnographic data is to be believed, is that they are highly divided places

(see Woods 1979 for the classic study). Teachers, particularly in secondary schools, tend to identify

with their subject specialisation rather than the school staff as a whole (Little 1993).

A growing area of consensus in debates about school communities is the crucial role that leadership

plays in creating the conditions for the sense of community to develop as well as actively managing

change processes (see for instance Gray 1998). Schools with good leadership are generally more

resilient (Christie 1997) and more likely to create an enabling environment for school development 3 Gluckman develops this definition in relation to the white and Zulu interaction within Zululand. The community in this case is ‘Zululanders’ in that very few social situations can be understood without understanding ‘Zulu-European relations’. However, there is little doubt that this community did not have shared interests and beliefs or any of the other features of community listed above.4 A liberal community emphasises individual rights and responsibilities where members of the community maintain their own goals and pursue them individually. In a collective community members maintain shared goals with a strong social contract that draws people into community life (Westheimer 1998: 128)5 Both schools essentially had all their teaching staff dismissed, new management brought in and teachers hired who were seen to contribute to the school vision.

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and change (Fullan 1999). But what are the implications for schools where these conditions don’t

exist? Do other forms of community emerge or do teachers operate in isolation? It is these questions

which I intend to explore in relation to one specific case study.

Methodology

The methodology employed is that of life history or biographical interview and career data, coupled

with focused interviews on specific aspects of curriculum change and social change. The life history

data was collected in late 1999 and early 2000, while additional background data are drawn from

earlier studies (Penny, Appel et al. 1993; Wedekind, Lubisi et al. 1996; Wedekind and Sader 1998;

Harley and Wedekind 1999; Randall 1999; Sader 1999) carried out by a team of researchers at the

University of Natal.

The particular advantage of drawing on life histories is that the discussion of the significance of

friendships emerged from the participants’ accounts of their lives and careers as teachers. The

broader study for which the life histories were collected did not have this dimension as an explicit

focus. Work is understood by the participants in the interview to be one dimension of a broader life

and thus tends to overcome the difficulties of reifying the work and organisational dimensions of

people’s lives (Newton 1999).

The interviews varied in length between 1 hour and 3 hours. They were fully transcribed and then

managed and coded using Atlas/ti. All references refer to the document number and line numbers

within the Atlas/ti Hermeneutic Unit.

Before examining in some detail the friendship network, it is important to provide some background

to the school.

Forest View High6

Forest View High School lies on the suburban outskirts of a secondary city in South Africa. Its

buildings are located in fairly large grounds on the edge of a large commercial forestry plantation.

The architecture is typical of most schools built from the middle of the last century – multiple storeys

of long corridors of classrooms. The entrance foyer is adorned with plaques listing the achievements

of pupils at the school as well as the names of the head prefects and captains of the First XV Rugby

6 All names of schools and of the teachers involved have been changed. Teachers’ names begin with the same letter as the name of their school, hence all current Forest View teachers have names beginning with the letter F.

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team. A more recent addition includes the names of those who have been awarded school colours for

cultural activities.

The corridors are crowded during breaks between lessons as large numbers of pupils attempt to move

from one class to the next. The school was designed for 850 pupils, but now has over 1000 and the

intake is due to increase again in 2001. Large signs in English and Afrikaans have been mounted on

the building walls extolling the virtues of being quiet!

Historically, Forest View was administered by the Natal Education Department (NED)7 and was until

the early 1990s reserved for white children. It is thus well resourced when compared to the majority

of schools in South Africa, although in comparison to other ex-NED schools in the city it is not the

most affluent8. All classrooms have sufficient desks and chairs, electricity and usually an overhead

projector.

The school’s original feeder community was primarily the white working class community in the

surrounding suburbs. Partly because of the community it served, the school’s orientation was towards

technical and vocational subjects rather than academic ones. Indeed, it was the only NED school in

the city that offered a technical qualification as well as the conventional academic curriculum, and

this resulted in it attracting children who were struggling with the academic orientation of the

majority of other schools. It therefore tended to have a disproportionate number of children who were

perceived to have minor learning difficulties and it developed a reputation for being somewhat

‘rough’. The school also has a boarding establishment which results in it attracting children from

rural areas as well as many from broken homes or foster families (Randall 1999).

Besides the comprehensive curriculum, Forest View was also the only school in the city which was

(and remains) designated as dual medium9. Thus, even before desegregation there were two distinct

groups of pupils divided along language lines and, to some extent, the teachers were also divided

along these lines. With desegregation in the 1990s, the school’s learners became more diverse, with

an increasing number of children commuting from the black African townships in order to benefit

from better-equipped and more stable learning environments10. Because both the traditional

community and the new intake were relatively poor, the school was unable to increase the school fees

sufficiently to compensate for the cutbacks in teachers, equipment and the increase in legislated 7 White schooling was administered along provincial lines, while there were separate national departments catering for Indian and coloured children, and an array of departments linked to homelands catering for the black African children. In all there were 16 separate departments of education in South Africa.8 As a measure of its affluence, it charges the lowest school fees of all the former NED schools in the city (Randall 1999).9 Prior to 1994, South Africa had two official languages and schools either taught in English or in Afrikaans. A limited number of schools offered academic streams in either language.10 Interestingly, the new learners tended to be more academically oriented than the traditional children had been.

