Research Outputs (Education)
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Item Experiences of sport coordinators in a physical education professional development programme(2020) Zeller, D.; Roux, C. J.Physical education (PE) is an essential component of the school curriculum. However, studies show that many facilitators responsible for the delivery of PE in South African schools possibly lack the requisite specialist skills for effective PE delivery. Such facilitators can therefore be assisted with in-service training and professional development (PD) interventions to equip them with the relevant PE teaching skills. The purpose of this study was to analyse sport coordinators’ views about the attributes of effective development of non-specialist PE teachers or programme facilitators in South African schools. A qualitative interpretive paradigm was used to conduct a case study among 32 sport coordinators who taught Foundation Phase PE in 32 schools in the North-West Province of South Africa. The training model of PD was used to design the intervention, which included four different workshops held over one year. Data were obtained by using three semi-structured questionnaires, which were completed at different stages during the intervention and consequently analysed using the conventional content analysis approach. The most significant finding was that continuous training and support should not be considered as optional, but rather a necessity. Both the selection of content and pedagogy used to present the programme need careful consideration. Developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) experientially is critical. Modelling of practice and engaging the participants in carefully designed practical activities to demonstrate theoretical principles is preferable compared to the traditional lecture method. Thus, teachers should be assisted, not only to grasp concepts associated with PE as a learning area, but also to develop the pedagogic insight needed to adapt their teaching strategies to the instructional settings in which they find themselves.Item Decolonial History teachers' charter: A praxis guide(2020) Dollie, A.; Ramjain, A.; Varachia, T.; Maangoale, T.M.; Tshipugu, T.; Laurence, T.; Laher, Y.; Dabhelia, A.; Abba, M.; Karanie, A.; Mitha, A.; Mbuli, M.; Mogane, K.; Montshioa, T.; Mamogobo, A.; Sahula, M.The below text is a practical charter which calls for history teachers, students, learners and then the provincial and national Departments of Basic and Higher Education to decolonise. Decolonisation is often talked about in the abstract, it is separated out into curricula, pedagogy, or university spaces. This charter takes the argument into schools and explores several aspects of decolonisation in a substantial and detailed way. The charter was developed as a collective exercise in a history methodology class by third and fourth year Bachelor of Education students training to be histori(an) teachers. The idea from the charter emanated from the students, and was initially, pre-Covid, guided by the lecturer (see footnote 1); however, once Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) began, the students took complete ownership of the project. The lecturer's only role was to make the charter an assignment, to give students impetus to carry on with the task. Students could work collectively on the Decolonial History Teacher's Charter, or work on and submit individual assignments. This is important because the desire, the heart, the intellectual work, and the collectivity all emanated from the students. The below document can serve, in our collective view, as an important guide to new and serving history teachers, students, learners, and scholars.Item Teaching History teachers during COVID-19: Charting poems, pathways and agency.(2020) Godsell, S.In this article I argue that Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) has necessitated and produced some transformative teaching methods, using the frameworks of Freire and hooks. However, I argue, that their methods are incongruous with this moment of online learning because of the 'invisibilisation' of the marginalised and vulnerable students, who can and do easily disappear into the void of online learning. This makes dialogic teaching (Freire) and teaching in community (hooks) impossible. I use examples of two undergraduate history and history method (teaching history) classes, specifically looking at the teaching methods and the assessment methods. I draw thematically on what the students produced in their assessments, analysing their texts (poems, creative essays, artistic submissions), looking at how they engaged with the assignment (method) and what emerged in the assignment, reading specifically for political engagement. In this discussion, I look at both the possibilities and the limitations of online teaching. Ultimately, I argue, that the limitations outweigh the possibilities of online teaching, and that there is a danger in claiming victories or even good teaching standards in this context. The danger is that the students who disappear are written out of the script of the University, and the promises (however precarious) that post-university life in South Africa offers. My argument here, using two specific courses as evidence, is thus a contradiction and a balance: for exploring this portal, and everything it offers, but pushing back vehemently against complete online migration because, in a country as unequal as South Africa, it is unethical, unjust, and anti-critical pedagogy.Item Colonial heritages, educational Incompartibilities and the challenges for a reunified Cameroon: 1961–2016(2020) Ndille, R.The reunification of British Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun 1961 required the adoption of new national policies which were to guarantee that none of the colonial identities were jeopardized.1 In doing this, the Federal Republic adopted harmonization as a policy framework for the establishment of a new national educational system that was to unequivocally represent both colonial heritages without feelings of marginalization by any side. Using archival evidence and some empirical literature, this paper has examined the landmark developments in the harmonization of education in the country. It has observed that although significant strides have been made there are still huge challenges. The paper concludes that until both sides are determined to put national interests above former colonial interests, harmonization and the ultimate establishment of a national educational system cannot be achieved.2Item Rethinking the African space in a global education project: A representational reflection in the context of nationalism(2020) Ndille, R.The call to a global education project involves transformations of educational ideologies, policy formulation, systems restructuring, and curriculum reforms that go beyond national/local considerations. While advocates of globalization have identified inherent advantages in these transformations, the paper argues that in terms of the ‘globalism’ of its origins, values, and the standards it advocates in education, there is much that meets the eye. It uses attributes such as the origin of the global ideology, the main agents of global educational decision making, and the proposals of the kind of global history curriculum, to argue that a deeper consideration of these attributes reveals Euro-North America as generators and regulators of ideation while Africa and the Global South in general are forcefully involved consumers to the detriment of national and indigenous education orientations that should be prioritized. The paper concludes that until such times when issues of egalitarianism are considered in its ideation, decision making and flow of knowledge(s) within which Africa and the Global South find representation, globalization of education would continue to be seen as the perpetuation of the entrapment of Africa within the global matrices of power.Item Organic translanguaging in Science classrooms: Perceptions of pre-service primary school teachers.