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Exploring senior phase teachers’ use of Kahoot! Gamification as a formative assessment tool to scaffold mathematical understanding
Get PDFIn South Africa, digital technology, particularly gamification, continues to become an important teaching and learning tool. Its importance lies in scaffolding mathematical understanding, improving the quality of assessment, and developing twenty-first-century technological skills for effective mathematics assessment. To explore this importance, senior phase mathematics teachers are encouraged to adopt gamification technology such as Kahoot! in assessment. The study adopted a case study research design with a interpretivist research paradigm, as this method allows detailed exploration and understanding of a specific context through a close connection with the participants. Data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires, focus group interviews, non-participant observations, and reflective journals. The research involved ten purposively selected senior-phase mathematics teachers from two schools in the Sarah Baartman District, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The study drew upon Vygoysky's Sociocultural Theory for its theoretical framework, while the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge was used for analysis. The data analysis pursued an inductive approach. Adopting a thematic analysis included coding participant responses, organizing codes into concepts and categories, and developing a theoretical framework from the resultant categories. A four-phase process was involved: coding, conceptualizing, categorizing, and theorizing, was employed. This process and using NVivo software for data organization and management helped identify patterns, themes, and significant concerns surrounding the study's core subject. The findings from the study were as follows: Firstly, it was revealed that most teachers have a positive perception and attitude towards using Kahoot! for formative assessment, believing that it enhances teaching and learning quality. However, they showed scepticism due to insufficient Information and Communication Technologies knowledge and training. Second, teachers' pedagogical and technological experiences were predominantly enjoyable. Kahoot! was accepted as beneficial for promoting collaboration, interaction, and immediate feedback. Third, the study identified enabling and constraining factors in using Kahoot! for formative assessment. The enabling factors include Kahoot!, which was convenient and accessible, promoted immediate feedback and fostered collaboration and interaction. The constraining factors include Information and Communication Technologies and network interference, which posed limitations. The research concluded that Kahoot! as a platform for formative assessment indeed scaffold mathematical understanding. The study recommends increasing teachers' access to educational technology, incorporating continuous professional development programs, providing subject-specific training, and encouraging teachers to adapt to emerging technologies. The study also provided recommendations for future research to explore learner perceptions, employ a mixed methods approach to help quantify learner performance and investigate the pedagogical and technological experiences of senior phase mathematics teachers regarding formative assessment.Thesis (MEd) -- Faculty of Education, Secondary and Post-School Education, 202
COVID-19 and the Informal Economy: Impact, Recovery, and the Future
No full textA key challenge for the post-COVID-19 global economy is whether the disproportionate impact of the crisis on informal workers, who form the majority of the world’s workforce, will be acknowledged. Or whether harmful and negative stereotypes will persist. Today, despite the role of these essential frontline workers — producing, processing, selling, cooking and delivering food, providing cleaning, childcare, eldercare, healthcare, transport, waste removal, and other essential services — many observers consider the informal economy to be non-compliant (resisting registration and taxation) and associate it with low productivity (a drag on the economy) or with crime (illegal activities) and grime (blight on modern cities). Yet, most informal workers are working poor trying to earn an honest living in often hostile environments. Most suffered severe declines in work and earnings during successive waves of the COVID pandemic, and related restrictions and recessions, and have gone deeper into debt and depleted their savings and assets in order to survive. This book explores and informs answers to that key challenge. It presents findings on the impact of the COVID crisis on informal workers in Asia, Africa and North and Latin America. The chapters of the volume analyse the impact of the COVID crisis on informal workers, interrogate whether and which economic recovery plans and schemes include informal workers and explore what a more inclusive economic recovery and reforms might look like
Perceptions and knowledge of ecosystem services in urban river systems, Eastern Cape, South Africa
No full textThe ecosystem services concept has been studied in rural contexts but not as much in urban landscapes, particularly for aquatic ecosystems in Africa. There is little knowledge of how people perceive ecosystem services (ES) supplied by rivers in urban centres and the factors influencing their perceptions. To fill this gap, the research presented here addresses two objectives: 1) to assess local communities’ perception and knowledge of different types of ecosystem services of an urban river in South Africa, 2) to assess the influence of particular demographic characteristics (age and gender), socio-economic characteristics (education, housing type, income, and years of residence), and prior knowledge of the ecosystem services concept on people’s perception of the ecosystem services provided by the Swartkops River in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. To address these objectives, a team of ten trained field staff collected 181 surveys between May–June 2021 in communities within the river catchment. We used multinomial logit models to analyse the relationships between demographic and socio-economic variables, and people’s perception of ecosystem services
Sound matters: Podcasting as a learning and teaching intervention to enhance reading and writing skills
Get PDFIn this chapter, a group of student-researchers and their lecturer discuss their findings relating to a podcasting intervention which took place in an Ethnomusicology third- and fourth-year class at Rhodes University in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, South Africa. As part of a larger project, in which the class explored podcasting in general, they experimented with the medium in order to ascertain in what role it could be used as a learning and teaching aid in tertiary pedagogy. Audio recordings of the lecturer discussing journal articles relating to the module were sent to students. They listened to and used them in different scenarios, orchestrated to research their effectiveness in diverse learning and teaching situations. Using a qualitative case study research design methodology, the student researchers and their lecturer present these findings through a participatory lens. They analyse the podcasts’ efficacy and limitations from various perspectives through coding responses. Finally, they discuss future usage of the medium as a way to enhance students’ understanding of academic readings
Constructing assessment practices for knowledge building in science
