The affordances of PAR for a school-community partnership to enhance learner support in socio-economically challenged communities

Although complex reasons exist for the poor state of education in socio-economically challenged communities in South Africa, improving parental support to learners is one approach to buffer contextual adversities. Yet, historically, collaboration between school and parent has been problematic. We hypothesized that a participatory action research approach might be useful to develop positive relations between teachers and parents. We report on the benefits of a PAR project undertaken by seven community parents and five teachers to enhance learner support in a primary school situated in a low-income area. Thematic analysis of focus group interviews with participants, triangulated by transcriptions of a final project workshop, revealed that participation in the PAR process enabled i) the development of contextually relevant content for an educational programme; ii) change in the assumptions of parents and teachers about their respective roles in supporting the child; iii) the personal/technical skills development of participants; and iv) positive outcomes beyond the project. The insights gain from this study highlight the benefits of PAR to enable schools to harness the wealth of knowledge and skills that exist in their community to enhance learner support and improve the quality of teaching and learning.