Educational Partnerships and Democratic Education in Namibia

Educational Partnerships and Democratic Education in NamibiaAuthor(s): Helen MeyerSource: Africa Today, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 113-131Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187533 .

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Educational Partnerships and Democratic Education in Namibia Helen Meyer

This case study discusses the path toward the development of a democratic partnership between a Namibian college of education and four schools in the local educational area. It describes the initial educational conditions in postin- dependent Namibia and the potential role of education reform for the development of democratic values. Indicators of democratic values are discussed and used to understand partnership initiation and the resulting changes in the interrelationships of the college and the schools. The case discusses the potential of partnership development between educational institutions as a contributing mechanism for democratization.

Introduction

Learning is like democracy in many ways. Both are active processes. For successful outcomes, both learners and citizens must assume responsibility for those processes. They must both domesticate what is potentially alienating, making it their own. And as they share in its construction, so they must accept responsibility for its results. (MEC 1993a:42)

Namibia gained independence from South Africa in March 1990. It held its first democratic elections in November 1990, after which the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) took control of the government and set its leadership goals. Of primary concern to the SWAPO government was the need to reverse the pervasive effects and practices of the previously state-sponsored racial apartheid and minority rule imposed upon Namibia by South Africa. Namibia's new education policy brief acknowledged this political past and the need to educate Namibian citizens for a different future:

For nearly all of this century the laws and regulations of our country have been phrased in the language of democracy and at the same time excluded most Namibians from it. Becom-



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ing independent was in large part a struggle for democracy, a struggle for all Namibians to be citizens in their own society. Democracy must therefore be not simply a set of lessons in our schools but rather a central purpose of our education at all levels. (MEC 1993b:41)

In Namibia, as in other developing countries, education was a mechanism for dismantling institutional inequities created under previous systems and for the development of a nation's people: "as a principal ideological apparatus of the state, the education system and the definition of knowledge on which the system is based necessarily reveal the shape of [desired] social relations and social change" (Carnoy 1990:63). To this end, the Namibian government, supported by external development funds, invested heavily in the development of a new education system, which set four goals: access, equity, quality, and democracy (MEC 1993b:32). To achieve these goals, new education programs were developed for the basic grades (1 to 10) and secondary grades (11 and 12). Teacher education was to spearhead this educational reform with the development of a new teacher-training program, new institutional practices, and new relationships with local schools. The focus of this essay is on the development of the new relationship between The Gipacha College of Education and local schools through the establishment of a democratic partnership. The documentation for this case was gathered during a two-year period, from 1995 through 1997. During that time, I documented structural and procedural changes, interactions among the college, local schools, and the community, and with the national education leadership. From this, I define emerging patterns of democracy as a localized practice in Namibia.

Democracy and Educational Partnerships

Lauren Dobell discussed the emergence of democracy in Namibia in the early days of SWAPO's leadership and the need for the "mobilization or resurrection of popular forces which often accompanies the transition from authoritarian regimes . . . to push the democratization of society beyond the narrow confines of political democracy" (Dobell 1998:112). However, throughout her work, she points out that civil society and the institutions that support it were kept deliberately weak under apartheid. To create a democratic culture beyond a political democracy and toward a civil democracy, a mechanism had to be leveraged. Political democracy is character- ized by sets of rules defining the circumstances leading to the free and fair elections of government officials and universal suffrage (Torres 1998) and embraces the values of Western liberal democracies, such as "respect for the rule of law, for individual rights, pluralism of values and for constitutional guarantees" (von Lieres 1999:132). However, the creation of a civil democracy, which Filip deBoecks (cited in von Leires 1999) described for Africa as the creation of a new public sphere and a redefinition of who is allowed to



engage in the body politic, needed considerable support. A new civil democracy, arising from the active engagement of citizens in local democratic associations, would be identified by a valuing of board participation in the realization of a common destiny through improved communication strategies; leadership that valued accountability to the group; and cooperation, bargaining, and creative initiatives leading to collective problem solving (Diamond 1994; Heller 2001; Mongo 1995).

