3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Possibilities of using beads and beadwork (cultural) as instructional models in the teaching and learning of life science(2018) Fakoyede, Sina JoshuaThis study explored the possibilities of using beads and beadwork (cultural artifacts) to create instructional models of simple and complex organic compounds for teaching and learning of life sciences concepts in South African science classrooms. The objective was to find ways of integrating African indigenous knowledge (AIK) through cultural artifacts into westernized science teaching to enhance better learners’ understanding of and performance in sciences. I became interested in using materials available in learners’ (students’) lived-world to spur their interests in learning sciences when I taught high schools life sciences in Iyin-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. Classroom resources were very scarce and those manufactured by textbook companies were boring to indigenous learners. They tended to memorize and regurgitate to pass exams and often could not explain the concepts in their own words. Therefore, I had to improvise. I asked learners to bring resources from home that we then use to create paper mache of science concepts as instructional models thereby concretizing abstract life sciences concepts. This hands-on, minds-on, culturally related, approach sparked learners’ interests in science that resulted in high performance in science and spurred me to carry on this study. This study has therefore solidified my view that materials found in the learners’ lived-world (cultural artifacts) can be used by teachers to enhance the teaching, learning and understanding of westernized science and help improve science performances (the learners ability to produce and reproduce the knowledge of simple and complex organic compounds) and literacy of indigenous learners. Enhancing indigenous learners’ understanding of westernized science concepts by using culturally relevant materials that are significant in learners’ lived-world became imperative in South African context. The South African National Curriculum Statements stated categorically that teaching of sciences must “values indigenous knowledge systems and acknowledges the rich history and heritage of the country” (NCS, 2005. p. 5) and the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS, 2011. p. 2), as policy documents, mandated that “children acquire and apply knowledge and skills in ways that are meaningful to their own lives”. In addition, CAPS also instructed teachers to “construct models of simple and more complex molecules using beads” (CAPS, 2011. p. 19). Surprisingly, the teachers, who participated in this study, were unaware of this provision in the CAPS document and it may not be wrong to assume that most science teachers are equally not aware of this provision. More critical is that the curriculum did not state how these models of simple and complex organic molecules would be constructed with beads; and the schools and/or teachers were not provided with beads, resources, and neither were they trained on how to do this. Without these provisions, the outcomes envisaged by CAPS will continue to be hidden in the curriculum without actualizing them. This study takes a qualitative approach using a case study paradigm and video-recorded (teachers professional development workshop, teachers interview and teachers and learners classroom interactions) and conversation analyses with the use of questionnaire to collect data on “how” beads and beadwork could be used to create instructional models for teaching and learning of simple and complex organic compounds and more. The study was conducted in two peri-urban (township) schools near a metropolitan city in South Africa. Four (4) grade 10 life sciences teachers and their learners (forty learners on an average) as participants were involved in the study. The four life sciences teachers were interviewed after the professional development and training workshop. In the professional development and training workshop, all sciences teachers indicated their interest to participate and this was not denied, however, only the experiences of four life sciences learners were captured during the interview. In essence, there were four interviews (20 minutes each) with the life sciences teachers. The focus groups were conducted for 20 minutes also. The study was carried out in three phases. In phase one, I as the researcher taught myself how to create simple and complex organic compounds in order to teach the processes to science teachers. In phase two, I engaged science teachers from two schools in a professional development and training workshop where I worked with the teachers on how to create simple and complex organic compounds as instructional models using beads and beadwork. The third phase was where teachers taught learners how to create such instructional models by themselves, which were later used to teach the organic molecules Participants included four teachers and their learners. I also engaged a professional bead maker to help me gain a better understanding of the knowledge of beads and beadwork and the learning processes that are involved in bead making. Research findings indicated that the aesthetic properties of beads and beadwork and interests of learners in the aesthetic properties endeared the learners to the hands-on, minds-on activities and enhanced their sustained engagement, interests and interactions among learners, learners and their teachers, and both learners and teachers with the culturally-related materials (beads and beadwork). These materials became tools for generating culturally related instructional models (CRIM), as the beads and beadwork became cognitized for teaching and learning of life sciences in the classroom. The professional development and training workshops with the teachers became forum for teachers’ heightened awareness of and interests in the use of not only beads and beadworks but other cultural artifacts in concretizing abstract science concepts. Teachers demonstrated the conviction that the use of the cultural artifacts integration model (CAIM) could be a pedagogical approach to aligning the two worldviews, indigenous knowledge (IK) and westernized science (WS) in indigenous science classrooms. Other areas of indigenous knowledge integration with westernized science in the African sciences classroom/contexts; and how they can be integrated using the CAIM present areas for further research.Item Pigs,plants and parallel processing: an exploration of the tensions between Western liberal humanism and critical post humanism in dub steps(2018) Worster, Amy LourethThis research report presents a critical thematic analysis of Andrew Miller’s science fiction (SF) novel Dub Steps with the intention of demonstrating that the book’s central themes are interrelated and evoke various tensions between the ideological projects of western liberal humanism and critical posthumanism. Furthermore, this study examines how the novel’s setting of Johannesburg articulates with its themes and complicates the unfolding drama of the liberal humanist subject in crisis, especially in connection to South Africa’s troubled history of colonialism and apartheid. Representations of race – specifically blackness and whiteness – are at stake in the interactions between Johannesburg and the central themes of Dub Steps, and the historical and material politics of race in South Africa are brought to bear upon the novel’s depiction of a posthuman future. This study finds that Dub Steps may be read as a posthuman SF fantasy in which the vestiges of colonialism and apartheid are finally undone and socio-economic inequalities persisting in the post-apartheid sphere are finally rebalanced. However, it is also the view of this research report that the progressive potential of the novel is undermined by its technophobic ethos and a reversion to harmful stereotypes about black people in its vision of a new world orderItem Sample, improvise and collaborate: bringing home multimodal learning through creative practice.