The KwaZulu-Natal School Library Policy and its feasibility for implementation in the Province

This article reports on research on the KwaZulu-Natal School Library Policy, its implementation strategy and feasibility for implementation in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The article is the base research article which draws on a larger study which was undertaken for a doctorate. The first research objective of the study was to analyse and critically assess the KwaZulu-Natal School Library Policy document and its implementation strategy. Other objectives focused on the key elements of the provincial policy and their adequacy in terms of policy formulation and development. The research took into account the accepted standards of good policy formulation to provide perspective and contextualise the study, and delineated educational challenges for the sector. The following theoretical frameworks guided the study: a constructivist approach in interpreting and evaluating the role of school libraries within an education system based in constructivist principles, the traditional policy model to evaluate policy formulation and design, and a social constructionist view of policy in the interpreting of policy development and implementation. The epistemological basis for the main methodology, the Delphi technique, was social constructivism. The research design comprised two phases. Qualitative data collected from the Delphi panel's expert opinion were interpreted to analyse the policy document critically and assess its implementation strategy. To a lesser extent this article reports on the second phase, the quantitative data from an analysis of existing surveys and reports which provided an overview of the current state of school library provisioning in KwaZulu-Natal. School library models already being implemented in the province were evaluated against this background. The research results provide guidelines for reviewing and refining the provincial policy intervention and brought to the fore several issues that need to be resolved to facilitate school library development in South Africa. Recommendations are made concerning these guidelines.