Grade 11 Life Orientation teachers’ pedagogical approaches during the ‘development of the self in society’ topic at Johannesburg East schools

Abstract

Life Orientation (LO) is one of the critical subjects to guide and prepare learners to respond appropriately to social demands, and equip learners to interact optimally on a personal, psychological, cognitive, physical, moral, spiritual, cultural, and socio-economic level. The subject addresses current societal issues such as gender roles, identity and sexuality issues that requires meaningful learners’ participation for positive response to real-life challenges by application. Thus, effective teaching and learning relies heavily on teaching approaches that supports co-creation of knowledge that encourage learners to reflect and think critically about the different important topics. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ pedagogical approaches during ‘the development of the self in society’ topic and the factors that influenced the pedagogical practices during the lessons. It was also important to gain insight of the teacher’s experiences of teaching the “Development of the Self in Society” topic. To unearth teachers’ pedagogical practices, the study used Scott, Mortimer and Ametler’s pedagogical link-making as the conceptual framework, and Scott, Mortimer and Ametler’s communicative approaches to analyse the various observed pedagogical practices. The study used interpretivist paradigm and exploratory case study with non-participatory classroom observations and Video Stimulated Recall Interviews as research methods to generate data with three teachers from the Johannesburg East secondary schools. The main findings show the dominance of teacher – talks during the lessons with a mixture of teacher centred interactive/authoritative approach and learner centred interactive/dialogic approach. The approaches were further linked with forms one and two of pedagogical link making, specifically approaches one, three, and five, whereby two teachers dominated explanations in approaches one and three, while one teacher interactively built knowledge with the learners. Some of the factors that influenced teachers’ pedagogical practices were time constraints, outdated policy documents, and considering learner diversity during the lessons. Therefore, this study recommends research that includes learners’ reflections regarding the teachers’ pedagogical practices during ‘the development of the self in society’ topic.