Wits School of Education (ETDs)

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    Towards improving rural learners’ mathematics achievement: The roles of social relationships and identities
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Adeniji, Kehinde Adedayo; Essien, Anthony
    This study initially starts as a research journey towards improving rural learners’ mathematics achievement by interrogating the roles which teacher-learner social relationships and learners’ mathematical identities could play. To make the journey productive, the study was framed with critical realist philosophy and social realist perspective because of their greater concerns for reality in general and social reality in particular, respectively. However, both realist assumptions were found not robust enough to fully explain the key findings that emerged from the evidential data gathered. The curiosity to fill this gap led to another research journey that re-examined the two realist positions. The new research journey eventually brought in new philosophical and sociological viewpoints maintained and by extension methodological approach employed in the study. That eventually led to the dominance of the second research focus and the suspension of three of four objectives of the initial research focus. Employing mixed research designs (i.e., correlational and case study design) and mixed methods (i.e., questionnaires and interviews) inspired by the viewpoints and approach respectively, I was able to select four Nigerian rural schools and 237 learners for quantitative study, of which five of the learners participated in the qualitative study. All the data collected from the learners through the questionnaires and interviews were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively respectively. The results/findings show that generally there is a strong relationships between teacher-learner social relationships and learners’ mathematical identities for learners in rural schools in Nigeria. It also show that the nature of relationships can be validly considered as direct, indirect and neither direct nor indirect to provide deeper insights. At a much deeper level, it practically generated and explained why the relationships and the learners acted the way they did regarding mathematics. These findings were used to justify the new philosophical, theoretical and methodological views maintained in the study. The fundamental view, being philosophical, maintains that reality is a whole which is analytical separable to entities that are necessarily dependable on one another. This novel and debatable position deviates from existing Bhaskar’s CR philosophy and expected to shape any future study that has greater concerns for social reality such as mathematics learning.
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    An investigation of challenges experienced by Physical Sciences novice teachers when teaching Electric circuits in Grade 10 science classrooms: A case of Johannesburg North District schools
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Nkuna, Hlayisani Tracy; Stephen, Mmapaseka; Mushayikwa, Emmanuel
    The National Senior Certificate (NSC) diagnostic reports over the years have shown that learners perform poorly in electric circuits in the Grade 12 Physical sciences final examinations. This has raised concerns to identify the underlying reasons behind this. The learners’ performance is often linked to the teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. This study sought to understand the challenges that physical sciences novice teachers experience when teaching electric circuits in Grade 10 as well as the factors that contribute to these challenges. In understanding the challenges experienced by the novice teachers, this study was underpinned by Bhaskar’s (1978) theory on Critical Realism as a theoretical framework to reveal the teachers’ challenges in relation to their content and pedagogical knowledge. In conjunction to this, the study was guided by Archers’ (1995) constructs of the Social Realist Theory. The two theoretical frameworks were used to analyse the data, using stratified levels of reality from critical realism and analytical dualism from the social realist theory as an analytical tool. Employed in this study was the qualitative case study research design. The data was collected through twenty online questionnaires and five individual online semi-structured interviews with physical sciences novice teachers from the schools in the Johannesburg North district. These instruments were used to provide an in-depth account of the challenges experienced by the novice teachers and their contributing factors. The study found that the novice teachers experienced challenges with the lack of specialized resources such as fully functional laboratories and content related challenges, such as misconceptions, gate-keeping concepts and teacher centred approaches. The findings also revealed that despite being technologically oriented themselves. The findings also revealed that the novice teachers experienced challenges with the use of ICT in their teaching of electric circuits, owing to a variety of reasons related to the context of the school, their pre-service training as well as general beliefs about ICT. The study recommends that teacher training programmes should perhaps look into firstly, teaching the pre-service teachers more on how to improvise, given that most schools lack resources and secondly, the methodology courses need to consider focusing on how to equip the teachers with the correct conceptions of the main concepts of electric circuits in order to minimise the misconception perpetuated by the novice teachers as well as build they confidence in the instruction of electric circuits. The rationale for this study was on the grounds that there is not much physical science education research clearly accounting for the challenges experienced by the novice teachers post the millennial generation and the COVID-19 pandemic. This study provides ground for other researchers to explore the nature of science teaching with this current generation (generation Z). The findings from the research study reveal that the current generation experience challenges beyond content knowledge, such as a short attention span. In light of this finding, this study suggests that future research should be aimed at incorporating the technological aspect of teaching in science topics in order to make the science topics interesting and relevant to the learners.