Democracy in the educational institutions, or democratic education, should hold parallel features to local civil democracies; however, as Carnoy (1990) has described, education adds an additional layer of complexity since it exists as a primary tool of the state to instill the values of the new government. Educational writers such as John Dewey discussed democracy and education as sharing a valuing of broad-based participation, effective communication, collaboration, and creative problem solving (as cited in Boydston 1980). Paulo Freire understood the role of democracy in education as a means to and an example of democracy in action, as "an introduction into the democratization of culture" ([1970] 1998a:82). However, as opposed to Freire's adult-literacy projects, established outside of the state-sponsored education system, Namibia's teacher-education program was a state-funded system that sought to create democratic values and practices while still meeting requirements set forth by the national education-reform agenda.

To understand this tension, Patrick Heller puts forth an "optimist- conflict model" (Heller 2001:138). A postmodern dilemma is inherent in the creation of democratic schooling within governmentally controlled institutional structures. The optimist-conflict model provides a productive analytic framework for understanding the development of democratic partnerships within Namibia's education reform. The model predicts that development and the actions of the participants will occur in a messy and nonlinear fashion. Local participants are shaped by a continuous learning and feedback process, which leads to constant negotiations of goals and methods, resulting in partnerships that allow for shared ownership and the enacting of initiatives derived from the group learning process. The success of local democratic development within state-sponsored initiatives, accord- ing to Heller, "happens as a result of participation of multiple-stakeholders; (governmental and societal) and conscious communication to bridge the knowledge and authority gap" (Heller 2001:58).

In this case study, the optimist-conflict model provides a structure for understanding initial stages in the democratization of a local educational culture through the development of college-school partnerships. Educational partnerships between colleges of education and the schools where education students are placed were introduced as a way to create simultaneous reform and renewal in teacher education and K-12 education (Goodlad 1990, 1994; Holmes Group 1986) in the United States and in the United Kingdom as local education agencies took more control over teacher education (Applebee 1994; Dunne, Lock, and Soares 1996; Furlong et al. 1994). School-college partnerships in other countries had shown success in

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creating more democratic relationships between the different institutions and more democratic practices within institutions and classrooms (Clive 1994; Furlong, Whiting, and Whittey 1996; Kelly 1994). The selection of partnerships as a key to democratic development resulted in part through the influence of external consultants from the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as from the experiences of the Namibian educational leadership in those countries (Howard 1995; Swartz 1996).

The focus of this study is on indicators of democracy within those sites at the initiation of the partnership and at the conclusion of the study two years later. The analytical indicators used to understand the emergence of local democratic practice are derived from Heller's optimist-conflict model, with attention to ideals found in democratic education and from Michael Gonzales' research (2000) on the initial years of the Namibian education reform.

Before independence, Namibia's education system for the majority of the Namibian peoples was under the control of the South African Bantu Education system. Friedrich Kustaa (1997) explained that for the majority of Namibians, education could best be described as education to meet the needs of others. The "other" changed throughout Namibia's history, but included colonialists, missionaries, and occupiers. The missionaries perceived the need to educate for the salvation of the "savages." The German and South African (British) colonials perceived a "suitable education for indigenous people [as one that] prepared colonized Africans for subservient roles in relation to . .. the colonial economy" (Kustaa 1997:2). Finally, for the occupying South African Nationalist party, education for blacks was a way to institutionalize segregation and keep Africans in their place.

All these education systems created educational structures and institutions that furthered oppression by the state. The relationship between the education system and its teacher-preparation programs is described by two Namibian educators:

For Blacks, education was nothing more than their preparation for inferior positions in a white dominated slave-master society. The Bantu education policy also commanded its own teacher education system to service the entire apartheid status quo. Within this framework, teacher education was to create a social class of unreflective and obedient teachers. (Mayumbelo and Nyambe 1999:99)

In 1995, five years postindependence, official policy had changed; however, local practices still reflected the authoritarian structures under which the education practitioners, many now in leadership positions, had been trained. Michael Gonzales' work about these initial years provides an insightful account of several national-level changes that occurred in Namibia; however, his data from local practioners' perspectives brought him to the conclusion that little had changed. On this issue, he concluded



that "the Ministry must better incorporate broad-based participation on the parts of educators and administrators in the implementation of the new educational philosophy, methods, and development of materials" (Gonzales 2000:119). He further recommended new avenues for open dialogue among administrators, educators, and other stakeholders, dialogue that would allow for increased ownership of the reform and the initiation of creative solutions to impediments.

