Journal of Curriculum Studies Research
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Perceptions of Academic Resilience by Senior Phase Learners and Teachers from Low Socioeconomic Schools
Full text linkThis article reports on the perceptions of academic resilience of Grade 8 and Grade 9 learners and their teachers in low socioeconomic township schools. Learners from township schools experience many risk factors that can impede their academic success and careers. A lack of resources is one of the risk factors experienced by the learners. During COVID-19, where an online or hybrid learning model was relied on for teaching and learning, most township schools relied on the rotational learning model instead. The study’s main aim is to evaluate and understand the learners’ perceptions of their academic strengths, future aspirations and motivation, and to compare their perceptions with those that emerged from their teachers’ blind evaluations. The participants were teachers (n = 8) and learners (n = 12) from two purposively sampled township secondary schools. Data-generation instruments included semi-structured interviews for learners and a self-constructed Likert-type-scale questionnaire for teachers. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings suggest that risk factors to academic resilience exist within the family and the school environment. Lack of parental support and school security, poor teacher-learner relationship and unemployment were frequently mentioned. However, factors that can enhance academic resilience were also identified within the family, school and community. Risks and protective factors affecting learners’ immediate threats and needs were identified. Access to technology and the need for technological advances were not identified as resources or risks. Future research should examine the relationship between resilience, academic resilience, career aspirations and the role of technology in education
Fictional Stories: The learning strategy to mitigates challenges of reading comprehension for university students
Full text linkReading comprehension is the ability to understand the text, decode and infer its meaning according to reader’s level of comprehension. Similarly, reading is the ability to deduce, critique and construct the attributes of the text, hence reading and reading comprehension are intertwined and embedded into the skill to analyse the meaning of the text in general and synthesize the interpreting of your own understanding in particular to the text. Despite this prerequisite skill; there are challenges which impede the reading comprehension and as the results the paper intimates these challenges of reading comprehension using critical theory as a conceptual framework. It further employs participatory action research as a technique whereby participants were purposively sampled and interviewed in a semi-structured interview. Equally, the results are analysed using critical discourse analysis were it was established that lack of collaborative learning, exposure to informational text, students’ prior knowledge and punctuation marks are the core attributes to the challenges of reading comprehension. In brief, the paper contends that the use of fictional stories as the learning strategy can enhance reading comprehension of first year students.
 
The Effects of Computer Aided Education in the Education of Folk Cultural Products
Full text linkThis research explores the effects of computer-aided education (CAE) on the education of folk cultural products. Folklore, encompassing tangible and intangible cultural artifacts, holds significant importance in defining the identity and values of a community. CAE, utilizing multimedia software and interactive teaching methods, has emerged as a promising approach to enhancing student learning experiences. This study aims to investigate the impact of CAE on students' achievement, retention, cultural competency, and classroom participation in the domain of folk culture education. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was utilized, with an experimental group of 32 1st grade students receiving CAE and a control group of 32 1st grade students receiving traditional teaching methods in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Various assessment tools were employed to measure academic achievement, cultural competency, and classroom participation. The results indicate that students in the CAE group exhibited significantly higher academic achievement scores, improved retention of knowledge, enhanced cultural competency, and increased classroom participation compared to the control group. These findings provide empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of CAE in fostering effective and engaging education, particularly in the context of preserving and promoting cultural heritage through folk culture education
What Do Bachelor of Indigenous Knowledge Systems Graduates Say About Their Curriculum? A Qualitative Tracer Study at the University of Venda
Full text linkThe main purpose of any degree, in any institution of higher learning is to create graduates with competent knowledge and abilities to deal with vital challenges that affect the country; any deviations to this purpose requires a review and rethinking of the whole system, such as a curriculum transformation. Grounded in a critical post humanist paradigm, qualitative reflective semi-structured interviews were held with 12 graduates to ascertain their experiences with the Bachelor of Indigenous Knowledge System (BIKS) programme delivery and content during their 4 years stay at the University of Venda. Responses from graduates indicated that BIKS’s strength depend within its multidisciplinary method. It also exposed the graduates to the work environment through integrated learning program, although, there were also sentiments that such exposure was insufficient and at times irrelevant. The experience of the students provided insights into what could be the focus of the revision of the curriculum to ensure global citizenship competencies, employability and or entrepreneurial acumen amongst graduates. One of the challenges of IKS, that the students drew attention to, was a lack of the curriculum’s capacity to beneficiate, as its focus was not sufficiently business oriented. Work-based learning and other forms of exposure might have to be revamped to enhance entrepreneurial skills and to ensure that students learn how to create thriving IKS inspired businesses to create employment opportunities amongst others.
