3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Exploring a culture of reading: a case study in an under-resourced South African primary school(2023-09) Claire, Biesman-SimonSouth Africa faces an undeniable literacy crisis. Since 2000, there have been increasing calls for the creation of a culture of reading to address this crisis. This has been on the part of the South African government, academia and civil society. However, this has occurred without clear consensus on the term’s meaning and with little explanation of how a poorly-defined concept with its origins in the Global North would achieve this outcome. How this term has achieved such national prominence and the ways it affects school practices motivated this research. The first phase of the study investigated how the term “culture of reading” functions in national government education discourse, and its impact on the country’s reading landscape. This was followed by an ethnographic-style case study exploring the factors that shaped a culture of reading at a no-fee primary school, situated on the Cape Flats in Cape Town. Drawing on a review of more than 400 South African, African and global texts that reference “culture of reading”, this study provides a definition of a culture of reading that is appropriate for the African context, and central to the analysis of this study. To investigate how the term “culture of reading” functions in government discourse, I performed a textual analysis of a corpus of 58 publicly available texts produced by the South African government from 2000 to 2019. The analysis reveals an uncritical faith in a culture of reading as fundamental to improved reading levels despite there being no clarity on the term’s meaning or evidence of tangible outcomes in learners’ reading achievement. Bourdieu’s notion of doxa is drawn on to demonstrate how the government’s consistent return to an ill-defined Global Northern ideal is indicative of a misunderstanding of what reading is and can achieve, and of a need to further grapple with the complexities of South Africa’s reading landscape. Approaching reading from a socio-cultural perspective, the ethnographic-style case study investigates how habitus, capital and field (Bourdieu, 1990b) interact to shape school reading practices, and how the resulting culture of reading is reflected in one school’s reading practices. The case study shows the contextual realities and conditions in the field that affect the promotion of a culture of reading. Data was generated from interviews with 51 participants, classroom and schoolwide observations, photo elicitation, and document reviews which were subjected to a thematic analysis. Findings indicate that despite the evident value that staff and most learners attribute to reading and their positive dispositions towards reading (i.e. their habitus), the school’s culture of reading is undermined by external and internal forces. This is most notably with regard to inappropriate curriculum demands, a multilingual learner body restricted to learning in English, the impact of a community fraught with violence, as well as a dysfunctional culture of teaching and learning that has resulted in a divided staff body and poor discipline. Bourdieu’s attention to how no field exists in isolation is demonstrated by educators’ battles to promote reading in an education field that does not account sufficiently for social, cultural and economic contextual realities. Data generated in the Grade 5 classroom evidenced that agentive educators, equipped with the necessary cultural capital, can construct a sub-field that supports a culture of reading in spite of these constraints. However, this is precarious, and findings from the Grade 1 classroom demonstrated how overlapping fields and a dysfunctional culture of teaching and learning constrained an experienced educator, impacting on her wellbeing. The study highlights that there are many ways in which schools and educators can navigate and overcome institutional constraints that threaten South African learners’ reading development. The research highlights the need for closer alignment between government’s expectations of schools and their contextual realities, with educators’ professional and emotional wellbeing needing to be prioritised. Recommendations for research include further investigation into learners’ home and community language and literacy practices and how these practices can be built on at school.Item Do teachers need to believe in an intervention for it to be effective? A mediation analysis of the reading catch-up programme in Pinetown, KwaZulu Natal(2019) Baldese, BoitumeloLiteracy, which is the ability to read and write, forms the building blocks to one’s learning and inevitably enables active participation in a nation (Bormuth, 1974). The literacy landscape in South Africa is such that, although enrolment levels are high, about 74 percent of learners still cannot read with understanding after six years of schooling (Spaull & Taylor, 2015), rendering the quality of education in the country relatively poor. Consequently, there are studies that investigate interventions that may improve literacy outcomes, some of which focus teacher development and instructional change. This study is based on an initial study of the Reading Catch-Up Programme, a randomised control trial implemented in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal. The purpose of the programme was to effect instructional change with the use of scripted lesson plans, high quality reading resources as well as onsite one-on-one coaching in order to improve learner performance on literacy (Fleisch, et al., 2016). The purpose of this study to determine if teachers internalising the instructional change is significant in impacting learner performance, using a causal mediation analysis, where teachers’ internalisation is the mediator and learner performance is the outcome. The study found that teachers’ internalisation is not significant in impacting learner performance and that most of the teachers in the treatment group did not internalise the instructional change. Alternatively, the study may suggest a sequence of teacher change reflecting the Guskey model, where teachers form a belief in the instructional change only after the improvement on learner performance is evident, which may also encourage persistence and sustainability of the change. However, due to data limitations, the full Guskey sequence cannot be tested, which presents an opportunity for future research.Item The mediation of the integrated approach to literacy instruction programme to grade eight learners in an independent secondary school in South Africa.