These recommendations set the stage for my own research that focuses on structural developments since 1995 designed to enhance the democratic culture of education in order that the goals of the education reform be more fully realized. Drawing thus from Gonzalesz' work and the values inherent in civil democracy, I examine institutional practices with attention to broad-based participation in decision-making, the effective- ness of the communication patterns, indicators of program ownership, and initiatives for problem solving.

Methods and Context

By situating this research as a case study, I emphasize the particularities of the processes that took place at each of the educational sites, the interrelationships among the partner members, and how these factors influenced the development of local democracy. The case-study methods are necessary to capture the unevenness and nonlinearity predicted in the development of democratic values within an institutional structure. To provide the necessary descriptive details that illustrate the complexity of the democratization process, multiple data sources were used, including locally produced drafts of documents, memos, meetings from minutes of partner members, formal and informal interviews of participants, and long-term participant- observation at the sites. It is also necessary to understand my relationship to the case site. I was able to obtain this array of data through my participation at the College of Education in Namibia. Between August of 1995 and December of 1997, I worked as a facilitator (external consultant) to the College of Education in the development of local implementation practices and pedagogical strategies to support teachers' educational reform. Since I was situated at the case site, the college rector and vice rector had some authority to assign me reform-related tasks; however, most of my work was determined by the Director of the National Institute for Educational Development and the Foreign Project Director. It was on my ability to carry out the reform agenda generated from these central authorities that I was evaluated and the terms of the work contract extended. This dual role provided with me greater access to national-level decisions than other roles might have; however, it also presented contradictions in my ability to attend to supporting locally driven developments that were not in line with national strategies.

Further, as a foreign consultant with expertise in educational reform, I had to overcome my initial naive and incomplete perceptions of how a

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civil democracy functions, as well as my own misperceptions of Namibian interaction styles. These early perceptions led to inadequate initial interpretations of local events and actions, interpretations that were reconciled through formal interviews exploring with Namibians the changes they saw in their interactions with partner members. Toward the end of the study period, interviewed participants were asked to read through their transcribed interviews and their initial analysis, and respond to the emerging interpretations, and further clarify the emerging ideas. Three of twelve interviewed participants completed this task, and one participant continued to perform this member-checking role through electronic communications once I had left Namibia.

A Democratic Starting Point

The Gipacha College of Education (GCE)' was one of three Northern Col- leges of Education that before independence had exclusively trained black Namibians to work in schools for black Namibian children. Postindepen- dence, it continued to train black Namibians exclusively; however this was no longer necessitated by law. GCE was located in the small city of Gipacha, which had a population of approximately 10,000, including residents of vil- lages within easy walking distance of the city. The city was 1200 kilometers from Windhoek, the capital, by road, most of which was paved. Within a 25-kilometer radius of Gipacha were nineteen schools, primary and secondary, eight of which were within the city limit. In 1995, GCE had a total enrollment of 226 students, and was administrated by, and courses were taught by, twenty-two full-time faculty, including nineteen teacher educators, the rector, an English-language consultant, and me, an educational development consultant. The rector and thirteen of the faculty members were men; the vice rector, who was also part of the teaching faculty, and the remaining five faculty members were women. By 1997, student enrollment had increased to 331 students in the three-year program and a faculty of twenty-eight. In 1996, the college moved into a newly built site, designed specifically as a college of education. The new site included housing for teacher educators and students, meeting space, and new resources, such as photocopiers, computers, and a library.

The actual reform of the teacher-education program, the Basic Educa- tion Teaching Diploma (BETD), was phased in at GCE and all the colleges in 1993. The BETD had been designed to prepare teachers for the postindependence education system; therefore it was to be delivered through democratic teaching practices within a democratically run institution. It provided college-based instruction and school-based experiences. The school-based studies (SBS) gave student teachers opportunities to gain professional knowledge and experience through observing, teaching, and conducting research projects (MEC 1994). SBS was also to help bring new teaching practices and democratic participation to the schools through



cooperation with the colleges of education. The colleges and schools were seen as partners contributing equally to an emerging understanding and practice of democracy in Namibian education.

