Diversity High Class, Color, Culture, and Character in a South African High School

Diversity High offers special insight into school change and social transition in racially divided communities. It underlines the obvious notion that change is difficult and confirms that leadership in an academic environment matters in changing schools. Vandeyar and Jansen provide a thorough investigation allowing readers to distinguish second-order changes (changes to curriculum, staffing, culture, and leadership), from first-order changes (changes in student complexion in de-racializing schools). The study demonstrates the non-linearity of reforms by capturing the dynamism of change in powerful photographic records ranging from origins to change. Conveying complexity through the ways in which race, class, and culture intersect to produce unintended consequences; this book is concise and expertly researched. Ultimately, Vandeyar and Jansen celebrate human agency over determinist structures at the center of change through their in-depth analysis of a white South African high school that pursued transformation against the grain of its own racial biography. Book jacket.

Saloshna Vandeyar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria Jonathan D. Jansen is the former Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria and Fulbright Scholar to Stanford University (2007-2008)