Building a Research Network for Life Orientation Teachers
I am proud to share exciting progress on the Amathuba Project — a mixed-methods, longitudinal, national research programme dedicated to explaining and strengthening the sustainable employability of Life Orientation (LO) teachers across South Africa. The project name, drawn from isiZulu, means opportunities — a word that captures its spirit perfectly.
LO teachers occupy a uniquely critical role in South African education. As the primary practitioners delivering career guidance, psychosocial support, and values education to approximately 2 million secondary school learners each year, they stand at the intersection of teacher wellbeing, learner development, social inequality, and the challenges posed by technological and climate-related change.
Amathuba will produce the first coordinated national evidence base on the sustainable employability of South African LO teachers. Despite their central role, there is currently limited national evidence on the conditions that enable LO teachers to work effectively and remain well over time. The project addresses that gap by examining how school, community, and system conditions shape teachers' capability sets, wellbeing, and professional sustainability.
Over five years, the study will combine a stratified national teacher panel with linked school-level data, qualitative case studies in contrasting contexts, and a clearly specified pilot intervention. It will generate validated multilingual instruments, province-sensitive capability profiles, evidence on teacher and learner support processes, and tested tools for policy and practice.
Rather than assuming that formal resources produce equal opportunities, the project asks what LO teachers are actually enabled to do in different South African contexts — and how those enabling conditions can be improved. The contribution is both scholarly and practical: strengthening theory on work capabilities in unequal schooling systems while delivering outputs usable by schools, teacher development structures, and education departments.
A Growing Team
The project recently welcomed Mrs Geraldine van Heerden and Mrs Maryke Marais as new PhD candidates. Their research will make a meaningful contribution to understanding and strengthening sustainable employability for this vital group of educators. Additional master's and PhD students will be recruited to the project in due course.
Building the Network: Recent Visits
We have been actively cultivating interdisciplinary partnerships across South Africa's leading universities and government structures:
26 March 2026: Dr Amanda Erasmus and I hosted representatives from the Directorate of Career Development at the DHET (Mr Letshego Mokeki and Ms Lesego Aphane), the Director of the Career Centre at the North-West University (NWU), Mr Thoriso Maseng, and Dr Rachele Paver.
21 May 2026: Dr Erasmus and I visited Dr Alfred du Plessis, Prof Julialet Rens, and Dr Jaco van der Merwe at the School of Psychosocial Education, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University.
2 June 2026: Mrs Marais and I met with Prof. Liesel Ebersohn, Director of the Centre for the Study of Resilience, at the University of Pretoria.
18 June 2026: Dr Erasmus and I visited the Centre for Neurodiversity, Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, where we met with Prof. Maximus Monaheng Sefotho, Dr Nettie Ndou-Chikwena, Ms Nqobile Kweyama, and Ms Samantha Dirker.
Why Interdisciplinary Collaboration Matters
Life Orientation sits at the intersection of identity development, social resilience, emotional health, and civic responsibility — and no single discipline can do it justice. The Amathuba Project draws on expertise across curriculum studies, educational psychology, psychosocial education, and policy research to ensure the programme is both scientifically rigorous and grounded in the lived realities of South African classrooms.
This growing network of collaborators reflects that commitment — and positions Amathuba to produce research that can genuinely influence how LO teachers are supported, developed, and sustained in their profession.
Watch this space for further updates as the Amathuba Project continues to take shape.