 
The Perceived Heads of Departments’ Infusion of Ubuntu Values in Curriculum and Knowledge Sharing Leadership in Under-Resourced Public Schools
No full textThe article reports on the findings of a qualitative inquiry involving a sample of nine (9) teachers (three participants per school) drawn from three schools within the locality of three education circuits of Emalahleni in Mpumalanga Province (South Africa). The primary objective of the article was informed by the paucity of literature that establishes an intersection between Indigenous epistemologies of Ubuntu philosophy, instructional leadership and the sharing process of knowledge management within the domain of primary and secondary education. By eliciting teachers’ views on heads of departments’ (HODs’) curriculum leadership practices, the article attempts to narrow down the knowledge gap on the topic of instructional (herein referred to as curriculum) leadership— a domain whose preoccupation often slants towards the principal’s role at the exclusion of other key stakeholders within the school ecology. In terms of the findings, democratic (participative), autocratic, transactional, transformational and managerial (in no particular order) leadership styles were found to have been used by individual HODs alongside instructional leadership style to strengthen their curriculum leadership role. It however, became apparent that both participative and transformational leadership styles sufficiently promoted the ethos of Ubuntu in HODs’ curriculum leadership role and thus enhanced curriculum delivery processes and knowledge sharing behavior among teachers as well as between HODs and teachers. The findings of the article demonstrate how a non-adversarial intersection between indigenous and mainstream leadership practices, might add an impetus to HODs’ curriculum delivery and knowledge sharing leadership role in under-resourced schooling contexts
Borderless Curriculum in the Post-Human Era: Reflections on the United States of America and South African Initial Teacher Pedagogical Practices
Full text linkThis paper interrogates the opportunities and challenges of a borderless curriculum as the alternative to reimagine a better future premised on initial teacher education. The paper comes against the background that curriculum projects remain nationalised, depriving learners and educators of an opportunity to learn from the best educational practices outside their borders. The paper is located in posthumanism, where a borderless curriculum through technology can be positioned to respond positively to human tragedies such as war, systematic racism, human trafficking and conflict. Borderless curriculum involves unlearning in order to learn by harvesting best practices across borders to reimagine a comprehensive initial teacher education that addresses the lived realities of the learners globally. The paper argues that the posthuman era provides a platform for nations to share knowledge in the virtual and blended space to deconstruct prejudices while evoking living and working together across curriculum and spaces to improve initial teacher education
Relationally Enhancing Teacher Education in Early Childhood Learning Environments towards Sustainability
Full text linkTeacher education in early childhood learning environments (ECLE) is a generally neglected space in teaching and learning, more so when the focus is on relationality and sustainability. ECLE refers to the Care and Education of children between 2-4 years of age. The focus of this paper is on ECLE from a post-humanist perspective, which goes in tandem with UNESCO’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Emphasis is on inclusive economic development through environmentally sustainable social inclusion for all. Relationality has been chosen because of its power to advance the deconstruction of the hitherto taken for granted canons of humanism and enlightenment that promote hierarchies in knowledge and its production. These hierarchies disregard the voices of the vulnerable and the excluded, in terms of social class and other markers like age, but most importantly their erroneously assumed lack of knowledge. To date, the voices of the aspirant teachers in ECLE, as well as those of the children and parents, are non-existent when teacher education programmes are designed and implemented. This paper reveals that including the voices of these beneficiary communities enhances the quality of the discourse, theorisation and praxis in the provision of ECLE, as well as in the crafting of relevant teacher education programmes. Thus, the design and delivery of a programme is better based on the relationalities among humans, animals and plants; and between them and inanimate entities like infrastructure and resources. The relationality among all of these in the crafting of the beyond human is enhanced using advanced digital technologies. A relational approach recognises our entanglement with our entire universe in a manner that does not centre on identity. Quality therefore is about the ever-increasing complexity of diffractions of multi-layered and multi-perspective engagements across borders