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pupil-teacher ratios11. Thus teachers have been faced with an effective reduction in staff by almost

50% while the learner numbers have risen by over 30%.

A divided school?

It is already evident from the background to the school that it is potentially a highly divided place.

An initial reading of the interview data would lend support to this interpretation. In this section I will

examine the ways in which the school is actually and potentially divided. The divisions appear to cut

across each other in a range of ways: amongst management, teachers, and learners, and between them

in complex ways.

The divisions amongst learners are of less relevance here, but do provide a further sense of the nature

of the difficulties faced by teachers at the school. The most obvious to an outside observer are the

divisions between black African and white children. Given South Africa’s recent history, and the fact

that the racial divisions are further marked by linguistic divisions, it is little wonder that the school

has experienced open tensions amongst its learners, flaring up in early April 1998 into violent

confrontation between black African and white learners (see Wedekind, 2001 for a detailed analysis

of this and similar incidents).

However, like most schools, the divisions amongst the learners are more complex and include:

divisions between those learners in the dominant English stream and those in the Afrikaans stream

(which is entirely white); divisions around curriculum and status attached to subject; and divisions

between age cohorts, gender and sporting interests. By and large these factors can be regarded as

relatively normal in most schools and will not be discussed further here.

The teachers also appear highly divided. In part this is a consequence of institutional features of the

school such as the academic and vocational streams and the dual medium streams. The differences

that exist between teachers of core academic subjects and vocational and technical subjects are

widely documented in the literature and Forest View is no different (see Little 1993). In a number of

interviews, teachers spoke about the hostilities that surfaced regarding status, timetabling and

academic elitism. One teacher described her attitudes towards technical teachers when differences

arose as follows:

…we're patronising towards them! Because we think well, you know, you aren't very academic, you don't even know what you're doing. So we don't actually want to associate with you… (P8: 0918-0922)

A description of the staff room by one of the teachers highlights further divisions:Well, I think if you just walk into the staff room first thing in the morning, you'll be quite amused, because you'll find mainly the men sort of sit on the one side of

11 Setting school fees is the responsibility of the Governing Body, which enables schools drawing from an affluent community to employ additional teachers and fund facilities by setting high fees. It also ensures an effective barrier to children from poorer communities.

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the staff room and the women sit on the other side. Um, and that's something that just always existed at this school, right from when I started here. The men here tend to be of the old guard, you know. Still a lot of them hanker after the cane and ... very staunch, sort of Afrikaans backgrounds, you know. (P7: 0311-0318)

The divisions outlined above take on pedagogic and broad ideological dimensions too. Many of the

teachers interviewed expressed frustration at the divisions in terms of its impact on the classroom: the one thing that really gets to me is (…) how many different groups there are in the staff that are almost pulling in totally different directions. So if… I feel if we all had a similar direction, we'd actually get somewhere. So it's very difficult for me, when I've got a class, for instance, like a Grade X class that's really struggling, in appropriate behaviour, all of that kind of thing, and I try every lesson to deal with that, but when they go elsewhere they're being treated like dirt. (…) So that's a big frustration for me! (P8: 0830-0853)

Other teachers describe the divisions between themselves and ‘the civil servants’: those who “clock

in, clock out, do the minimum” (P11: 0856). Not only does this ‘civil servant’ mentality resist change

and disruption, but it also results in a smaller grouping of teachers who are prepared to do extra work

that might benefit the school or its learners. The teachers who are committed to change and

improvement are thus burdened with additional tasks that add to the stress of an increasing general

workload.

Given the social context of major political upheaval and its direct impact on the identity of the

school’s learners through the process of desegregation, it is little wonder that broader ideological

cleavages are found at the school. André, a teacher at another local school who taught at Forest View

for a year remembers the polarities:

it was an interesting school because it had all the poles - we had an AWB12 member, and we had Fiona as well, (laughs) and we had a very verkrampte13 headmaster. (P1: 0346-0348)

It is likely that the AWB member was a teacher we interviewed in 1997 who talked at length about

his separatist views on South Africa’s races, arguing strongly against social mixing (Sader 1999). On

the other hand, Fiona, the teacher mentioned by André above, was a supporter of the ANC led

government and a member of the ANC aligned South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU).

The teaching staff thus included the full spectrum of political opinion in South Africa at the time,

with dramatically antagonistic positions.

André’s comment also mentions the school’s principal, Mr Firth. In fact, few of the teachers at the

school described him as politically conservative, although our interviews with him did tend to

suggest that his educational beliefs could be viewed as such (see Penny, Appel et al. 1993; Sader

1999). The dominant impression from members of the current staff was that leadership at the school

was somewhat erratic and inconsistent. The picture painted by the teachers interviewed for this study

12 Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging (Resistance Movement), a militant far right grouping fighting for independence of white Afrikaners.13 Afrikaans word for conservative.

