Abstract

The World Health Organisation (WHO) views health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not simply the absence of illness or disease. Schools are powerful sources of health promotion and, of course, health adversity. In South Africa's attempt for social and economic transformation much emphasis is being placed on education as being a primary site for achieving healthy development. Organization development (OD) is presently considered by many school development practitioners in South Africa to be a potent strategy for managing change and enhancing the school's growth towards becoming a healthy learning environment. Current policy proposals on education support and special needs in South Africa advance the idea of healthpromoting centres of learning through a holistic approach to institutional development. It is against this background that this paper, which is based on a case study research project, briefly tells the story of a historically disadvantaged South African high school and its quest to establish itself as a healthy learning environment. The school had transformed itself from an adverse learning environment typical of many South African schools (and perhaps schools elsewhere) to a safe, supportive, caring, mutually respectful and generally well organized educational context. Many of these improvements were associated with a particular school OD intervention. What can we learn from this story about the process of developing a health-promoting school? What are the practical implications for school development practitioners, especially school psychologists whose general task it is to promote the health of all learners? This paper addresses these questions and offers some propositions concerning the role of school psychologists in contributing towards the development of health-promoting schools.

No abstract

Pastoral care in schools has traditionally been associated with notions of help, advice, values development, and children's moral welfare. In the past it has been viewed predominantly as a separate set of extra-curricula activities offered to students by school staff with particular support roles, or ‘pastors’ from affiliated church or religious communities. In some Australian schools and education sectors pastoral care continues to be conceptualised in this way. However, over the past two decades interest has intensified in a ‘whole school approach’ to pastoral care that supports the holistic development of students as they learn. What has influenced this change of direction? What are some of the key challenges encountered when implementing this approach? How might we define ‘a whole school approach’ to pastoral care? What are the core principles and associated school practices of this approach to pastoral care? We attempt to address these questions in this paper. In doing so, we have drawn on the MindMatters Plus Demonstration Project and constructed a ‘whole school’ framework for pastoral care. We emphasise the importance of distributed leadership in our framework, where all staff and students alike are responsible for developing an ethos of care. This is a ‘work-in-progress’. We invite feedback on our proposal.

In South Africa, as the myriad of 'apartheid holy cows' are buried, so the opportunity for reconstruc.tion takes on an unprecedented challenge. The renewal of South Africa's dishevelled education system is central to the country's renaissance. Against this backdrop, this article briefly describes some current positions on systems thinking and educational psychology service delivery in the South African context. Derived mainly from a formative evaluation of a Cape Town-based teacher in-service project which focuses on whole school development, three substantive issues related to school organization development are raised. They are the issue of effecting a paradigm shift from a positivistic to a systemic worldview; the issue of the relationship between power and organization development, and the issue of sustainability of organization development. These issues are discussed with particular reference to the challenges that they present to educational psychologists as school organization development consultants in South Africa's education reconstruction process.Terwyl die talle 'heilige koeie van apartheid' in Suid-Afrika begrawe word, onstaan daar op 'n ongekende skaal geleenthede vir rekonstruksie. Teen die agtergrond beskryf die referaat enkele huidige posisies t.o.v. sisteemdenke en opvoedkundige sielkundige dienslewering in die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks. Drie onafhanklike (substantiewe) kwessies, gekoppel aan skoolorganisasie-ontwikkeling word in die referaat geopper, aan hand van 'n formatiewe evaluasie van 'n Kaap-gebaseerde indiensprojek wat op die ontwikkeling van die hele skool gefokus is. Hulle is die kwessie van 'n paradigmatiese verskuiwing van 'n positivistiese na 'n sistemiese wereldbeskouing; die kwessie van die verhouding tussen mag en organisatoriese ontwikkeling, en die kwessie van die volgehoudheid van organisatoriese ontwikkeling. Die kwessies word bespreek met besondere verwysing na die uitdagings wat hulle bied aan opvoedkundige sielkundiges as konsultante van skoolorganisasie-ontwikkeling in Suid-Afrika se rekonstruksieproses van die onderwys.