Faculty of Humanities (ETDs)

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    The Development of Learner Network Society Skills by Technology Subject Teachers in the Gauteng Full ICT Schools
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Shindiri, Charlotte Dineo; Ndlovu, Nokulunga Sithabile
    The issue of teacher utilization of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) confidently and creatively, to help South African learners develop the skills and knowledge they need, has been debated extensively. This is essential for learners to achieve their personal goals and become full participants in the global community. Although the National Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) envisions the utilisation of ICTs for teaching and learning in each subject, it is silent on the pedagogical approaches for learners to acquire the desired ICT skills to participate meaningfully in the global community. Instead, the literature reviewed has revealed that teachers are utilising the available ICT resources deployed in schools mainly for content acquisition. Teachers offering Technology in Gauteng Full ICT schools also fall within this category. The Grade 8 Technology CAPS curriculum is also silent on using ICTs to solve the real-life problems identified. In an attempt to ensure that South Africa does not fall victim to a ‘digital divide’, the ICT resources deployed in these schools need to be utilised effectively to develop the necessary knowledge and skills for learners to compete successfully in the global world. Accordingly, teachers in these schools have been capacitated to use ICT resources to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. However, the studies conducted to establish the return on investment in the ICT resources deployed in schools have revealed a mismatch between the desired educational outcomes and what is prevailing on the ground at the implementation level. This study focused on understanding how Grade 8 Technology teachers from the Full ICT schools in Gauteng utilise the available ICT resources during teaching and learning activities to create opportunities for learners to acquire the ICT skills required to solve the identified real-life problems in Technology and participate meaningfully in the global world. The findings assist in the development of an ICT Teacher Development Framework that guides teachers on how to utilise the available ICT resources to facilitate teaching and learning activities in sync with the South African Education Policy (the CAPS document) aspirations. The study used a multiple case study design that relied on semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, lesson plans and social media use to understand the development of Learner Network Society Skills (LNSSs) by the Grade 8 Technology teachers in four Full ICT xiv schools in Gauteng. This aimed to customise the findings to facilitate the development of the desired ICT skills, considering the South African context. The study adopted Connectivism as the main learning theory to understand how teachers could equip learners with network society skills. Since this theory is not wholly suitable for teaching and learning in the South African context, the developed Guided Blended Connectivist Learning Framework became instrumental in achieving this goal. It employs four learning frameworks to merge traditional face-to-face teaching and learning with online learning to help identify teaching and learning activities that facilitate the development of LNSSs in the context of the Full ICT schools in Gauteng. The results reveal the conditions that support the development of the desired ICT skills in these schools. It is recommended that the current content-heavy Grade 7 - 9 Technology curriculum be reviewed, to incorporate the pedagogy and LNSS to be acquired, as learners engage in the standard technological design process, to address real-life problems.
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    Re-designing the Road to Success Programme (RSP) as a Tutorial: Blended Mode
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Maogi, Kedibone Ivory; Agherdien, Najma
    Courses are still commonly characterised as blended without any relation to appropriate and pedagogically sound methodologies and practices. Merely adding an online component to the existing (face-to-face) classroom content should not be considered a ‘good’ blend. My argument in this thesis is that blended learning should be underpinned by sound theory, pedagogy and practice that extends the design and review beyond the mode (percentage online /offline and synchronous /asynchronous) discussion. To ascertain how a Road to Success Programme (RSP) could be reviewed and redesigned as a blended learning offering, a rubric was created using definitions gleaned from the literature on blended learning, Constructivism as learning theory, blended learning models, design principles, approaches, practices and Community of Inquiry framework. In this qualitative study, I created and piloted a rubric as data collection tool to review the RSP course. I employed a phased approach to data analysis, starting with simple statistics (numbers), followed by qualitative summaries and a Community of Inquiry/CoI (social constructivist) theoretical and analytical lens. The main findings suggest that the pedagogical principles, particularly the teaching, social, and cognitive presence provide a useful framework both for the design and review of blended courses, to extend it beyond an online/offline exercise. The study recommends a deeper engagement with course design elements (beyond the organisation and teaching of content and the use of technology) to instead consider how these elements intersect with each other and how the review and redesign of blended learning offerings could be strengthened.
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    Rethinking the “Idea of the University” Through Pandemic-Era Student Experiences
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-05) Caine, Amber Rose; Hornberger, Julia
    The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the upheaval of “the university”, as we knew it, and a repositioning of higher education online. By mid-2022, third-year anthropology students at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) had experienced two years of online education, followed by a return to select in-person classes under the banner of “blended learning”. My research centred on in-depth interviews with fourteen students in order to grapple with, and learn from, this cohorts’ unique “university experience”. As the “Idea of the University”, conceptualised in academic texts, often contains lofty notions for an imagined future, I chose to retrospectively highlight “the university” as it was experienced, from early 2020 until mid-2022. Grounded in student narratives, I describe the pre-pandemic Liminal University; the Remote University as distance learning commenced and progressed; the Static University as education continued for a second year online; and the Interpersonal University as students returned to on-campus classes. I found that through destabilisation, the key elements that made an all-encompassing university education possible, came into focus – namely, campus infrastructure and student sociality. Despite the university’s dispersal of data and loan devices, students’ home environments could not mirror the layered infrastructure nor social connection that had shaped pre-pandemic university education. Yet, upon students’ return to the physical campus in 2022, small, in-person classes where discussion was facilitated led students to re-engage with their course material, educators, and each other. As such, I argue that the full university education, that students both desired and benefited from, requiresrobust on-campus infrastructure for living and learning, and facilitated in-person engagement.