Abstract
This study is based on the already established discovery that primary school children in
the Kweneng West Sub District of Botswana, who are predominantly of BaSarwa and
BaKgalagari ethnicity, show poorer academic performance and higher school dropout
rates than the average pupils of the country. The study seeks to explore the possibility
that in the Botswana education system, where the dominant culture determines the
school's culture of dealing, failure to recognise and embrace the culture of the ethnic
minority learners may contribute to the afore mentioned imbalance. In an effort to
contribute towards positive change in educational practice, the study aims to investigate
the feasibility and efficiency of implementing 'Intercultural Arts Education' (ICAE).
ICAE is the collaborative intercultural teaching of Creative and Performing Arts
involving adult members of the community who represent the local 'ethnic minority'
cultures. The study seeks to evaluate the impact of the introduction of ICAE on pupils'
attitudes towards school, cultural consciousness and academic performance and on
teachers' attitudes towards their duties and the village community.
The findings reveal that peoples with non-Tswana background are disadvantaged in the
education system of Botswana due to cultural non-recognition. Including CommunityBased Education, collaborative work based on dialectic reason, child centred
approaches, community involvement in classroom teaching preferably in form of project
teaching based on communities' cultural capital and interdisciplinary teaching, ICAE
may provide a way to bridge the cultural gap between learners and the school,
contributing towards the promotion of social justice through striving for equality and
ontological security. Introducing ICAE as envisaged leads to more open and inclusive
norms of discourse, lifting all involved to more powerful positions with an improved
sense of self-worthiness.
Triangulation is applied in the data collection concerning sources of information,
methods of data collection and persons carrying out observations and data-analysis. The
analysis draws on the idea of critical realism.
The thesis recommends the implementation of ICAE in two phases: In the first
immediate phase a redesign of the syllabus is promoted to include literary arts in the
subject 'Creative and Performing Arts', to encourage the teaching of the arts as a truly
integrated subject and to involve community members in teaching the arts based on the
communities' cultural discourse. In addition teacher in-service training is recommended
to prepare for teaching children with different linguistic and cultural background. In the
second phase collaborative action research involving all stakeholders is envisaged to
explore the inclusion of political aspects of Community Based Education and the
extension of intercultural education towards other subjects.