(2013-09-17) Andrews, Douglas Peter SpencerThe role of literacy skills in learning and the ability to have the cognitive learning skills necessary to receive, process and make meaning of information is core to academic achievement at school. Many learners whose underdeveloped literacy skills prove to be a considerable barrier to learning struggle to make any significant progress at school, particularly at secondary school if these learners have come into their grade eight year from a remedial primary school where only a limited curriculum is taught. Often these learners drop out of the educational system altogether with no real alternatives available to them. Inclusive education policy states that schools must do everything they can to make the curriculum accessible to all learners regardless of their barrier to learning. This research project examined the critical success factors of implementing a one-on-one mediated literacy programme to eight selected grade eight learners as part of their school programme. The learners selected to be participants on the programme were identified from an analysis of background history, educational testing, and parent and teacher recommendations as learners whose specific barrier to learning was associated with inadequate literacy skill ability. The programme was called the Integrated Approach to Literacy Instruction(IATLI), and it combined the mediation of literacy skills simultaneously with metacognitive learning strategies. The research project was participatory in nature, as the researcher was the mediator of the programme to the eight learners. The project was based on participatory action research theory, and was a case-study design implemented at an independent secondary school in Johannesburg. The methodology used to evaluate the research project was a mixed research design incorporating structured surveys of the teaching staff, pre- and post-testing of the eight learners using standardized educational tests that evaluated literacy ability, semi-structured interviews with the teachers who taught the eight learners, and commentary from the learners themselves recorded in the researcher’s journal. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data indicated that the programme was a worthwhile initiative, and that certain critical success factors of the IATLI programme’s implementation emerged. Of these critical success factors, highlighted in the research sub-questions, success was often more evident in some learners than others. The data also highlighted a number of challenges that the programme’s implementation exposed, notably sustainability of the programme in the long term, as the programme was driven by the learning support specialist and the factor of burnout with regard to the intensive nature of the programme and its demands on the learner participants and the school’s internal structures. Other challenges that emerged were the practical aspects of integrating an inclusive education initiative into the demanding high school curriculum, and addressing the paradigm shift necessary to get all educators collaborating with learning support programme outcomes and then supporting initiatives in their own teaching.Item Evaluating the effectiveness of Harcombe's cognitive approach to literacy instruction in improving literacy learning in a South African university training setting.(2010-06-25T10:16:28Z) McMahon-Panther, GailAlong with various contextual factors, the method of literacy instruction is recognised as one of the main reasons for low levels of literacy learning both locally and internationally. Harcombe’s CATLI process is offered as an alternative literacy methodology, firstly since its constructivist, ecosystemic underpinnings endeavour to address as many contextual issues as is possible, and secondly, because the CATLI process attempts to address some of the gaps in other literacy instructional programmes. The current study aimed to evaluate the CATLI process as a viable alternative to traditional methods of literacy instruction. In addition, the study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of using the constructivist approach to train university students in the CATLI process. The sample comprised trainee learning support specialists and one parent per learner receiving the CATLI intervention at the community centre at a Johannesburg university in 2007. Quantitative and qualitative data obtained by means of questionnaires and extant records provided evidence that all learners showed improvement in literacy skills as well as general development, ascribing the effectiveness of the process to being underpinned soundly by social constructivism and associated theories. For the same reason, trainees considered their training sufficient.Item Literacy and the comprehension of public safety signs, with and without written aids.(2009-01-28T05:36:09Z) Howell, LindsayThe aim of this study is to determine the comprehension levels of safety signs with and without written aids among South African workers. Numerous studies on warnings and safety have identified certain factors that can influence the effectiveness of safety communications such as, individuals’ behavioural responses to safety messages as well as the impact of design features on safety information (Kline, Braun, Peterson & Silver, 1993). However, little research has explored the role that literacy plays in interpreting safety information, specifically in developing countries such as South Africa where illiteracy is common. Sixty structured interviews were conducted at the Johannesburg General Hospital, a locale which essentially everyone has equal public access to. Twelve randomly ordered safety signs were presented to participants upon which they were required to describe what they understood each safety sign meant. Varied education and literacy levels were evident however the majority of the sample had only received some level of high school education. Interestingly, of the twelve safety signs chosen for this study, only three safety signs (SS1, SS4 and SS7) were ‘acceptable’ according to ANSI Z535.3 (1991) and ISO’s 3864 (1984) criteria. Furthermore, results from this study suggest that there is a relationship between one’s level of education and the understanding of certain safety signs.