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is of a man approaching retirement who has become disillusioned. The turning point seems to have

been the perceived lack of support he received from the provincial Department of Education when

the school was attempting to clamp down on discipline. Having been instated as principal because he

was perceived to be able to manage a difficult school, he has now given up because there are too

many external constraints on schools14. Here, Fiona, describes the consequences:

(He’s) not a particularly theoretical philosophical kind of guy, but he was very popular because he was good at the discipline and whatever. I don't know what happened, I seriously don't. I mean I never particularly liked him but I certainly liked him more before. (…) He's all bluster and he's very rarely effective. He, he can be, and I mean on a good day he's perfectly pleasant and perfectly intelligent and whatever but I mean there're so many rumours about him it's, it's quite terrifying. And the support for him has declined so there are few people who only sort of say "yes, hear hear". (P11: 1084-1095)

The general lack of support for the principal includes members of the senior management who are

reported to come and ‘bitch’ to teachers about the leadership in the school. Most teachers interviewed

referred to the two Deputy Principals as the people who’ know what’s going on’ and effectively run

the school. Clearly, the school at best lacks adequate direction and leadership from the principal and,

at worst, is being mismanaged.

To conclude this section, there appear to be few factors that would suggest that Forest View is a

school that could be termed resilient: a weak and disillusioned leader; a rapid increase in learner

numbers and a decrease in staff; a highly divided staff; divisions and animosities amongst the

learners that have at times turned into violent confrontation; a concomitant increase in ‘disciplinary’

problems; and little perceived support from education authorities.

‘A happy place to be’

While the description thus far presents a school that has a combination of factors that would make it

appear to be riven, the impression is not something that is borne out by spending time in the school or

talking to the staff. In fact, once ethnographic data fleshes out the picture, the divisions appear to be

predominantly structural and potential rather than the defining feature of the school.

In terms of many of the standard indicators of school success, Forest View is doing well. Its results

remain good and appear to be improving despite the relative socio-economic deprivation of the

learners. It remains a highly sought after school for many learners in the city and has a growing

learner base.

14 The banning of the use of corporal punishment is one aspect of this. It is also much more difficult to expel learners from the school, and the school has to find the learner an alternative school when this is done. In one instance cited, the school was refused permission to expel a learner who had been caught stealing.

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At a qualtitative level, the school has been a firm favourite amongst student teachers that were placed

there for their teaching practice15. They enjoy the open and welcoming staff and the ‘down to earth’

approach of the school. The student teachers’ impressions are supported by Randall’s experience as a

researcher where she found the staff welcoming, warm and sensitive to her needs as a researcher

(Randall 1999: 13). My own experience in the school as researcher and mentor to some of the student

teachers equally left me with the impression of a school which seemed a positive environment for

staff and learners. Not only this, but hours of observation in classrooms left me with an impression of

teachers who are motivated and prepared to tackle the pressing issues facing the school. My

observation notes reflect classrooms that are decorated with learners’ work, lists of negotiated rights

and duties are prominently displayed, and the classrooms and laboratories I visited were always full

of activity and energy (Obs 13/1).

André, the teacher who no longer teaches at Forest View articulates a similar sentiment:

we had teachers who were very willing to explore kind of creative teaching. I enjoyed the dynamics of the staff a lot. It was a very exciting staff room, I found it very refreshing. (P1: 0345-0358)

Anthea, another teacher who had previously taught at Forest View was desperate not to leave the

school. She described it as a very happy place to be.

There is seemingly a tension between an account of a school, which is deeply divided and lacking in

leadership, and the relative stability of the school coupled with the affection with which many of the

interviewees regard the school. The literature on school management and change suggests that

schools function most effectively when there are clear policies, when the management team provide

leadership, and when there is a strong sense of community or at least collective responsibility and

vision. Yet Forest View displays few of those characteristics. It is this seeming gap that this study

seeks to explore further by focusing on the experiences of a group of teachers within the school.

The Friendship Network

The particular circle of friends that this paper focuses on consists of a core of five women

predominantly in the humanities departments of the school. Like all informal social networks, the

group is a flexible and permeable network. At various times certain people are included or excluded

depending on the context, whether they smoke, or what the issues confronting the group are. Despite

this, members of the group and outsiders have a clear sense of the group as something that exists both

within the school but more importantly beyond the boundaries of the school:

15 Although during the interviews conducted earlier this year some of the teachers reported that the most recent group of students had not been happy there.

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I mean we don't see a lot of each other at school, its very much like passing, because we're so busy the whole time, but usually when we meet that's what we talk about… school the whole time. (P11: 0920-0922)

There is an overlap between the friendship group and a broader collegial network within the school.

For instance, certain teachers sit together with members of the group of friends in the staff room, but

do not meet socially outside the school and, because the staff room is a designated no smoking area,

some of the group spend their breaks with the smokers rather than their friends16.

The core grouping of friends that were interviewed are introduced briefly below. Views from former

members of staff and outsiders to the group are also drawn on where appropriate.