No full textAuthentic assessment is often narrowly framed as tasks that mirror workplace tasks, resulting in on overemphasis on generic workplace skills at the expense of disciplinary knowledge. We place disciplinary knowledge at the heart of authentic assessment and explore how authentic assessment across a programme can contribute to an authentic view of the broad discipline of science. Through the metaphor of a suspension bridge, we explore relations between disciplinary knowledge, the nature of the discipline, feedback from assessment, and evaluative judgment. We argue that assessment of student reflection on the nature of science is an essential but often overlooked element of authentic assessment and provide data to support this claim. Critical reflection on the nature of science invites students to examine and question their worldview assumptions about what science is and how it works, giving them the epistemic agency to deeply engage with the often-controversial ways science interacts with society
Developing an approach for balancing water use and protecting water quality of an urban river ecosystem
No full textUrban stream syndrome is a growing phenomenon in tropical part of the world. Urban rivers face significant challenges due to pollution induce by anthropogenic activities, exacerbated by population growth and industrialization. The main objective of this study is to develop a generic approach to balance water use and the protection of water quality in urban rivers. Water quality physico-chemical assessments were conducted during the dry and rainy seasons at various points along the N'Djili River and its tributaries. Anthropogenic activities in the surrounding areas were also analyzed to determine water uses from each sampling site. Sites were classified based on their pollution level using multivariate analysis and hierarchical classification into management classes
Reflections on an engaged research approach to understanding patient record-keeping systems in a local clinic in Makhanda
Get PDFThe taking and archiving of accurate record-keeping is an essential part of caregiving in health care. There is extensive evidence that record-keeping systems are affected by systemic problems that impact healthcare provision globally and in South Africa, particularly in public healthcare. Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) has been applied in healthcare settings to address these systemic challenges, including those related to record keeping, but not in South Africa. With participation being a critical element of HFE, a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) framework can but has not been used to understand and optimise systems such as those linked to record keeping. This reflection provides an overview of how an HFE approach was applied, using a CBPR framework to understand the challenges affecting patient record-keeping in a clinic in Makhanda. Specifically, it provides insights into how CBPR was applied and reflections on this experience from both the researchers’ and collaborators' perspectives. The importance of patience and flexibility, empathy, constant feedback and consultation and listening to collaborators' and participants' contributions emerged as important lessons. The community collaborator also experienced the process positively, where she emphasised the empowering experience of being able to help guide and facilitate research, which, in turn, revealed challenges that affected the daily running of the clinic. The collaboration using the CBPR approach was a practical framework for applying several HFE approaches to understand the challenges around record keeping
Evaluating innovation in transdisciplinary sustainability education: TRANSECTS’ international learning labs
Get PDFEvaluative research can advance sustainability education through the learning it can enable, at micro and systems levels. This proposition is explored by examining evaluation practice in a 6-year international programme entitled Transdisciplinary Education Collaboration for Transformations in Sustainability involving universities and biosphere reserves/regions in Germany, South Africa and Canada. A Transdisciplinary International Learning Lab (TILL) was evaluated using a theory-based evaluation approach and interviews, focus groups and questionnaires that yielded qualitative data. Through metareflection, we concluded that our TILL had elements of a Field School, rather than a Learning Lab, and that our curriculum required more explicit deliberation among programme developers and implementers towards a deeper and shared understanding of pedagogical assumptions and more congruent practice of transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability education. The reflective, theory-based approach enabled learning from evaluation and was captured in a shared refinement of the theory of change, which makes it explicit that learning from pedagogical innovations is not only for students but also for academics. The paper is an invitation to other innovators in sustainability science, education and evaluation in higher education, to share related findings
A New Social Contract Inclusive of Informal Workers
No full textWhen countries experience fundamental changes to their economy and society, there is often a call for a new social contract—a new bargain—between the state, capital, society, and labour.¹ The public health and economic crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the inequality between, and within, countries around the world. It has also exposed that, in many countries, the social contracts of the mid-twentieth century were never firmly in place and, in others, have broken down or are in serious crisis: both the social contracts between states and society (e.g. the welfare state) and between capital and labour (e.g. minimum-wage and collective-bargaining agreements)
What Is Missing from National Economic Recovery Plans? COVID-19 and the Informal Economy
No full textAt the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020, there was nearuniversal acknowledgement that employment losses, globally, would be borne disproportionately by vulnerable workers, in general, and informal workers, in particular (ILO 2020a). Of the world’s 2.2 billion informal workers, it was estimated that 1.6 billion would be among the most severely affected by job losses and reduced working hours (ILO 2020b). The result of this impact has been the reversal of decades of progress in human development. For example, the number of people living in extreme poverty in emerging markets and developing economies was expected to increase by 100 million by the end of 2021 (World Bank 2021a). Similarly, the gendered burden of job losses has threatened progress towards gender equality, as evidenced by the highly uneven recovery of employment between women and men throughout 2021 (ILO 2021a). Country-level data on job losses provides support for the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) initial projections about the vulnerability of informal workers to the global ‘pandemic recession’. Most informal workers in the world are located in low-and middle-income countries and are in self-employment. Data from ILOSTAT shows that working hours in lower-income countries in 2021 were about 7 per cent below their pre-COVID (2019) levels, while the corresponding decrease was only about 4 per cent in high-income countries (ILO 2021c). Data from Peru in 2020 suggests that the difference in the decrease in labour income between employees and the self employed (who are largely in the informal sector) was 21 percentage points (ILO 2021b; see also Chen and Vanek, Chapter 2 in thisvolume)