In this theoretical paper, we contribute to ongoing narratives that attempt to mitigate and curb school violence. We do this by critiquing school relations through the lens of critical emancipatory research. Critical emancipatory research has the impetus to map skewed relations that exacerbate school violence in South African schools. In order to achieve our aim, we highlight various principles of critical emancipatory research that position the theory so that it relates to rebuilding school safety to achieve better schools for all stakeholders. The principles of social justice and social transformation, and the necessity to eliminate false consciousness, are discussed as critical elements of mitigating school violence. The article argues that critical emancipatory research, when it is used to frame relationships within the school milieu, has the impetus to forge new dimensions of, and responses to, conflict resolution-and to lessen school violence.

In this paper, we suggest strength-based approaches for the creation of sustainable rural learning ecologies. We have framed the creation of rural learning ecologies with appreciative inquiry (AI) as a framework and argue that it begins from understanding rurality from positive psychology. The premise within AI has been seen to be the shift from deficient understanding of rural spaces to consideration of them as areas with untapped potential. Arguments for strength-based approaches are based on the fact that they promote improvement from within. This is placing rural communities at the forefront and removing them from the receiving end. We argue that such approaches are giving acknowledgement to rural dwellers that they are better placed to address their solutions drawing from different forms of capital. This paper argues that rural education improvement strategies are possible when educational leaders draw from the capacities that exist in rural spaces.

Background: Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) refers to the care and education of children from birth to age four. There is a scarcity of research on inclusion in this marginalised sector in many developing countries, including South Africa.Aim: This article reports on a virtual learning participatory workshop on understanding inclusion with six ECCE teachers and two ECD practitioner trainers.Setting: Due to the social distancing necessitated by the Corona Virus pandemic, all interactions were facilitated through the WhatsApp platform.Methods: The study employed a participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) design that focuses on collaborative and contextually relevant learning and research. Data were generated in two iterative cycles using a baseline questionnaire, photovoice, reflective journals and purposeful conversations.Results: Cycle one found that some of the participants’ understanding of inclusion needed to be challenged. Their understandings of inclusion centred on discourses of disability with a narrow view of inclusion. This action learning set (ALS) mainly regarded inclusion to be a product rather than a process and claimed that segregation had some advantages. Some of the members of the ALS also misconstrued inclusion for micro-exclusive practices of assimilation and integration. Cycle two was planned to address these misunderstandings. Cycle two revealed that becoming inclusive means revisiting dominant ideologies about inclusion and a critical awareness of micro-exclusive practices.Conclusion: This research serves to challenge dominant beliefs of what inclusion is. The knowledge presented here could be cascaded to other ECCE centres in the South African context. With a scarcity of research on inclusion in ECCE, this study may provide a point of departure for future research.