(2018) Thomson, Susan KaolinThe aim of this creative research project is to argue for and activate a critical pedagogy that is grounded in multimodality and what I will refer to as “this artist’s sensibility” (Andrew, 2011, emphasis mine). This sensibility, for the purposes of this research project, is characterised by processes of sampling, improvisation and collaboration and is envisioned through visual and sonic modes, documenting and sampling the bricolaged constellations of personalised learning events within the home-practice environment. This auto-ethnographic research is framed by my own identity and informed by my experience as an artist, musician, composer, performer, teacher and mother. In addition, the research aims to critique the notion of the classroom and the system of education and to challenge how we think children learn and how they should be taught. I do not suggest a perfect solution, or the only way in which we should consider education. Rather, I hope this will be regarded as an honest and humble contribution to the research annals of critical pedagogyItem Telling and illustrating additive relations stories: a classroom-based design experiment on young children's use of narrative in mathematics(2016) Roberts, NickyIn South Africa, difficulties with learners solving word problems has been a recurrent problem identified through national standardised assessments extending from Foundation Phase into the Senior Phase. As is evident globally, particular difficulties have been identified with young children solving ‘compare-type problems’ where the numbers of objects in two disjoined sets are compared. This design experiment provides empirical data of young South African learners trying to make sense of compare-type problems. The task design from this design experiment suggested that engaging learners in narrative processes where they are expected to model the problem situations and then retell and vary the word problems, to become fluent in using the sematic schemata may assist them to become more experienced and better able to make sense of compare-type problems. This finding contradicts the advice offered in official South African government documentation. The study was a three-cycle classroom-based design experiment which took place over 10 consecutive school days with Foundation Phase learners in a full service township school where the majority of learners were English Language Learners (ELLs), learning mathematics in English when their home language has not English. This study set out to research a ‘narrative teaching approach’ for a specific mathematics topic: additive relation word problems. At the heart of the study therefore, was a question relating to the efficacy of a teaching strategy: To what extent do young children’s example space of additive relations expand to include compare type word problems? This design experiment reveals that when adequately supported with careful task design and effort in monitoring and responding to learner activity, Grade 2 ELL children in a township school can improve their additive relations problem solving, in a relatively short time frame. The majority of the learners in this design experiment were able to solve compare-type problems at the end of the 10-day intervention. These learners were also able to produce evidence of movements towards more structured representations, and towards better learner explanation and problem posing using storytelling. III The design experiment intervention showed promise in expanding young children’s example space for additive relations word problems. In both cycles the mean results improved from pre-test to post-test. The gains evident immediately after the intervention were retained in a delayed post-test administered for the third cycle which showed further improvements in the mean with a reduced standard deviation. The effect sizes of the shifts in means from pre-test to post-test was 0.7 (medium) in both cycles, while the effect size of shifts in the mean from pre-test to delayed post-test was 1.3 (large). T-tests established that these shifts in means were statistically significant. The core group showed the greatest learning gains, suggesting that the intervention was most successful in ‘raising the middle’ of the class. Particular patterns of children’s reasoning about additive relations word problems are documented from the South African ELL children in this design experiment. For example many ELLs in this design experiment initially responded to compare word problems like ‘Mahlodi has 12 sweets. Moeketsi has 8 sweets. How many more sweets does Mahlodi have than Moeketsi?’ with: ‘Mahlodi has 12 sweets’. New actions and contrasts relating to additive relations are brought into focus. For example the empirical results indicated that inserting attention to 1:1 matching actions was found to be useful to helping learners to deal with static compare situations. This study has helped to extend the theoretical foundations of what is meant by a ‘narrative approach’ as the theoretical features of the narrative approach are now situated within a broader theoretical framework of orienting theories, domain specific instructional theories, and related frameworks for action. The findings of this design experiment have been promising in the local context of the focal school. Should the intervention task design be found to yield similar results in other South African Foundation Phase contexts, when implemented by teachers other than the researcher, then it may be appropriate to use the research findings to improve the guidance provided to Foundation phase teachers (in curriculum documentation and through professional development offerings).Item Exploring postmethod pedagogy with Mozambican secondary school teachers.(2010-11-11) Delport, SusanThis research explores postmethod pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 165) with two Mozambican secondary school teachers who expressed an interest in carrying out an exploratory research project in their context of practice. The research was undertaken to investigate how teachers, who had attended an International House Language Lab (IHLL) teacher education programme in 2008, were theorizing from their practice with the aim of developing a context-sensitive pedagogy. The research is a qualitative study consisting of two case studies. Each case is based on the practices of a teacher attempting to implement an exploratory research project. The exploratory projects included the following activities: the teacher teaching a lesson with a colleague observing; the teacher and observer meeting both before and after the observed lesson to discuss and analyse the lesson; and finally, the teacher inviting a group of students to discuss their perceptions of selected episodes in the lesson. The teachers used the exploratory research projects to explore their classroom practice in order to learn more about their teaching. Of particular relevance to this study is literature on practitioner research and teachers as reflective practitioners. In analysing the data, I demonstrate that although the exploratory research projects provided a frame of reference and point of departure for postmethod pedagogy, the teachers’ ability to ‘develop a systematic, coherent, and relevant personal theory of practice’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 40) was limited by: the context, the surface level application of macrostrategies, and a lack of foregrounding of the critical in the postmethod macrostrategies. The study concludes with a critical reflection on the value of postmethod pedagogy for teacher education programmes offered at IHLL, as well as for the teachers’ contexts of practice. I offer some ‘fuzzy generalizations’ (Bassey, 1999) about the place of postmethod principles in teacher development courses for language teachers from a range of classroom and community contexts.