The above may have been the expectation, but it was not the practice, as I observed at a typical meeting between college teacher educators and local schoolteachers:

The college committee responsible for SBS contacted the school principals about having student teachers placed at their schools and relied on the principals to prepare the teachers. The committee did not communicate directly with the teachers . . . until the teachers were informed of a meeting to learn about. . ..what their role as support teachers was to be. [At this meeting,] sentences began with demands on the teachers and were stated as pre-determined absolutes, such as: "You must observe the student teachers every week ... :" or "The assessment forms must be completed at the end of student teaching." The meeting took approximately an hour and fifteen minutes, during which time the teachers were not asked for their ideas or comments.... The tone was established. The college was in charge and the schools, and particularly classroom teachers, were to do what the college said. (Meyer 2000:113-114)

The description above shows a clear gap between the expectations of a democratic partnership being created and the local practices. At the level of interinstitutional interaction, a highly authoritarian interaction style remained.

Other evidence of lack of movement toward a democratic culture was recorded in the 1995 appraisal and moderation reports. The appraisal was an internal evaluation of the courses, teaching, and governance of the four colleges of education. The moderation was an external evaluation of the four colleges that focused on parity between the colleges and the degree to which each college was progressing toward the goals of the reform. Both the internal and external evaluations concluded that:

* the college-school relationships remained authoritarian (Howard 1995);

* the professional and academic leadership needed strength- ening at all colleges;

* in some cases it seemed that the management [college, schools, and programs within the college] were separated from the professional and academic activities. (MBEC 1995: 2)

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If democratic culture was measured by broad-based participation in decision-making, open communication patterns, program ownership, and initiative development, there was no significant shift toward democracy at GCE by the end of 1995. The evidence points to managerial, academic, communication, and morale difficulties, rather than collaborations between the college and local schools. Moreover, there were very few changes to the institutions as organizations to encourage a democratic culture. Gonzales' conclusions with regard to basic education seem to be paralleled in the teacher-education reform. He found that the most affected participants felt left out of the discussion, they did not take ownership for the changes, and they had not seen the promised changes in their working environments. In late 1995 in the Namibian colleges of education, the previous authoritarian organizational structures and roles were still in place and in practice. The education reform was in danger of being reconstructed to fit into the previous system, rather than reconstructing the old structures into a reformed system. Patti Swarts, acting director of the Namibian Institute for Educational Development (NIED), used this information to call for a restructuring of SBS and other aspects of the BETD program. She suggested the colleges and schools create a new structure for SBS, rather than trying to change practices while working within old structures. She argued the new structure of SBS should provide a two-way avenue for communication and partnership development. In a February 1996 memo, she highlighted the need for developing partnerships that:

... enable team planning and sharing of knowledge and skills about the Reform to take place between student teachers, teacher educators, and classroom or subject teachers working at the same grade level as the student teacher in a form of shared dialogue. This means that those involved in promot- ing the basic education reform can participate in the decision-making process and so learn and support one another. (Swarts 1996)

This memo began deliberations about, and the initiation of, a partnership at GCE. It was at this point that I began to record and analyze the emerging practice of democracy and the implementation of the local partnership. In the next two years of initial implementation, it was possible to find the previously outlined indicators of an emerging democratic culture: broad-based participation, effective communication patterns, initiative development, and program ownership. In tracking these indicators, understanding the progress toward an emerging civil democracy within an institutional educational setting becomes clearer.



The Partnership Initiation

The rector of GCE delegated the task of creating a partnership model to the chair of the SBS committee and me. The rector determined that a school- college partnership was how the college's SBS program should be organized (MBEC 1996). Teacher educators were introduced to the idea of a partnership at a staff meeting where the new partnership organization and responsibilities were explained to them. The partnership considerably changed how the teacher educators were to work; however, it gave them no choice about involvement. There was no negotiation of their roles, nor was there a vote on partnership involvement (Meyer 1996a). Without deliberation, the partnership model was formally institutionalized at the college by its inclusion in the 1996 Gipacha SBS handbook. One teacher-educator stated that the rector and school principals "had unilaterally made the decision to involve their institutions in the partnership without consultation of the faculty that would be most involved in implementing the partnership. It was no different from anything done before" (Angela 1997).

