Open Journals@UKZN
Not a member yet
870 research outputs found
Sort by
Enhancing inclusive education through active student-teacher participation: A case study on a university in Cape Town
Full text linkAddressing the needs of a diverse learner population remains one of the most pressing education concerns in the 21st century. One of the issues that are debated is whether responsive teacher education curriculum caters for the needs of student teachers, and how effective it is in preparing student teachers for teaching in diverse situations. It is essential to locate the issue within teacher education – given the expectations on teacher graduates to deliver socially-just pedagogies in school terrains that are often marked by deep inequalities. The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated these inequalities, which have become the subject of all education discourses. This study foregrounds student teacher voices regarding how they experienced curriculum reforms in inclusive education within the Bachelor of Education (B Ed) programme at one university[1] in Cape Town, South Africa. Specifically, the study engages with how different modes of curriculum delivery position student teachers as both recipients and co-creators of the intended knowledge and skills – who can engage in critical interaction with the learning material and provoke self-scrutiny among student teachers and lecturers. This qualitative and interpretivist study was framed around constructs of cognitive apprenticeship, guided participation, participatory appropriation, and border crossing. Data were collected through focus group interviews. It was found that an approach to learning, where student teachers are positioned as knowledge collaborators leads to a meaningful appropriation of some aspects of a curriculum on inclusive education.
[1] The name of the university is withheld for ethical reasons
Transitions in education: Educators, digitalisation, and datafication
Full text linkThis paper explores the digitalisation and datafication of teaching and learning which intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on the transitions, responses and agency of educators as the rules of their professional world changed. The paper uses data from four focus group discussions with nineteen educators from diverse South African contexts, including urban and rural, affluent and poor environments, schools, colleges and universities. Framed by Archer’s nuanced concepts of agency, the paper shows how educators working within the structures of very stratified education contexts negotiated their educational ‘projects’ while the rules were being rewritten as the socio-technical systems in which they teach were - and are - being transformed in ways that are not yet fully understood. Control of the teaching and learning environment has been a key issue as it has become clear how much is outside the jurisdiction of individual educators: the entrenching of big tech in education, stakeholder arrangements including private-state partnerships and the selection of digital tools and systems. Despite not being explicitly aware of the business models which shape the datafication of their teaching systems, educators discuss their discomfort and unease, while remaining reflexive and active agents, showing the ability to re-orientate a course of action even within narrow and covert parameters
Using vignettes to understand the social-emotional experiences of three-year-olds in diverse language contexts
Full text linkThis article reports on the educational experiences of young Afrikaans mother tongue South African children who are exposed to multilingual learning environments during the preschool years. Vignette research provided observational, co-experiential data of the lived experiences of three-year-old boys as they engaged with formal and informal learning. Vignette data that had been collected through observations, written teacher validation and face-to-face interviews, was controlled against existing literature to provide in-depth insights into the participants’ divergent experiences of and within their learning environment. Findings indicate specific areas in which young children may need additional support in multilingual learning environments, in terms of i) social-emotional security experienced in the learning environment; ii) intentional development of empathy for peers, iii) independence and initiative taking in informal settings, and iv) interactive communication. Although the study focused on South African contexts, its findings may inform future interventions to support multilingual language environments in the early years. 
Mapping the form of continuing professional development in public–private partnership schools in the Western Cape
Full text linkPublic-Private Partnership (PPP) schools in the Western Cape, South Africa are known as collaboration schools. The management of these schools are outsourced to private entities known as School Operating Partners (SOPs). SOPs are, inter alia, also contracted to provide support to teachers through continuing professional development (CPD). CPD activities are meant to up-skill teachers, so as to improve teaching and learning, and ultimately learner performance may be valid, there is a need to explore the CPD received by collaboration schools. This paper seeks to build up a knowledge base of collaboration schools by mapping from existing quantitative and qualitative data a profile of the manner in which CPD is provided. For this paper data was collected through questionnaires and in-depth individual interviews with School Operating Partners, WCED officials, school leadership, teachers and school governing body (SGB) members. Results reveal that CPD received by teachers focused narrowly on teaching and learning and did not provide a broad, expansive and holistic notion of education quality. This data reveals the need for a better understanding of how such schools provide professional development support for teachers and the effects on the provision of equitable and quality education for all
Online entrepreneurship teaching and learning approaches: A South African conceptual perspective
Full text linkThis conceptual paper reviewed literature on the importance of entrepreneurship education, the constructivism theoretical framework that explains how entrepreneurship education can be offered through online teaching, the effectiveness, and the design of online teaching for entrepreneurship education, as well as studies conducted on elements of constructivist theory and entrepreneurship education. The paper used a conceptual analysis methodology. A library search was also conducted, and previous pertinent literature on the online entrepreneurship education subject matter was evaluated. The findings of the paper indicate that online entrepreneurship education should be grounded in constructivism as a learning theory. Thus, there should be applicability of constructivism in online teaching of entrepreneurship. The findings suggest that, during online entrepreneurship learning, lecturers should introduce and explain new concepts using knowledge that students already possess. The findings also show that online activities should allow learners to interpret and assimilate new knowledge, online entrepreneurship modules should incorporate learning by doing and experiential learning. Lecturers should also provide feedback as part of online entrepreneurship learning. The findings further suggest that at the end of online entrepreneurship learning, lecturers should post online questions that provide opportunity for learners to outline the elements of entrepreneurship process that they are competent on
Understanding higher education: Alternative perspectives (2022) by C. Boughey, and S. McKenna.