(2020) Charamba, E.In spite of today’s science classrooms being linguistically diverse, languages are still kept separate during academic instruction with education policymakers and stakeholders emphasising language purism and a strict separation of languages in the classroom. The overarching aim of this article is to investigate science teachers’ perceptions regarding linguistic potential and language competence in relation to translanguaging strategies. The data presented consists of interview responses, lesson observations, and questionnaire responses from purposefully sampled 25 pre-service teachers at 6 different primary schools in South Africa. In analysing the data collected from the questionnaires, descriptive statistics were used to calculate the percentages of each Likert-type item in the questionnaire while qualitative data was analysed using structural coding. The present research findings corroborate previous research findings which affirm the pivotal role language plays in the science classroom and suggests teachers do away with ‘named languages’ through the use of students’ linguistic repertoire in the classroom. The study also shows how translanguaging assists science students and teachers in multilingual South African classrooms achieve voice and agency by challenging discourses otherwise framed in monolingual perspectives. Given the academic and social benefits as well as the fluid nature of a translanguaging approach, the study also recommends teachers to implement translanguaging pedagogy in their linguistically diverse multilingual science classes.Item Encounters with mentor teachers: first-year students’ experiences on teaching practice.(2020) Moosa, M.; Rembach, L.Teaching practice is a compulsory, legislated component of initial teacher education programmes in South Africa. During this experience, preservice teachers engage with their mentor teachers. By exploring first-year students’ experiences with their mentor teachers during their first teaching practice, we argue that mentorship is a vital component of teaching practice in order for first-year students to grow and develop their teaching skills and their professional development. The theoretical framework chosen underpins the mentorship processes based on Hagger and Macintyre’s work, this enabled a multi-dimensional analysis and account of mentorship. Four hundred and twelve first-year students participated in this study and the data were analysed by means of an open coding method. The results were that 376 (91%) of participants reported that they felt unsupported and powerless during teaching practice, because of negative engagements and experiences with mentor teachers. These findings have implications for the preparation of preservice teachers in other contexts too.Item From learner to teacher: Personal experiences, beliefs and attitudes about bullying victimisation(2020) Moosa, M.Research shows that first-year pre-service teachers enter initial teacher education programmes with certain beliefs in place about schooling. This paper explores first-year pre-service teachers' experiences of, beliefs and attitudes about bullying. Social Learning Theory and Theory of Planned Behaviour are used to shed light on bullying as a learned behaviour and the impact this could have on how pre-service teacher will handle incidents at school. Three hundred and five first-year pre-service teachers participated in a mixed-methods research study. Multiple-choice and open-ended questionnaires were collated and analysed. The paper argues that pre-service teachers use their personal experiences, beliefs and attitudes about bullying victimisation to make decisions on how to assist learners. The findings of this research indicate that more than half of this cohort has witnessed bullying at school at some point. They did nothing about it because of fear, inadequate reporting systems at schools and lack of action been taken by teachers. Should they witness bullying in schools as teachers they might opt to take the same approach if they are not adequately prepared. Nonetheless, they are willing to use their experiences of bullying to become proactive teachers and stop the cycle of bullying. Keywords: Pre-service teachers; bullying; violence; victimology; bystanders; Social Learning Theory; Theory of Planned Behaviour.Item Deconstructing South African Grade 1 learners' awareness of number in terms of cardinality, ordinality and relational understandings.(2020) Askew, M.; Venkat, H.The cardinal and ordinal aspects of number have been widely written about as key constructs that need to be brought together in children’s understanding in order for them to appreciate the idea of numerosity. In this paper, we discuss similarities and differences in the ways in which understandings not only of ordinality, cardinality but also additive and multiplicative relations have been theorized. We examine how the connections between these can be considered through a focus on number line representations and children positioning and comparing numbers. The responses of a cohort of South African Grade 1 learners’ (6- and 7-year-olds) to a numerical magnitude estimation task and to a numerical comparison task are analysed and the findings compared to those in the international literature, some of which argue that children’s early, informal, understandings of cardinality and ordinality are underpinned by an intuitive logarithmic model relating number order and size. A main finding presented here is that the responses from learners in this study exhibited a better fit with an exponential model of the relationship between cardinality and ordinality. These findings raise questions about whether some of the findings in previous research are as universal as sometimes claimed.Item Teacher talk in professional learning communities.(2020) Brodie, K.; Chimhande, T.Professional learning communities can be important sites for teacher learning depending on the quality of the conversations in these communities. This paper shows how different activities in teacher communities support different kinds of conversation at different levels of depth, through examining the conversations of four professional learning communities of mathematics teachers over two years. Our analysis suggests three key findings. First, there were strong relationships between different activities and the content of the conversations in the communities. Second, the depth of the conversation in the communities was constant across activities and over time. Third, conversations about learner thinking, a key goal of the project, did not increase over time, but there were increases in talk about mathematics and practice. We explore the implications of these findings for teacher learning.