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Exploring students’ experience and perceptions of the Somatology extended curriculum programme at the Durban University of Technology
Get PDFThe South African higher education had faced scrutiny in recent years due to the low participation and high attrition rates. In an attempt to address this, institutions have introduced additional programmes such as Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECP). In this study, an interpretive research paradigm was followed to explore students' experiences and perceptions of the Somatology ECP programme at the Durban University of Technology. A semi-structured were conducted with 69 graduates of the Somatology ECP programme. The participants hold the view that social integration, reduce academic workload contributed to their academic performance. It emerged that identity crisis, lack of awareness was the cause why some of the students had drop-out. The participants perceive that supports the subject, the staff and mentors supports influences their academic success through the programme. The study suggests that ECP is a successful programme in the Somatology programme with the potential to significantly increase the academic success of students.  
Memories of their mathematics teachers: implications for pedagogy
Get PDFThe future teachers in this study were asked to tell the story of their engagement withmathematics, beginning as far back as they could recall, and ending with the present whichwas as they were about to begin a module entitled Mathematical Literacy for Educators.The narratives contained accounts of their struggles (many) and successes (few) withlearning mathematics. The focus of this paper is on their memories of their mathematicsteachers who feature in most of the autobiographies. The purpose of this memory work wastwofold: to provide a starting point to overcome mathematics anxiety which had thepotential to inhibit their engagement with mathematics, and to inform the selection ofpedagogical practices in the module. Selected memory narratives are presented and thethemes of teacher memories are discussed. Finally, four pedagogical purposes for memorynarratives are identified and discussed.I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, butpeople will never forget how you made them feel.Maya Angelou (Kelly, 2003
Exploring the recontextualisation of the discourse of geography in textbooks
Get PDFThe review of textbook studies shows that cursory attention has been given to therepresentation of the nature and structure of the parent discipline in textbooks. This studyfocuses on how the discourse of geography, is recontextualised in four grade 10 textbooks:two state approved textbooks that support the new curriculum (CAPS), an older pre-1994textbook and a UK textbook. The analysis has been framed, at a macro-theoretical level, byBernstein’s concept of recontextualisation and Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic forms. At themicro analytical level the discourse of Geography as conceptualised by Wignell, Martin andEggins (1993) has been drawn on. A qualitative approach enabled in-depth multidimensionalanalysis that uncovered explicit and implicit similarities and differences in thetexts.This paper articulates and illustrates an analytical framework for analysing therepresentation of the knowledge structure of geography in textbooks. It illustrates thisframework by analysing the same sub-section: the structure and composition of theatmosphere, in the texts. Data analysis shows that the textbooks recontextualise thediscourse of Geography differently. Of the two textbooks developed to support CAPS, onerecontextualises the discourse of Geography in a more coherent and differentiated way thanthe other. It is argued that greater divergence from the discourse of Geography increasespossibility of gaps in knowledge and understanding. On the whole the paper points topaying attention in textbook studies to how the nature and structure of the parent disciplineis recontextualised in textbooks
Understanding the contextual resources necessary for engaging in mathematical literacy assessment tasks
Get PDFMathematical Literacy (ML) was introduced in South Africa as a compulsory school subjectfor all learners who are not studying mathematics in Grades 10 to 12. In an ML classroom,mathematical skills are used to explore the meaning and implications of information incontext. In this article, the notion of context in ML is interrogated by identifying particularconstructs that can be used to illuminate the focal events in a contextual setting. It is arguedthat each context constitutes a particular domain with specific contextual resources whichset out the parameters of engagement with the focal event of the context. It is shown that thecontextual resources often differ from the corresponding constructs in the mathematicsdomain. It is then argued that in order to fulfil the life-preparedness mandate of ML, thedifferential purposes of the mathematics and contextual domains needs to be acknowledgedand the corresponding implications with respect to the nature of ML assessments needs tobe considered by ML practitioners
Ready to teach? Reflections on a South African mathematics teacher education programme
Get PDFprogramme at University of KwaZulu-Natal prepares teachers to teach well in the regionalcontext. In order to determine which aspects to consider in the analysis, I draw on studies offactors correlated to learner achievement in South African primary schools. First, thissuggests that the consideration of context should play a strong part in our teacher education.Second, it indicates that teacher actions most strongly linked to learning – deeprepresentations, feedback guiding learning and challenging learners on their level – onlyoccur occasionally in KwaZulu-Natal schools, and with limited opportunity to developmathematical proficiency. The question I raise is to what extent we prepare teachers toteach in this way, and with awareness of the context. Third, I briefly consider what other,perhaps overlooked, competencies our teachers need.In the light of Bernstein’s recognition of the centrality of evaluation in the pedagogicdevice, I have analysed the exam papers in the programme. My analysis utilises apragmatically compiled bag of tools. First, I distinguish between the