The study sought to establish causes of conflict amongst primary school heads and teachers and how such conflicts could be resolved in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. The study also sought to establish teachers' perceptions of conflict, and their preference of conflict arbitrators. Sixteen purposively selected teachers from 4 schools responded to questionnaire items in this survey. The major findings of the study were that conflicts exist in most schools as heads and teachers conflict with each other over unequal distribution/allocation of resources and grapevine or gossips. It was also established that teachers and heads frequently conflict and most teachers were not satisfied with the ways in which problems were resolved. They preferred the District Education Officers (D.E.Os) to resolve their conflicts with the School Heads. The study recommends that School heads should ensure equitable and transparent distribution of resources at schools and workshops on conflict and conflict resolution should be mounted for school stakeholders including heads, teachers and school development committees/associations.
Much still needs to be done to transform schooling in South Africa and provide education of equal quality to all learners. The notion of encouraging close collaboration between schools is widely accepted as a possible strategy to improve the quality of schooling in a particular geographical area. In this article, we discuss research conducted on the implementation of the Better Schools Programme cluster in Zimbabwe (BSPZ), a system of inter-school collaboration aiming at improving the quality of teaching and learning at the member schools. One of the primary objectives was to enhance teachers' professional development by means of the establishment of professional infrastructure. Despite the shortcomings highlighted, our exploratory study brought to the fore potential advantages of school clusters as a type of formalised school collaboration which can indeed promote quality and equality in the South African schooling system.
This study examined teachers' perceptions of the assessment structure on the 0'level History Syllabus 2167 examination in Zimbabwe. A descriptive survey approach in which 30 History teachers from 15 Zaka District secondary schools responded to a questionnaire was used. Quantitative and qualitative paradigms of data presentation were both useful in this project. Findings from the study revealed that assessment and teaching History are two sides of the same coin but dropping the Source Based Question to an option was considered to be throwing away the baby with bath water. Most teachers are no longer teaching Source Based Questions and critical higher order skills are no longer developed in History students. The essay question with its tri-segmented structure gives prominence to factual regurgitation. This study led to the conclusion that the removal of the Source Based Question from the compulsory status has prevented History students from developing genuine higher order skills in Zimbabwe. It is recommended therefore that syllabus 2166 be revisited with an aim of merging it with syllabus 2167 in order to resuscitate the development of higher order skills of analysis ,inference and evaluation among History students.
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