Brown Bag — How the Poorest Schools in South Africa Achieve the Highest Results in Science and Mathematics

The kinds of things that make poor schools work are well established in the scholarly literature and in the popular imagination. Strong leadership, competent teachers, available resources all count. But Jansen's research into poor schools in the nine provinces of South Africa reveal something else not found in even more destitute schools of Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Using video-documentaries, Jansen and his team captured the daily rhythm and routines of the schools apartheid left behind and discovered that for the the elements of teaching, leadership, and resources to be effective, a basic functionality had to be established first.
 
Jonathan Jansen is Vice Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State and President of the South African Institute of Race Relations. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a Fellow of the Academy of Science of the Developing World. His book, Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past (Stanford 2009), was listed as one of the best books of that year by the American Libraries Association. He also writes popular books addressing issues of race, education and reconciliation such as We Need to Talk (2011), and We Need to Act (2013). His newest book, How to Fix South Africa's Schools: Lessons from Schools that Work (2014), uses video-documentaries to capture what happens inside disadvantaged schools which nevertheless produce the best results in physical science and mathematics in South Africa. He is also a columnist for The Times. He recently was awarded the Education Africa Lifetime Achiever Award in New York, the Spendlove Award from the University of California for his contributions to tolerance, democracy and human rights, and the premium award of the British Academy for the Social Sciences and Humanities for research excellence and human commitment demonstrated in his book, Knowledge in the Blood. He is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford completing his new book on the politics of intimacy and the transformation of racially divided campuses and communities.