3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Introducing the moon to South African natural science classrooms(2009-04-08T11:36:42Z) Kelfkens, LesleyThis dissertation concerns the the problem that natural science teachers with limited astronomy backgrounds have to teach new curriculum content about lunar motion, phases and eclipses. My study aims to establish: 60 teachers’ knowledge of lunar phenomena through surveys; whether an intervention incorporating models and activities is effective at improving a case study group’s understandings; how the case study teachers use these activities and models in the classroom. My results indicate that the majority of natural science teachers have little formal astronomy education. Only two teachers held a scientific understanding of lunar phenomena. The intervention led towards a more scientific understanding amongst the case study group. Scale is essential for developing an understanding of lunar phenomena and models are extremely beneficial, but participants experience spatial problems when viewing models from an external perspective. I propose in-service training in small groups for building knowledge and increasing confidence for teaching this content.Item An investigation into the relationship between what learners find relevant and how they perform in the grade 11 science curriculum(2009-04-02T07:29:06Z) Patel, FirozaRecent efforts in science education have focused on making the curriculum more relevant. Many discourses maintain that relevance improves the teaching and learning of science. This study attempted to identify a relationship between content that learners thought was relevant to them and how they actually performed in the examination. An evaluation was also done to determine whether there was a gender difference in choices regarding relevant content, and whether gender differences existed in the performances of learners in the year-end examination. The study involved forty-six learners from a low socio-economic school. Data from questionnaires and examination scripts were statistically analysed to determine if there was any correlation between relevance and performance. Results showed firstly that the most relevant topics were equation of motion and inorganic chemistry, with vectors being least relevant; secondly that there was no correlation between what learners regarded as relevant and how they actually performed in relation to content they identified as relevant; thirdly that there was no gender difference in performance in physical science, with regard to the year-end examination and the trend of boys favoring physics and girls preferring chemistry identified in other research, was shown to be true for these learners as well.