The details of the partnership's introduction into the curriculum and to teachers varied at the different sites; however, the general pattern was the same as it had been at the college. At Lumbula and Gwenze, the principals assembled the teachers and named those who would be participating in the partnership. The principal or his appropriate department head would deter- mine each teacher's role in the partnership. No discussion took place, and no teachers asked questions. At Bubumba and Seshke, the principals were not present for the meetings. These meetings were led by college faculty members, who came in and informed the teachers of their roles and responsibilities as partners to the college. At Bubumba, half the teachers attended the meeting where, again, no questions were asked. At Seshke, however, the teachers did ask questions and disagreed with the system. They questioned the principal's authority to include them without their consent or at least their prior knowledge. With the exception of Seshke, the meetings to intro- duce the partnerships between the college and the schools were remarkably similar to the 1995 meeting. Authority was vertical, with the rector and principals on top, college faculty next, and teachers below them.

The students' place in the partnership remained at the bottom. The college assigned their schools and the schools assigned their teachers. They were told of the new requirements-team teaching and weekly meetings with their teaching peers, support- teachers, and teacher educators-when they were given the up-dated handbook. At each level of introduction, an authoritarian vertical-power structure was reinforced, rather than decon- structed. The partnership was presented as a completed package, developed by someone else, introduced in a typical top-down fashion, and left to be carried out by those who were the least involved in its development. From this beginning point, it is difficult to see how a democratic culture could emerge.

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The power behind the partnership model, however, was its organizational changes, shifted work requirements, and continual contact required by teacher educators, support teachers, and student teachers. The organizational changes included two teacher educators assigned to a school and a group of student teachers. Student teachers were paired with a support teacher and the three then took responsibility for the learners in that teacher's class. This organization provided weekly opportunities for small, consistent groups of teacher educators, support teachers, and student teachers to meet with each other and gain a sense of group.

Although the partnership establishment and introduction was, in Angela's words, "no different from anything done before," its organization provided new opportunities on a practical level for communication, group ownership, and understanding the reform's effects between the college and schools.

The Partnership and Emerging Democracy

By mid-July, the partnership and participants' influences on each other were becoming apparent. My own mid-term evaluation (Meyer 1996b) pointed out discrepancies in the partnership configuration at the different sites and a reconstruction of the model as a whole. How each site organized the spe- cifics of the work responsibilities varied; however, in each case, the broad indicators of a developing democracy were emerging. Differences among the school sites resulted from the uniqueness of the individuals located there, as well as the integration of the site-based partnerships in the overall organization of the schools. From the July 1996 evaluation to the final interviews conducted in October 1997, common practices and trends developed that pointed toward an emerging local democracy.

Broad-Based Participation

By July, each site had organized school-based teams of support teachers, teacher-educators, and student teachers. Each team functioned as an independent organizing body, so much so that teams within the same school did not communicate with each other in a systematic way. Individual teams became the decision-making bodies for dividing responsibilities between teacher educators and support teachers. This autonomous decision-making power was revealed by the different organization of assignments and teaching periods student teachers had, and in the distribution of support and supervision activities.

Regardless of the differences in work distribution, eight teams reported this aspect of the partnership as a positive experience. Teacher educators reported that observing student teachers was easier, since all their students were at the same school and the teaching schedules were better planned. They felt this increased efficiency because they wasted less time driving



and could observe several student teachers during each visit. The support teachers felt more confident making observations and assessments, and consequently made more of them since it was now clear that this was one of their responsibilities (Simanga and Meyer 1996).

On the mid-term evaluation, the student teachers, regardless of their team placement, reported satisfaction with support they received. The non- assessment observations helped create an atmosphere where the student teachers felt they were receiving support and guidance with their teaching, not just being penalized for mistakes (Meyer 1996b). On the final evaluation, the student teachers reported an average of four written assessments and another six observations during the twelve-week teaching period (Simanga and Meyer 1996).

Significant variations occurred in the number of observations reported by the teams. All sites showed a significant improvement from two observations for the twelve weeks in 1995 (Meyer 1995), but the discrepancies between sites indicate a problem with such localized decision making within an institutional program. The variation within the system, even within a school, raises questions about the equity of the experience for the student teachers and workloads for teacher educators and support teachers.

An attempt to direct the number of observations per students was taken by the SBS committee in the revision of the program in 1997. The new SBS handbook (GCE 1997a) stated that each student was required to have six observations by teacher-educators and six by support teachers over the twelve weeks; however, serious disagreements broke out among the teacher- educators when an accountability system was discussed and in the end, no system was developed. In interviews with the student teachers in October and November 1997, it was clear that these requirements had not been met. Because of the lack of effective communication and decision-making across teams and school sites, local discrepancies remained.