Fiona (P11):

Fiona was about to enter her eleventh year as a teacher and her eleventh year at Forest View. Besides

a break in order to travel, a spell of maternity leave and another break when she accompanied her

husband on work related travels, Fiona has not left Forest View. She has been promoted to Head of

Department (HOD) of English and thus is a junior member of the school’s management team.

By her own admission Fiona stumbled into teaching for want of a clearer career path after university

but quickly developed a passion for it. She enjoyed her teacher training and has recently completed a

further post-graduate qualification in education. Her future career path remains unclear to her, but

she only imagines leaving the school through ‘circumstances’ such as not being granted leave rather

than out of choice.

Felicity (P8):

Forest View is Felicity’s first school and she had just entered her fourth year at the school. Despite

her relative inexperience, Felicity is supremely confident as a teacher and ambitious in her

expectations. Her colleagues regard her as a natural teacher who has excelled from day one, not

suffering from the usual periods of adjustment. She is the academic head of English and works

closely with Fiona in managing the department.

Felicity had a much clearer idea of wanting to become a teacher and had thus followed a fairly

conventional route through university and onto the post-graduate teaching qualification.

Freda (P7):

Freda teaches commercial subjects and joined the school at the same time as Fiona. She also has no

other experience of teaching bar a disastrous period of supply teaching in the United Kingdom, which

16 It is not possible here to explore the role that spatio-temporal dimensions play in the construction of the friendship group. Suffice to say that the boundaries between in and out of school, in and out of the classroom or staff room, and work time and leisure time are elements in the construction of the group and its identity.

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she did during two years of travelling after six years at Forest View. Freda had resigned her post in

order to travel, but was able to return to the school and was promoted to HOD shortly after her return.

Freda attributes her decision to become a teacher to poor career guidance at school rather than a

specific desire to teach. Nevertheless, she now regards it as a positive career to be in.

Fran (P9):

Fran is by far the oldest of the group and has a chequered history that saw her leaving teaching after

two years in order to work in the United Kingdom. She worked for organisations dealing with

children with special needs in the UK, before working on the European continent for a community-

based church. She returned to England where she began studying at a theological seminary. It was

here that she met her ‘life partner’17. After a spell as a parish priest’s wife in a large inner city

community she returned to South Africa with her husband. They quickly became involved in church-

based anti-Apartheid organisations. It was only after the installation of the first democratic

government that she returned to the classroom, first doing temporary ‘locums’ and finally accepting

the post of school librarian at Forest View in 1998.

Origins and mechanisms

The origins of the particular circle of friends can be traced back to the period when Fiona, Freda and

Fanny (who subsequently left) joined the staff at the school eleven years ago. Freda describes it as

follows:

…there were a lot of us that all started here as first year teachers, so we were pretty much the same age – Fiona was one, Fanny - do you know Fanny? - Filly du Plessis you know, we all sort of started off here, and we just had a very strong sort of social group, I mean, you know, we always have done lots of things together, you know, and sort of – you know, Fiona and I travelled overseas together, and you know, so there's a very good friendship that was established with all of us. (P7:0256-0264)

The initial basis was a group of new teachers in a school bonding around their common experience

and cutting across subject disciplinary boundaries. Because all the teachers felt that Forest View was

and remains a tough environment, the need for support brought people closer together. However, it is

clear that the friendships are also based on a common ideological understanding of teaching and

broader society. Fiona elaborates:

I've been incredibly lucky that I've had, always, I mean we've got a whole group of people some in more, more closely associated some wider, but at any time can get together ten to fifteen people that we work with and have similar - not the same always -but quite similar ideas about things. (P11: 0904-0908)

17 The term she used to describe her husband.

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Over the ten-year period the group has shed members as they left the school and taken new members

on board. However, it is not restricted to teachers at Forest View as many of the former teachers

continue to be members of the group. Here Felicity as a newer member of the group elaborates:

INT:How do the other people (at social gatherings) who don't teach at Forest View - do they feel that Forest View is a kind of dominating thing?RES:Maybe some people do, because we always seem to be there. But some of them have also taught at Forest View before. So in many ways sometimes I'm the newest person. (…) Because there are some people - there's somebody who teaches at (name of school), and then there's somebody who teaches at (name of school). And there's Fanny who teaches at (name of school). Now, it's quite strange, because Fanny and Fiona were very - they were like us, best friends here at Forest View, and then Fanny left. Now Fanny and I belong to the same book club, like Fiona - so it's quite a complex kind of ... and we all kind of know each other from Forest View. (P8: 1182-1206)

Fiona remains central to the maintenance of the group by ensuring that new teachers are

incorporated. Fiona describes herself as being on the lookout for like-minded people who she could

become friends with. While the group is able to absorb new members (in no small part through

Fiona’s active recruitment) it does not transcend the divisions that exist in the school. To date the

group has consisted only of women, although the social group includes the partners and husbands

when it meets. Fiona believes this to be primarily because the men at the school tend to be associated

with either the ‘civil servants’ or the rugby grouping and there are no areas of common interest.

There was much anticipation over a new male teacher arriving that year who might be ‘eligible for

membership’18.

