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Bibliography: leaves 271-283. ; This is an ethnographic study, which investigates discourse practices in English subject classrooms at Mziwethu Senior Secondary, a Western Cape township high school, where the subject is taught as a second language. The data were collected between October 1997 and March 1999. Working within a critical theory framework, my assumptions are (1) that classroom discourse practices reflect and construct outside realities and (2) that motivation to learn a language, and classroom language practices are intimately connected to power relations outside the classroom, as well as to social identity. These assumptions are embedded in my thesis title. Alongside Pennycook (1998), Kumaravadivelu (1999) and Canagarajah (1999), I believe that it is not possible to analyse English language practices in colonial and post-colonial contexts without a consideration of the history and national politics of English in that country. But, as all these writers emphasise, politics also extends to the contemporary local context in which the learning takes place, the roles and relationships in the classroom, and to literacy practices.

The aim of this study is to examine Doris Lessing's relationship to Africa and to politics as reflected in the Children of Violence series, and to examine the impact of this on the form of the texts. The study plots the ideology of the series (which is strongly autobiographical) by examining Lessing's own biography over the seventeen years of writing the series, and by means of close textual analysis of narrative focalisation and representation of subjectivity. It is a central contention of the study that literature is influenced by political and historical events and emerges from a social and cultural milieu which helps shape form and content. The importance of engaging with rupture as it manifests itself in the text in the form of silences and contradictions, is stressed. The first two novels, Martha Quest and A Proper Marriage were written while Lessing was still a member of the Communist Party; A Ripple From The Storm, Landlocked and A Four-Gated City after she had left. Despite this, the ideology of the series is remarkably consistent in that we are presented with a humanist perspective which poses the conception of an essential self throughout, despite Lessing's political affiliation. Whereas the ideas of individual essence are evident only in silences and contradictions in the earlier texts, Lessing's romanticism is increasingly openly expressed in the texts which were written after she leaves the Party. Her increasing sympathy with her protagonist is represented in the change in narrative focalisation from omniscience to free-indirect speech. The central change in the series is in Lessing's depiction of her protagonist's relationship to Africa. Before Lessing leaves the Party, her protagonist desires a construction of herself as African, after Lessing leaves, her protagonist is described as alienated from Africa and having no role to play there. The Children of Violence series enacts the reworking of the protagonist's (and Lessing's) contradictory position as African and exile.

Introduction / Rochelle Kapp and Bongi Bangeni -- Students' negotiation of learning and identity in working-class schooling / Rochelle Kapp, Elmi Badenhorst, Bongi Bangeni, Tracy S. Craig, Viki Janse van Rensburg, Kate le Roux, Robert Prince, June Pym and Ermien van Pletzen -- Closing the gap : three mathematics students talk about their transition to and through their undergraduate degrees in the sciences / Kate le Roux -- "Going nowhere slowly? : a longitudinal perspective on a first-generation woman student's withdrawal from university / Judy Sacks and Rochelle Kapp -- Humanities' students negotiation of language, literacy and identity / Rochelle Kapp and Bongi Bangeni -- The role of religion in mediating the transition to higher education / Bongi Bangeni and June Pym -- A longitudinal account of the factors shaping the degree paths of black students / Bongi Bangeni -- Enabling capabilities in an engineering extended curriculum programme / Tracy S. Craig -- The impact of previous experiences and social connectedness on students' transition to higher education / June Pym and Judy Sacks -- Conclusion : exploring the implications of students' learning journeys for policy and practice / Bongi Bangeni and Rochelle Kapp