Full text linkIn August 2023, I enrolled for a Short Learning Programme in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Johannesburg’s Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies. Understanding Higher Education: Alternative Perspectives, a book written by Chrissie Boughey and Sioux McKenna and published by African Minds in 2022, was one of the books we had to study for our first assignment. Boughey and McKenna, like other publications that concentrate on current discussions in higher education, use their extensive knowledge of higher education studies to contribute to the discussion about the goals and prospects for modern higher education in Africa, and South Africa specifically. I thought the book was a fascinating reflection on the discourses that dominate higher education systems in the global South for these and other reasons
Business studies teachers’ understanding and implementation of flipped learning in technology-enhanced classrooms
Full text linkToday, there is a growing demand for teachers to shift from teacher-centred to learner-centred teaching methods. In accordance with this, novel teaching methods such as flipped learning have been devised. This study explores business studies teachers’ understanding and implementation of flipped learning in technology-enhanced classrooms. This qualitative study is underpinned by an interpretive paradigm. A phenomenology research design was adopted and six secondary schools located in Kwa-Zulu Natal were conveniently sampled. One teacher from each school was purposefully selected. Interviews and observations were used to collect data. Thematic analysis was adopted to analyse data collected through interviews, while data generated through classroom observations were analysed descriptively. The study found that some teachers did not fully understand and implement flipped learning. Therefore, the study recommends that teachers undergo in-service training to orientate them to novel teaching methods, including flipped learning.
 
Towards an integrative Philosophy of Education: The contemplative case of Economic Education
Full text linkAcquiring a basic a knowledge of philosophy is usually a matter of deprioritized choice for students in undergraduate programmes across the world. Seldom is even a basic philosophy course mandatory in the hard sciences. It may however be an option in social sciences degrees. While many undergraduate teacher education programmes do have standalone courses in the philosophy of education or some variant thereof in general educational studies courses, of note is that philosophical inspiration is largely drawn from continental philosophy, often critiqued for its efficacy at understanding the Southern Other. The problematic then is twofold. Firstly, there is uncertainty as to the extent to which preservice teachers are able to see philosophy of education’s wider relevance and application to disciplinary fields (school subjects) they choose to teach. Secondly, contemporary philosophy of education courses especially in the (South) African context, may still be paying homage to western, Eurocentric philosophical canons despite recent calls by the broader student collective in South Africa for (African) contextual relevance. In this paper, I present an account of a curriculum initiative in a teacher education course that attempts a disruption of traditional western canons that underpin economics and economic education. I argue that the disciplines (such as economics) are fertile spaces for engaging teacher trainees in a philosophical exposé with the view to contesting the universality of the philosophies of (economic) sciences to explain contemporary societal crises. The paper concludes with insights for how philosophy (of education) might be conceptualised as an ‘across the curriculum’ competence as opposed to an insular packaging as standalone offering.  
A systems approach to understanding novice teachers’ experiences and professional learning
Full text linkThe seeming disconnect between what novice teachers learn at university and what their first year of teaching demands has been described and lamented for decades. Researchers, teachers and school managers often blame teacher education programmes for not preparing novice teachers for the realities of school. In this paper, I argue that what a teacher learns from their initial teacher education programme is only one of the complex systems that shape their practice. A more productive way to understand novice teachers’ experiences is to engage with all four nested systems that shape their practice – namely the teacher system, the classroom system, the school system and the macro-educational system. This paper interrogates the data generated from 30 Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) after they had been teaching for 18 months. The data shows that many challenges faced by the NQTs cannot be addressed by ITE curriculum, because they are grounded in other sub systems. For example, ITE cannot compensate for the growing administrative burden imposed by the state through increasing accountability measures and the pacing set by the curriculum which does not consider learners who still cannot read in the Intermediate phase or cannot understand English (the LOLT from Grade 4). Similarly, ITE can do little about schools that often do not provide formal induction and mentoring for NQTs and who allocate NQTs to teach outside the specialisation and phase that they were trained for. The main influence of ITE is in developing student teachers’ ethical commitment, professional identity, competences and knowledge, and here the data shows that the curriculum offered by an ITE programme can make a difference to the competence and the confidence that they have in their content knowledge and pedagogical strategies