The group also does not centrally incorporate teachers who are Afrikaans speaking. Two Afrikaans

teachers are part of the group at the school but do not participate in extramural social activities.

Interestingly, the fact that Fran is significantly older than the majority of other people in the group

does not appear to foreclose membership. Indeed, for some in the group she has taken on a central

place. However, Fran did express some reservations about the difference in experience with regard to

children. The younger teachers either don’t have children or have very young children and this means

that Fran has no reference group that is able to relate to the specifics of teenage children. Fran

repeatedly mentioned her sadness that Anthea, who also had teenage children, had left the school.

What is the impact of a friendship network such as the one described above on the individuals

involved and on the school in which they work? It is to these questions that I now turn.

18 The gender dimension of this group is interesting and it is unclear how significant this is. It is not discussed in detail here because there is evidence from other schools in the broader study that mixed and all male friendship networks exist that appear to operate in similar fashion. Further comparison and analysis is needed.

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Friendship as a Resource

Sandra Wallman’s anthropological study of households provides a useful conceptual frame for

thinking about the interactions that happen between colleagues within Forest View (Wallman 1984).

Wallman is concerned with how low-income households survive in the city, and she examines eight

households in terms of their resource systems. 'Resources' in this context means not only money and

property but also time, experience, information, and networks of contact with kin and neighbours. In

the same way one can examine the networks of contacts within a school context in order to explore

the ways in which teachers survive and thrive in difficult institutional settings. I will examine the role

that friendship plays as an affective resource and an instrumental resource. The former denotes those

aspects of the friendship network that enable individuals to cope, grow and thrive at a personal level,

while the latter denotes the material, career and professional benefits that accrue through

participation within the group.

Affective resources

It is already clear that despite its relative privilege, Forest View is nevertheless a stressful

environment in which to teach. All the respondents felt that they faced greater challenges than the

majority of formerly white schools in the city although they acknowledged that their workplace

conditions were far better than the majority of black African schools in the vicinity. Teachers, like all

workers and professionals, reach crisis situations when either the work context or their personal lives

create conditions when they feel they cannot continue. The teachers at Forest View are no different.

All the teachers interviewed described how in small ways (and in some cases, significant ways) the

support of their friendship network had assisted them in surviving and overcoming personal or job-

related difficulties. Two examples illustrate this well.

Fran faced perhaps the deepest crisis when she found she could not cope with the pressure of work

any longer. Her partner, her therapist and her doctor all told her to take time off from school. She

describes her breakdown as ‘post-traumatic stress’ (P9: 0546-0547) as a consequence of the stress

that all teachers were under. She took some time off school and then re-entered school life very

tentatively in an attempt to rebuild her confidence. It was at this point that she appreciated the value

of the support offered by the friendship network, and she became more central to it. In fact, for Fran

the breakdown marked a turning point for her in the school. Her first two years were served as a

locum or temporary teacher, and she was conscious not to be too outspoken. As a consequence she

avoided identifying too strongly with any particular group within the school. However, in part

through the support she received from other teachers she became more central to the circle of friends

and has gained in confidence within the school as a whole. She now feels that she is able to “push the

boundaries within the school.” (P9: 0557).

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Felicity too had faced a serious personal crisis when a long-term relationship ended:

And I was here at Forest View, and I really - I just couldn't cope, because I - I'd - I actually don't know how I taught my Matric class, I can't - like there are big fractions of it that I can't - but I know that I did it, and I kind of got through it… (P8: 1662-1667).

Again the group of friends played a central supportive role in ensuring that she was able to cope. The

supportive environment of her friends at school helped her to regain a sense of ‘meaning’ (P8: 1690)

that enabled her to overcome this crisis.

Clearly then the friendship network provides a resource to the individual for dealing with affective

dimensions of their lives. However, it also impacts on the professional dimensions of the teachers’

lives.

Instrumental resources

The friendship network is to some extent defined by a particular professional orientation or broad

ideological convergence amongst the friends. This enables the group to act as a forum for the

discussion and dissemination of pedagogic and educational ideas. One of the concerns expressed by a

number of the teachers interviewed was the lack of time to talk to colleagues at school.

We don't have time! Generally, I must say that's one thing that I have noticed, that I mean, when I first started teaching at Forest View, we had a lot of time to actually socialise at school, you know, during breaks we'd sort of get together and talk in the staff room, whatever. You know, and there was time to sort of be light-hearted and sometimes clown around, whatever, and that doesn't happen any more. You know, we are just generally - I mean, sometimes days will go by and I don't even speak to people that I'm friendly with out of school. I mean, I don't even talk to them at school… (P7: 0356-0365)

The friendship network provides an important forum that helps to counter this isolation. When the

group meets socially, the school and general professional matters related to the school such as the

sharing of pedagogic ideas are focal points. Freda explains:

we do tend to talk a lot about school, socially, and in fact anyone else who is there, men - whether they're partners or husbands or wives or whatever, tend to whine, we always talk about Forest View, but because there isn't that time to talk at school, we tend to do it out of school, so lots of ideas sort of get bounced off each other, because although we are in different departments, I mean, there are still basic teaching, there are still issues that are basic to teaching, doesn't matter what you teach. And we talk about specific children…(P7: 0746-0754)