The partnership structure led to the development of school-based teams in which new opportunities for participation arose. With the increase in participation, more individuals had their ideas heard and were consid- ered in implementation decisions. This level of localized ownership and the overall lack of program ownership, however, produced discrepancies in the equity of support and work.

Communication Patterns

Though school-based teams resulted in new opportunities for communication between teacher educators, support teachers, and student teachers, a larger cultural change was also evident as new communication links were developed between the schools and the college as institutions. As part of the partnership, collaborative professional development activities were initiated. Previously, college-based professional development workshops had been open only to the teacher educators but with the partnership model, college workshops were opened to support teachers and student teachers.

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Evaluations from these workshops indicate that these programs encour- aged team building and increased discussion about ideas in the educational reform:

An important aspect of the workshop that appeared in the comments to [sic] the evaluation was the effective use of teamwork and that the workshop created a sense of a team that had not been there before. (Meyer and Brown 1996)

It was interesting because I learnt [sic] how to reword topics, not only rewording but suggestions that we were asked to contribute [,] which was quite positive. (Brown and Meyer 1996) [This relates to an action-research assignment the students conduct during SBS.]

Moreover[,] I enjoyed group work[,J which was a combination of support teachers, teacher educators[,J and student teachers. (Brown and Meyer 1996)

Support teachers' and student teachers' involvement in the professional-development activities of the college reduced the vertical power structure, a structure created by the knowledge gap between teacher educators and support teachers about the teacher-education reform and basic-education reform. The partnership provided opportunities for teacher educators, support teachers, and student teachers to discuss major practical and conceptual components of the education reforms (action research and continuous assessment), bridging differences in understandings of the teacher-education reform and the basic-education reform.

Classroom instruction changed at the school and college level through the use of the new classroom practices developed by the student teachers, support teachers, and teacher educators in 1997. A primary objective of college-school partnership is the simultaneous reform of practices at both locations (Holmes Group 1986). At GCE, the partnership provided new opportunities to share ideas central to the pedagogical reforms at both college and the school levels, reforms such as learner-centered instruction and continuous assessment. Further, support teachers became comfortable with specific aspects of the college's program and became more involved with it. In 1997, fifty percent of the student teachers reported their support teachers had helped them with their action-research projects, as compared to six percent in 1995. Three support teachers began their own action-research projects after working with their student teachers (Meyer 2000). At GCE, a group of teacher educators followed the model support teachers used in their teaching teams, observed each other's classes, and shared ideas about teaching and planning. In these ways, the partnership created a new local climate of discussion and dialogue about teaching and learning.

Finally, GCE's role in communicating with the national educational leadership began to shift. It began to initiate communications to NIED about the teacher-education reform. Previously the college had reacted to,



or commented on, ideas promulgated by NIED. In 1997, GCE sent ideas and information to NIED and the other colleges without solicitation. Further, it requested information from other colleges or NIED, rather than waiting for information to come to them. An example of this newly found voice was the "Report to the Moderation Team" before its 1997 visit. The report defined the partnership, its structure, and priorities for program development (GCE 1997b), and suggested the moderation team's work should be done within these parameters. Not all the communications from GCE were acted on or received favorably, but they indicated a growing democratic voice at GCE.

By 1997, the schools and college had documented an agreed-upon language for discussing issues central to the educational reform. In this way, terms such as continuous assessment, formative assessment, group work, prior knowledge, learner-centered teaching, hands-on activities, and so forth could be used to further discussion, rather than always as topics of discussion. GCE educators became aware of how these terms were used by teachers in basic education and vice versa. As GCE's overall awareness of the educational reform grew, they established wider communication net- works to share and elicit information about the educational reform. These new voices in the education reform and patterns of communicating across and between institutions, although not always consistent or effective, dem- onstrate a local commitment to democratic involvement.

Program Ownership

This indicator of a democratic culture appears in several forms, not all of which were necessarily productive for the teacher-education reform or the development of a democratic education system. As discussed previously, primary ownership occurred at the team level at the expense of a coordinated reform agenda at the school and/or college level. Teacher educators reported a lack of time and insufficient organization as reasons for not extending beyond the teams (Angela, Elaine, and Frank 1997). What resulted at the school sites were team partners without cohesive program structures or cross-team ownership, which would have afforded them effective change.