Teachers’ Perceptions of Paper-Based GIS Implementation in The Rural Learning Ecology
Full text linkIn South Africa, paper-based geographic information system (PBGIS) was introduced as a strategy to resolve the hindrances in schools without computers in implementing GIS. This study explores the geography teachers’ perceptions of implementing PBGIS in a rural learning ecology. In this context, PBGIS is defined as teaching and learning of GIS utilising topographic and orthographic maps, while rural learning ecology refers to a school in a rural environment consistent with how learners learn in a particular context. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) constituted the theoretical framework used to understand the geography teachers’ perceptions in this inquiry. Qualitative research methods, and semi-structured interviews were used to generate data to answer the research question. Two geography teachers from a rural learning ecology were purposively selected to participate in this study. The data generated from the field was then analysed thematically utilising a deductive and inductive approach. The findings showed the following: inadequate teacher training; teachers are unsure about the resources required for PBGIS; lack of teaching time; and the complexity of PBGIS concepts, and improper PBGIS examination setting. This study proposes that the Department of Basic Education (DBE), in association with universities, train teachers and provide resources; support teachers by reviewing the time allocated in the Annual Teaching Plan (ATP) for teaching PBGIS; engage teachers about ways to simplify PBGIS concepts when teaching; and guide teachers on the approaches that must be used when teaching PBGIS
Examining Media Literacy Perceptions of Preservice Social Studies Teachers in Turkey
Full text linkThe most commonly used definition of media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate and generate information for specific implications. Media literacy helps individuals to critically analyze media forms, question media influences and uses, utilize media intentionally, and produce alternative media. The purpose of this study is to investigate how preservice social studies teachers perceive media literacy. In order to do this, the Media Literacy Perception Scale (MLPS) was administered, and a descriptive survey approach was used for the research. A total of one thousand social studies education students from seven different regions of Turkey were randomly selected for the sample, ranging from students enrolled in the first, second, third, and fourth years at seven different state universities. A proportional stratified sampling technique was employed in the study. The dependent variable in this research is the media literacy perceptions of preservice social studies teachers, and the independent variable is a variety of demographic characteristics. In order to examine and interpret the gathered research data, One-Way Anova and t-test analyses were performed. Based on the findings of the research, the participant students majoring in social studies education often showed high levels of perceptions of media literacy on both the scale and sub-dimensions. According to the research, a number of variables, including the amount of time spent watching TV, the amount of time spent online, and the region of residency, significantly affect students’ media literacy perceptions. The findings suggest that future students of these preservice teachers will benefit from their teachers’ increased media literacy skills
Pre-Service Science Teachers’ Preparedness for Classroom Teaching: Exploring Aspects of Self-Efficacy and Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Sustainable Learning Environments
Full text linkThe technological reconfiguration of humanity and advancement requires initial teacher training (ITE) programs that create and enhance sustainable learning environments (SLEs) where teachers are prepared to embrace posthuman pedagogy to teach confidently. This case study aims to examine pre-service science teachers’ level of preparedness and teaching efficacy beliefs to teach in SLEs. The study findings revealed that teaching science requires content knowledge and an understanding of how to teach the content. Furthermore, education programs need to be responsive to the socio-economic demands and produce 21st-century-ready graduates. The participants’ teaching philosophy aims to promote SLEs where quality teaching will be prioritized. Without proper training, support and resources, this aspiration will remain a mirage. Maintaining responsive classrooms will thus be a challenge that continues to be an albatross to social change. This study has some implications for ITE programs, impacting the school curriculum and educational transformation.