"I'm not under-standing"

Abstract

This article presents the experiences and reflections of a South African educational researcher on a recent field trip to schools in a deep-rural part of the country. The data gathering exercise was part of an evaluation of the "Learning Improvement Project" (LIP), a pseudonym for a donor-funded intervention programme instituted to improve the functionality and academic performance of schools that were victims of the unequal, racially segregated apartheid policies, prior to their abolition in the nineties. The names and places cited in this reflective piece have been fictionalised, but the narrative is constructed from actual data collected.