Individual modifications to teams worked against the goal of sharing ideas about the reform throughout whole schools. At two schools, Gwenze and Lumbula, each partnership became a school within a school. The teams were marginalized to the point where they worked in separate sections of the school grounds, and teachers who were not assigned to them were not involved in the teams' activities. This marginalization was not seen as a problematic by these schools' principals; on the contrary, the Gwenze principal saw the lack of disruption to the whole school as positive. He explained his feelings in the following way: "I have had no complaints brought to my attention. The partnership has not disrupted any of the activities of the school. We are very happy with it" (Principal 1996).

At Bubumba, the teachers' ownership of the program was not apparent. The teachers took part in activities when they were asked, but did nothing else. This was the only school where student teachers reported

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the support teachers regularly leaving the school and expecting them to take over all the teaching and planning responsibilities (Meyer 1996b). The teacher educators claimed they had made more visits to the school to ensure the student teachers had sufficient observations. They believed the support teachers could not be trusted while the support teachers believed teacher educators and student teachers were sending complaints to the regional office (Angela 1997). The teacher educators stated the partnership felt like policing, and apparently the support teachers felt they were being policed. Although the student teachers and support teachers evaluated the partnership favorably in writing, oral evidence suggested that the partnership was suffering from a lack of common goals and ownership.

At Seshke, a schoolwide partnership was established. The support teachers worked with all the student teachers and teacher educators, not just subject-area educators. Even the principal at Seshke took a role in the partnership. He attended some of the team meetings and met with the student teachers and teacher educators in his office. The distance between Seshke and the college, twenty-six kilometers, made it difficult for the teacher educators to make quick visits; therefore, they spent longer blocks of time at the school, visited more classes, and met with more teachers. The smaller size of the school also meant that the majority of the teachers were involved in the partnership. Seshke initiated several projects with the college faculty and the larger community in 1996, and became a model for initiatives at other schools in 1997.

Ownership of the partnership in the implementation years ran from low-level compliance through active engagement; however, in all cases, the partnership participants demonstrated more commitment and involvement in defining their roles and work. At Seshke, a democratic culture was emerging across the traditional leadership structures. Here, all school members were involved in discussion, development, and decision-making; however, the lack of central ownership with a unifying and guiding vision was still problematic. This lack of overall coherence to the partnership inhibited bringing together the divergent paths the individual teams were following.

Initiatives and Creative Problem Solving

This indicator was present in 1996 only at two sites; however, it extended to the others and into the community at large in 1997. Initiating activities within the teams based on locally identified problems is closely tied to the idea of owning a decision-making voice in the direction of the partnership. Once initiatives were set in motion, they required communication and participation based upon an individual's ability to contribute, rather than on a preconceived notion of role.

In 1996 at Lumbula, math and science educators worked collaboratively to develop locally made science and math equipment for the school. This joint project arose within the partnership, but relied on prior relation-



ships between the science and math educators. As the science teacher-educator explained, "we had been to life-science workshops together, and then when I was at the school twice a week, I came to realize that we should put together some new equipment for the lab" (Elaine 1997).

At Seshke, the agriculture teacher-educator, support-teacher, and student-teachers worked together to rebuild and retool the school garden and develop new practical activities for the agriculture syllabus. They peti- tioned the regional waterworks department to repair the school's wells. The principal sought advice from a teacher-educator on how to obtain materials to repair the school buildings and electrify the school. Simultaneously with these changes to the school building, the partnership helped develop new teaching materials. The teacher educators and support teachers made classroom posters and "manipulatives" to be used by the learners. The student teachers modeled how to use the manipulatives and learning aids in classrooms during their teaching practice, and left the materials with the school.

The Seshke partnership differed significantly from the others. The teachers and principal took a role in shaping their relationship with the college through the partnership. Seshke did not just respond to the college's requests: it made requests to the college, similar to the shift in communication between the college and ministry, initiated ideas, and created a sense of shared responsibility for the school environment.

In 1997, similar collaborations were extended into the other sites. Most involved new teaching and learning activities, such as the development of hands-on activities, posters, and manipulatives, but they also included more cooperative professional development activities, team teaching and planning, and sharing resources. These activities supported, and were supported by, the development of a common language about reform ideas and shared experiences.