When asked whether the discussions in social situations had a direct impact on the practices in the

school, Freda responded:

Oh, definitely, definitely, absolutely. Yes, because you know even if it's just that we're talking about one particular child who, I mean, maybe there's some sort of problem with, with it's home - you know, the child's home life, or whatever it might be, it's the sharing of knowledge that you then take, and whether you’re applying it to one child, or if it's a way of teaching something, a sharing of ideas of

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teaching methods. You know, all of those sorts of things. I mean, that does come up in social situations. As I say, much to the annoyance of anyone who's not a teacher at Forest View. (P7: 0770-0779)

There is a second dimension to the professional support the network provides which is related to

management and workplace conditions. Because one of the core features of the friendship network is

a broad ideological congruence, it provides a basis for challenging perceived conservative or

reactionary practices in the school. In an earlier interview, a Forest View teacher described how a

teacher “got into quite a lot of trouble for being quite outspoken” during a staff development

workshop (Sader 1999: 38). Subsequent to that, numerous examples of being outspoken were

discussed in the interviews ranging from challenging the dominance of technical subjects in the

timetable to workplace issues and employment practices. In one instance, a temporary teacher who

was the only black African member of staff at the time did not have her contract renewed:

…when Fundi (surname) was here and then 'he' terminated her contract, that's the kind… that was, that was probably the first time we ever really did anything, that we, we wrote a letter and all signed it. (P11: 1009-1012)

The fact that some members of the group are well established members of the staff in junior

management positions affords them access and a degree of strength when challenging conservative

elements in the school or indeed the management. The group’s willingness to tackle the management

of the school means that other members of staff who are not part of the friendship group draw on

them as a resource. Staff members will take their grievances to a member of the group, and the group

will then informally discuss it and take action if this is warranted.

Thus, in a school where there is often little time for interaction amongst members of staff, the fact

that a personal friendship circle exists provides valuable interaction time where teachers can express

their frustrations and grievances, as well as sharing in knowledge about their craft and the pupils they

work with.

Community and Identity

One of the interesting features of this friendship group is the strong link to a specific institutional

setting. The point of commonality for all the friends is that they have been or are currently associated

with Forest View. At times during the interview the school community and the friendship group

become almost synonymous. For instance, Freda describes the influence of the circle of friends on

her own identity in terms of the moniker ‘Forest Viewish’19. The culture of the friendship group

becomes linked to the context in which it is constituted. Thus there are times in the interviews when

19 She later uses the same term to describe learners at the school, suggesting that they may well be included in the sense of a school community.

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it is unclear whether the interviewee is speaking of the friendship group or a looser collegial

grouping, or indeed the staff of the school as a whole.

Much of this is rooted in the interaction that happens within the school where the identities of friends

are mixed with colleagues and, in some cases, hierarchy. Fiona describes some of these processes in

relation to the staff room:

…I mean Frank (the deputy principal), I have quite a lot to do with Frank I mean he and I are quite good friends and you know. Ja, and Fred Fourie but I mean Fred’s just like, he doesn't do anything, he's very sort plods along and whatever. He doesn't get excited about things and he rolls his eyes at us a lot, but I mean like in the smoking room, which is often where we all chat, he's always there putting in his five cents worth. (…)INT: And the smoking room, is that a separate group to your group of friends or not?RES: Ja, well there's a bit of an overlap. Like I have all my stuff in the smoking room, like this and so I'm in there every break and then people will come in and out talking and then Fenian and Fred and other smokers are there, like not, I don't sit actually in the same circle as them. I sit here but then we all talk across the room. And then most people stay in the staff room. But then like after school we might meet there or whatever. So, it's sort of like a… it's also where the photostat machine is, so people pop in an out.INT: Right.RES: But we do most of our serious bitching outside of school (chuckle). (P11: 0944-0972)

Fiona’s description of interaction highlights the blurring between ‘we’ the friendship group and a

broader collegial grouping which occupies the same physical spaces. Colleagues, despite all

differences, represent a ‘community of fate’: “In having to put on the same kind of performance they

come to know each other’s difficulties and points of view; what ever their tongues they come to

speak the same social language” (Goffman 1959: 159). The intimate friendship community becomes

blurred with the looser collegial community.

This blurring is only an analytic problem. It is perfectly understandable that the boundaries between

these different social networks are fluid and that social processes flow between intimate friendships

and larger collegial networks of which those friendships are also a part. For the individual, the

positive feelings that arise out of friendship relationships become associated with the place in which

those relationships occur, and consequently become identified with other people that inhabit that

space. This is in all likelihood a more general pattern in community building. In the following

section I attempt to explore what the impact may be on the school more generally.

Impact on the School

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Besides the personal and professional benefits that arise for the individual members of the friendship

network and the group as a whole, there are a number of ways in which the existence of the network

of friends impacts on the school in direct and indirect ways.

