Quality Education for All Using a Generic Mentoring Framework

ABSTRACT

At the onset of reformation and conciliation in 1994, various interventions were implemented by the South African government to ensure the reparation of learner outcomes and throughput. The Department of Basic Education has, however, failed innumerable times to achieve their set educational outcomes. Thus, educational stakeholders, opinion leaders, and researchers perceive the quality of education in South Africa to be appalling, as schooling systems continue to maintain a dysfunctional reputation. This article reports on how a systematic literature review was used to design a generic mentoring framework, adapted as a fit-for-purpose mentoring system, to be used as a tool to turn around dysfunctional schooling systems in South Africa. An analysis was undertaken of the schooling system undertaken at the micro level, employing a functionalist perspective framed by the theoretical contributions of Parsons and Merton. Further to this, a systematic review was conducted, and thematic analysis was employed to analyse data drawn from an array of literature on mentoring, best practice, quality education, and dysfunctional schooling systems to draw out concepts and themes. These concepts and themes were used to make inferences from which to develop a code book that would give insight into the structure and process of the design of a generic mentoring framework that can be adapted as a fit-for-purpose mentoring system.

Keywords:

• Educational
• functionalist perspective
• generic mentoring
• schooling
• South Africa