In 1997, the collective partnership extended activities into the community of Gipacha. A Lumbula team organized a citywide cleanup campaign, which involved all the partner-school staff and learners in a litter-pickup program. This was followed by the creation of the GCE environmental science club, which involved teachers, students (college- and school-age), and teacher educators. The club posted signs throughout the city to encourage the proper disposal of garbage and give information about recycling and reusing materials.

At Seshke, the principal worked with teaching teams to write a grant for funding from the work-for-food program offered by the SWAPO government. He and the community elders organized work teams to remud and rethatch the primary-school buildings. The agriculture teacher, student teacher, and teacher educator at the school worked with a local shopowner who provided laborers and materials to recement and repaint the secondary section of the school. A group of students-school and college-community members and teacher-educators built new classroom stools and desks for the primary classes using "appropriate paper technology." At the end of the

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1997 school year, to celebrate the school's rejuvenation, a community cel- ebration was held for parents, children, teachers, teacher educators, student teachers, and other community members.

Other community efforts arising from the partnership included com- puter courses. These were initially developed for, and at the request of, the support teachers; however, community members participated when space was available. The inclusion of the local community in activities that supported education, or were supported by the education community, are exam- ples of how educational reform can bring about national development.

Initial reviews of the college-school partnership indicate that there was an emerging concept of a democratic partnership. Significant changes had taken place in the organization of the program, and these changes provided space for developing a community dialogue. The fact that a flourish- ing democracy had not developed is not unexpected. Two years is too short a time to restructure, implement, and bring about cultural changes; however, in those two years, new trends were developing, and these extended beyond the immediately impacted educational community and into the city of Gipacha. It seems the partnership developed between the college and schools played a critical role in expanding the vision of participation in education and provided some first steps toward education for democracy.

Conclusion

Many events that took place in 1996 and 1997 may appear to be insignifi- cant if taken independently of each other; however, taken together, they show an emerging culture of democracy within an attempt at democratic educational reform. Most significantly, the partnership created organizational and structural changes that required new associations to be developed and sustained, and these in turn created new opportunities for dialogue.

The partnership, by creating new avenues for communication, appeared to disrupt some of the traditional vertical-power structure evident in the interactions between the college and schools in 1995. Teacher educators and support teachers identified their own needs and worked collaboratively to solve local problems; however, not all of the traditional structures were disrupted, and with the exception of one principal, the principals' and college rector's roles in the partnership were ambiguous. They held leadership positions within their own institutions, yet offered no vision or guidance to the overall development of the program. Learning the role of a leader in a democratic culture is clearly a difficult task this case cannot address.

This case presents the potential of local education partnerships for creating a mechanism for establishing small-scale democratic associations. It also makes clear the difficulties of creating democratic associations and structures within a larger system, one that exerts its own values and orga-



nizational goals. The schools and GCE were limited in their ability to make decisions about education reform, since they were being held accountable to the goals of the national reform agendas. Heller's model suggests the overlay of national agenda on locally developed agendas makes for uneven progress toward accepting local democratic initiatives, and this prediction can be seen in this case. The local teams had power to make local decisions, as long as those decisions fit within an externally driven framework. Does this structure then address Gonzales' recommendation that greater participation by all stakeholders was needed in the development of the reform agenda? Some individuals involved in the teams began to explore the power behind communicating across traditionally established boundaries to create a collective voice, one that could forward initiatives to policymakers. Over time, it may be possible to assess the effect of the collective local voice on national education decisions.

Local education partnerships do not ensure that democracy will flourish, even at the local level; however, it is possible that they create space for a democratic community to develop and the practices of a civil democracy to take hold. Educational partnerships were not the only democratic inter- vention in Namibian education between 1995 and 1997: the strides toward democracy were reinforced and confounded by other ongoing events in the development of the Namibian education reform and the Namibian nation as a whole. Namibia is a political democracy; however, democracy as a culture is locally generated in day-to-day interactions and ways of working that may expand into the culture of the nation at large (Freire [1970] 1998b). It is because of the development and negotiation of new types of day-to-day interactions and ways of working that an educational partnership provides a framework for democratic education reform.

NOTES

1. In accordance with the institutional-review requirements of the author's home institution

at the time of the research, the names of the local people cited & interviewed, the college,

and the schools are pseudonyms. For this research, it was under a promise of anonymity that people agreed to take part in interviews and be observed on site.

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Educational Partnerships and Democratic Education in Namibia