Grade 12 examination results' top 20 positions : the need for the creation of sustainable learning environments for social justice in all schools

Abstract

Why do African learners continue to be underrepresented in the top 20 positions of the Grade 12 examination results, and what can be done to remedy the situation? Yosso's notion of community cultural wealth shows that it is because our education continues to exclude the African learners' ways of knowing and being that the situation remains as it is. Analysing discourses of top performing white former Grade 12 learners, their teachers, their parents and their former African classmates, indicate that including modes of knowing of all learners in the curriculum irrespective of their race, class, disability or gender may help to create more socially just schooling, which is reflective of sustainable learning environments.