School Libraries and Outcomes Based Education: A study of factors impacting on the development of school libraries with focus on disadvantaged areas in the Western Cape Province

Abstract: The purpose of this Master’s thesis was to examine different factors influencing the process of establishing and developing school libraries in relation to the implementation of a new outcome based curriculum, Curriculum 2005. The main focus was on under resourced areas and a field study was conducted in 1998 in the Western Cape Province during the first year of implementation. As a frame a Swedish – South African school library project, that lasted between 1997- 2002, was used. The findings from the field study were analysed according to a model identifying different factors influencing the process of implementation ofeducational change in underdeveloped countries. Four evaluations of the project were incorporated in the analysis with the aim to enhance the findings from the field study but also to question them. The aim was not to evaluate the project itself. The conclusions reached were that several ofthe factors found to affect the implementation process were not specificfor under resourced areas, but could also be found in the research regarding developed countries. Some factors were however found to be specific for many of the under resourced areas, such as shortage ofadequate learning resources, especially in the indigenous languages, dependence on external support such as voluntary workers and donations, infrastructural problems, absence of possible co-operating public libraries, locked libraries due to security problems etc. Many of these factors couldbe referred back to inherited inequalities.