Community Engagement in Education and Educating the Community to Engage: Taking Research to the Grassroots in Botswana

This methodology paper explores a partnership between Botswana Educational Research Association (BERA) and the Mmathethe community in the south of Botswana, which sought to identify strategies for improving academic performance at a local primary school. The project was implemented within the theoretical framework of the school improvement approach, which argues that schools have the capacity to improve themselves with the help of both internal and external stakeholders. Both parties engaged in work-based learning, fieldwork, applied research collaborations, policy analysis seminars and other exchanges of information. Action research was employed to ensure community involvement and cascading of research skills to the community so that they can address similar challenges that may arise in the future. Several data collection strategies were employed and they included (i) focus group discussions; to elicit for opinions, brain storm, probe in to performance issues, and suggest new ideas as well as responses to new proposals; (ii) interviews to capture opinions, informed inputs, preferences and rationale behind some current pedagogical practices and (iii) document analysis to reveal performance trends, patterns and indicators, year on year and group by group comparison in performance before any intervention could be put in place. Data collection was done by a team in which community members were fully represented. This engagement was an eye opener in a number of ways. Besides cascading research skills, Community interest in improving academic performance at the school was rekindled. It proved that there is need to work with traditional leaders since communities have faith in them. It may be a pointer towards how future collaborations could be handled. In short, there was a deliberate effort to change current practices and improve efficiency within the way the school operates by changing the mind-set of the community members in which the school is located. It is quite possible that the way this project was planned and unfolded could become the cornerstone of how communities should be empowered to solve their own problems in Botswana, and could act as a model of how BERA could interact with other communities.