Retention and Return

Howard Becker, in his classic study of the Chicago school system, highlighted the horizontal

dimensions of teachers’ career paths (Becker 1952/1995). By this he meant the moves teachers make,

usually from less desirable schools to more desirable schools, that are not associated with immediate

vertical movement up the promotional ladder. Becker suggests that teachers’ tend to move in order to

seek “the most desirable setting in which to meet and grapple with the basic problems of their work”

(Becker 1952/1995: 60). The consequence of this, in a system that allows teachers to transfer freely

between schools such as the South African one, is that schools that are perceived to be ‘difficult’ tend

to have a very high turn over of staff as teachers move on to other schools after short periods there 20.

In fact, many of the teachers interviewed were apologetic for having stayed on:

You know people, people are funny about it because, there is a kind of perception that if you stay in one place which isn't… doesn't function really well, for a long time it must be because you’re either too scared to leave or you’re so useless nobody else will have you. (P11: 0335-0339)

The consequence for the school is that there are high numbers of inexperienced staff and problems

with continuity for the learners.

Felicity is a clear example of this horizontal mobility. Shortly before the interview she had applied to

a local private girls’ school for a post:

Last year I did apply out- I applied for a job at (name of school), um, I don't know why I did it, but I just decided to, and it was a great interview, and I really enjoyed that, because I don't want - or - you see, I've got to go for interviews or I've got to study or I want to - I don't just want to stay like "stuck". (P8: 0157-0163)

However, she decided not to leave the Forest View because she felt she had become too ‘Forest

Viewish’. When asked to explain what this might mean, she explained that the friendships she had

established at the school made it difficult to leave. Similarly, Anthea, a temporary teacher at Forest

View who had been part of the friendship network was offered a post at Arbour High.

She was here a short time and then she got, she was re-deployed, and then she got re-deployed to Arbour (…) And I mean she was devastated to leave (…) but it was the people that she, she missed. (P11: 1161-1167)

Forest View does tend to suffer from a high turnover problem, although often the teachers move out

of the education system entirely. Here, Felicity highlights the difficulty for her department:

20 This movement which was more prevalent in the NED than in other departments has become far more limited in recent years as large numbers of teachers have faced retrenchment or early retirement. Consequently teachers tend to remain in posts or leave the profession rather than move horizontally.

17

Oh well, you see, we've had this big problem lately with people in the English department staying for one year and then going overseas.INT:Oh really, so they get a post, do one year... do they leave because they don't like it, or because they've just always had plans to...?RES:Some people haven't liked it, and others have just - I mean, some people leave after a term, because they just can't - this is not the place for them. We have that often, not so much in the English department, that often happens in other departments, but in the English department for some reason - ja, people leave after a year. (P8: 0630-0658)

At the beginning of 2000, only two (Fiona and Felicity) of the eight English teachers had been at the

school for more than one year.

While retention of staff is a general problem for the school, the existence of the friendship network

linked to the school has played a crucial role in retaining some key members of staff. All the teachers

highlighted this:

And that (having a group of friends) I think has had a huge part in keeping me. It gives me a lot of motivation. (P11: 0909-0910)

Freda was a reluctant recruit to teaching and planned to teach only as long as it took her to pay off

her loan so that she could fulfil her desire to travel. However, developing a close friendship network

resulted in a more positive outcome:

So I got the job here at Forest View. Again, I didn't want to do it, it was just really a post available, and so I came up and um, - but then, it's quite strange, because then I ended up loving it, you know? I think I was very lucky because you know I got into a good network of friends, you know, there were a group of us who became very close friends because we all worked together here… (P7: 0166-0172)

I am not suggesting that the friendship network is the only factor in retaining teachers. Many of the

teachers that were a part of the network have made career moves, be they horizontal (in the case of

Fanny who moved to an elite private school) or terminal (where teachers have left the profession).

However, there appears to be little doubt that it is a significant factor in making such decisions. At

stake for some is their work-place happiness. Fiona describes her minimal condition for happiness at

the school as follows:

I mean Fran in the library, often she's the person, I'll say, "well as long as Fran's here then I'll be fine", you know because she, because we see things the same way. I mean I know Felicity is, is more mobile, she's wanting to eventually sort of go, but I mean Fanny and I, Fanny was here for, for seven or eight years, and I mean we started together and, and really kind of created a, a, a niche. So, I can see that eventually what's, maybe, what's going to happen, is that I'm just not gonna have that same thing, and then that will be that. (F11: 0910-0918)

Becker recognised that the degree of social integration acted as a brake on the degree of horizontal

mobility. Once a teacher had established a network of social relations, coupled with growing

18

influence and prestige within the school, the need for horizontal movement is curtailed (Becker

1952/1995: 64-65).