knowledge categoriesin our programme: contextual knowledge, curriculum knowledge, content knowledge,pedagogic content knowledge, and general pedagogical knowledge. Next, I explore theextent to which specialised knowledge is foregrounded in our programme, drawing onMaton’s distinction between a knowledge and a knower legitimisation code. Third, bydistinguishing the semantic gravity of the course content, I aim to identify how theoreticalor decontextualised knowledge is linked to the practice of mathematics teaching. Thisenables me to consider the extent to which the programmes favour cumulative or segmentedlearning.My findings indicate that the programme is strongly founded in a knowledge code, and thatit covers all of the five aforementioned knowledge domains, but it needs further explorationhow well these are linked within and across courses, thus providing cumulative learning.Teaching for deep representations is strongly reflected in the exam papers, both in thecontent knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge components, but there isvirtually no indication that providing appropriate challenges to learners is important. Whilestudents are tested on their recognition and realisation of assessing learners’ level ofunderstanding, this is not utilised in teaching students to provide appropriate feedback, noris it used to inform the design of activities which can cater for a classroom with learners of mixed ability or varying levels of current understanding. Furthermore, there is noassessment of the teachers’ preparedness to teach for adaptive reasoning. In that respect, theprogramme appears not to prepare the students adequately for quality teaching. I discusswhether this knowledge mix and what is not taught can be seen as having an implicitstudent in mind, thus limiting access to relevant teacher competencies for some students
Connecting assessment and feedback: A customised and personalised experience for knowledge-building
Get PDFABSTRACT
Feedback is instrumental in enhancing the student learning experience and knowledge building. However, feedback does not always translate into the desired outcomes for students receiving feedback, compromising educational experiences, and goals. This small-scale empirical study brings postgraduate students to the fore by seeking to explore their experiences of feedback on formative assessments within the learning space and to focus in a nuanced way on innovative opportunities and practices of feedback. The findings revealed participants understood the value of eminent feedback. While most participants experienced and reacted negatively to the use of assessment grids and feedback received from lecturers. They were unaccustomed to the digital submission of assessments and the receiving of online feedback. They recommended using a blended feedback approach that incorporates face-to-face feedback to make the digital feedback provided to students more meaningful. Providing useful feedback that creates a customized and personalized learning experience for students.
Keywords: Formative Assessment (FA), Feedback, Knowledge building, Students’ experience
Researching higher education in Africa as a process of meaning-making: Epistemological and theoretical considerations
Get PDFThe article argues for a new way of thinking about knowledge construction in African higher education, as a basis for developing new theoretical and epistemological insights, founded on inclusivity, epistemic freedom and social justice. It recognizes “coloniality as a fundamental problem in the modern age”, thereby enabling scrutiny of knowledge for decolonization (to make change possible) and knowledge of decolonization (about decolonisation itself). Following Bourdieu, such thinking also requires degrees of vigilance which entail fundamental epistemological breaks; or put differently, it requires epistemological decolonization as a point of departure. Thus, the future of tertiary education in Africa, must be located within a new horizon of possibilities, informed by a nuanced political epistemology and ontology, embedded in the complex African experience and visibility of the colonized and oppressed. In short, there can be no social justice without epistemic justice.
Key words: African higher education, alternative thinking, epistemological decolonisation, social justic
Investigating student memories of cross racial mixing in a postgraduate sociology class in a South African university
Get PDFThe paper reports on a pedagogic and research initiative which I introduced in apostgraduate sociology course on Youth, Childhood and Gendered Identities which I taughtat the University of KwaZulu-Natal. This involved students participating in CollectiveMemory Work: choosing, writing and telling a story in class relating to their youth orchildhoods (from their early to very recent years) about themes which were selected by theclass, and then collectively and critically reflecting on these. The aim of this initiative wasto explore and compare constructions and experiences of youth and childhood of differentmembers of the group. The paper focuses on stories students told on one of the selectedthemes: cross racial mixing. Four stories are selected for closer thematic and narrativeanalysis. The paper reports on the collective discussions which were held after all thestories had been read, and the kinds of questions raised in these about the shape, form andcontent of the different stories and the nature and status of memories
Planning for freedom: From human capital to human capabilities
Get PDFWe would be hard pressed to disagree with Thurow’s statement, made almost a half century ago, that “however much they may differ on other matters, the left, the center, and the right all affirm the central importance of education as a means for solving our social problems, especially poverty” (Thurow, 1972, p.66). Since then, and against a backdrop of neoliberalism, the issue from a policy perspective has become not only equality in accessing education, but also the importance of providing the ‘right education’. Framed within what Brown, et al. (2020, p.227) aptly term “orthodox human capital and its links to neoliberal economics”, the ‘right education’ is that which increases production and economic growth whilst simultaneously expanding employability and competitiveness in the labour market