Retaining staff is one dimension. However, the network also serves to bring people back to the school

after seemingly terminal career moves. For instance, Freda had resigned her post at the school in

order to fulfil her ambitions to travel. After a two-year period she returned to the school:

Ja, I mean, they actually phoned me while I was still in England, because they knew I was coming back, because there was a post available, so I just sort of came straight back into it. I didn't even really go for the interviews. (P7: 0183-0186)

At one level this is another illustration of the friendship group acting as an instrumental resource, in

that the contact at the school gave Freda the necessary information and social capital in order to

return to the school without the usual bureaucratic procedures. However, the idea of returning to the

school is clearly an option more generally. Fiona talks about leaving, and then qualifies it with the

following:

So it (leaving) might happen. Like next year, if (her husband and her go on work related travel) again and they're (the education department) not prepared to give the leave or something, I won't have too much trouble in saying right, fine, bye. Three quarters of the people that leave here come back anyway because there's quite a high turnover of staff. It's not like it would have to be forever or whatever. But I can, I can… I sort of, I sense on the other hand that if I leave it will be because of circumstances and it will be like something I don't have much of a choice about… (P11: 1348-1356)

For Fiona (and many others) leaving the school is not a desirable prospect and is only contemplated

on the basis that she might be able to return. Even Felicity, who is adamant that she will not stagnate

and will leave the school before she has spent ten years there, imagines the possibility of returning:

I don't - but I don't have this big thing about ‘I'll never come back’. So if I've gone and experienced something else, then...INT:Oh I see, then you might do something different and then come back here?RES:Mmm. Maybe teachers - maybe I'll go teach somewhere else and maybe I'll hate it, and then I know that I can come back. (P8: 1597-1609)

Teacher-Management Relations

A much more qualitative benefit for the school is the informal channel the friendship network

provides for teachers to make their views known to management. Because members of the group are

part of the middle-level of management they are able to convey feelings amongst the staff to the

principal and, perhaps more importantly, the two deputy principals. In this way, while the formal

management structures seem dysfunctional, there is in reality a far greater level of communication

than is initially evident from comments by teachers or observations. I have already reported that

members of staff at times make use of the willingness of the friendship network to take up issues and

challenge management. This is partially reciprocated by the close relations between the deputy

19

principals and certain members of the friendship network, enabling greater communication between

management and, at the very least, certain sections of the staff.

There is of course a danger in suggesting that this modus operandi is a strength. Informal channels of

access and communication are also likely to heighten tensions and result in influential cliques where

for example there is a commonality of viewpoints between management and the clique. In this case

however, the friendship network is critical of the principal and does not seem to enjoy any form of

patronage.

Conclusion

There are two broad points that flow out of the case of one friendship group presented above. Firstly,

it is clear that career ‘satisfiers’ (Nias 1989) go well beyond institutional factors. Despite the

increasing stresses of teaching within a rapidly transforming context and despite the relatively

divided nature of the school context, the teachers central to this study remain committed to their

work in this specific school. Crucial to this commitment and positive relationship to their work is the

sense of belonging to a group of colleagues, but where the collegial relationships stretch firmly into

the realm of friendship. Van Maanen and Barley describe this as an occupational community: “a

group of people who consider themselves to be engaged in the same sort of work; whose identity is

drawn from the work; who share with one another a set of values, norms, and perspectives that apply

to but extend beyond work-related matters; and whose work relationships meld work and leisure

(cited in Little 1993: 137).

Too often the literature that explores the concept of community in relation to teachers and schools

tend to view the institution and the community as coterminous. This is a also a problem with the

wider literature on organisations where the workplace is separated from other social experiences

(Newton 1999: 425). Hence, if the school is a divided or poorly managed place, the literature

suggests that there can be little sense of community. Schools and teachers are very often going to fall

short of this ideal, with the rare exceptions being those schools defined by a mission, where teachers

are recruited specifically to fulfil that mission (see Westheimer 1998). In the case of Forest View, a

school that at a structural and organisational level demonstrates few of the features necessary for the

building of a community, the teachers discussed above identify with the school and associate a sense

of community with the school primarily because of the ‘occupational community’ they are a part of.

That community, like other types of community, acts as a resource both at an affective level, and

instrumentally at the level of their professional work in the classroom and in terms of their careers.

20

The second broad (and tentative) point that emerges from the study is that the sense of community

experienced by a relatively small group of individuals within the school nevertheless appears to have

consequences for the school as a whole. In this case the consequences appear to be benign and often

very positive. The school benefits from the retention of experienced and committed teachers as

horizontal career moves and burnout are reduced.

The difficulty with friendship networks for policy makers and school reformers is that they are

unpredictable and dependent on individuals, making it difficult for them to be incorporated into the

understandings of the dynamics of schools. Yet, without overstating the case, matters of teacher and

school community may have as much to do with a group of friends meeting for supper, as with strong

leadership or the building of a school vision. It is one more layer of the complexity that makes up

schools today (Fullan 1999).

I would like to thank Jean Dyson, Ken Harley, Cassius Lubisi, Mahomed Sader and particularly Laurence Piper for their helpful comments. In addition I would like to thank all my colleagues that have participated in the various studies that have built up the picture of Forest View that is presented here. But most importantly I am grateful to the teachers who so willingly participated in this study.

The preparation and presentation of this paper was made possible through funding from the Foundation for Research Development, the University of Natal’s Research Fund and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission.

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