Browsing by Department "School of Education"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 722
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    21st century tertiary design education in post-apartheid South Africa : a question of quality
    (2007) Leroux, Allen; Crawhall, Nigel T
    The dissertation explores the question of; what drives excellence in tertiary design education in 21st Century post-Apartheid South Africa? Is it what the state does in terms of policy and regulation or is it what the higher educational providers do in terms of curriculum and methodology that creates excellence? In the first part the dissertation traces the development of higher education policy in South Africa following the political changes from Apartheid to Democracy after 1994. It explores the development of a regulatory framework for higher education provision in post-Apartheid South Africa, due to the disparate levels of quality higher education developed under the Apartheid system for different racial groups and also the proliferation of poor quality private higher education during the first decade of democracy. It follow s the view that while the state set the regulatory control for higher education a n d bench marked educational excellence against public institutions, the realisation that market demands for access to quality higher education would require private education provision to form part of the institutional mix was soon reached. In the second part of the dissertation a case study of a newly established private higher education provider is developed. Created within the new regulatory framework for higher education in South Africa, FEDISA (Future Excellence Design Institute of South Africa) of which this author is the academic director, endeavours to show that private providers of higher education can, when pursuing excellence, become viable partners to the stat e in education provision and may even surpass the state institutions, now burdened with massification, in terms of quality education provision. The study goes on to develop an understanding of how changes in the economic markets have created change demand within design. It then considers the four tenets on which FEDISA's programme for achieving excellence is based in order to comply academically with the highest quality of 21st Century design education. This is as much in answer to the requirements of the new regulatory framework as to the institution's own analysis of what the market now wants. These tenets include the concept of what a curriculum is, drawing on Stenhouse and Smith's views of the curriculum as 'a blueprint for action'. Next, the importance of integrating the component elements of the design curriculum by drawing parallels between the 'collection type and integrated curriculum' theory of Bernstein is considered. In the third instance, an analysis of 'Knowing, Acting and Being', after the curriculum theory of Barnett and Coates is developed through the addition of a liberal arts component to the design curriculum. Special focus is afforded the importance of 'Being' development of design students in 21st Century design education. Finally, Brookfield's notion of becoming a critically reflective practitioner and how the concept of critical reflection has found its place in the 21st Century design classroom through the use of the 'tools of critical reflection' is brought into focus. The dissertation concludes that while the shift in the design markets from craft through mass production to an understanding of ethical considerations in new millennium design dictates what kind of design professionals should now be educated and that this awareness may be achieved through the refocusing of inherently simple means inside the design classroom of the 21st Century, excellence in tertiary design education, while primarily based on what happens inside our design institutions, goes hand in hand with compliance to the demands of state regulation in order to ensure the viability of our tertiary institutions.
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    A case study of grade 6 multilingual learners' experiences with monolingual assessment practices in a working-class township school in Cape Town.
    (2022) Cingo, Siviwe Innocent; Kapp, Rochelle
    This qualitative case study focusses on the experiences and challenges f multilingual learners when writing monolingual assessments. It draws on a growing body of poststructuralist theory on linguistic repertoire and translanguaging in order to understand how grade 6 multilingual learners engaged with monolingual assessments in a working-class school in the Western Cape where English is the language of learning and teaching for all learners except those for whom Afrikaans is a home language. Using ethnographic methods, I focused on 3 grade 6 classrooms and observed 46 lessons over a period of 8 weeks. In addition, I collected assessment transcripts, learners' notebooks and conducted interviews with 14 learners and their teachers. The data shows how classroom pedagogy tended to be mainly oral and dominated by teacher talk with limited space for learner engagement. Informal written assessment tasks were monolingual, but generally mediated by translanguaging and translation. Learners relied on teachers and on the linguistic resources of peers to facilitate comprehension of assessment questions and assessment content. By contrast, formal, high-stakes assessments included no mediation prior to and during assessment. Thematic analysis of learners' written answers shows how the majority of learners struggled with language comprehension at the level of vocabulary, sentence, as well as schooled academic literacy. The study concludes that both teachers and learners are placed in an untenable position by language in education policies that insist on monolingual assessment practices. Such policy results in compensatory, and contradictory classroom teaching and learning that is aimed at instrumental, assessment focused practices rather than meaningful learning. The study ends with recommendations for policy and practice.
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    A case study of multimodal and authoritative meaning making in grade 5 isiZulu, English, and Natural Sciences lessons in a quintile 1 primary school
    (2022) Msimango, Mfundo Jabulani; Mckinney, Carolyn
    This is a case study of multimodal and authoritative meaning making in grade 5 isiZulu, English, and Natural Sciences lessons in a quintile 1 primary school in KwaZulu-Natal, uMzinyathi Municipality in Nqutu. This study investigated the nature of classroom discourse in each of the subject areas and the opportunities learners have for participation in multimodal classroom discourse. This study is grounded in the socio-cultural approach, language and literacy as a social practice, and multimodality. Furthermore, this study adopted case study, and linguistic ethnography as a methodology. There are three major findings. First multimodality is not inherently pedagogically transformative, its success is determined by how multimodality is used, and integrated with the educator's pedagogy. Second, the presence and the use of multimodality and translanguaging does not compensate for monolingual assessments. That is, even though the isiZulu, English, and natural sciences educators were translanguaging and employing multiple modes of communication in the classroom, the written discourse was strictly monolingual in isiZulu/English. For example, learners were expected to write isiZulu class activities in monolingual isiZulu, and to write English and natural class activities in monolingual English, following bilingual oral classroom talk. Last, there is a similar communicative pattern across isiZulu, English, and natural sciences lessons. That is, the educators' pedagogical discourse was authoritative and interactional to a limited extent even in the isiZulu lessons where most learners are believed to be speaking isiZulu as their home language. In connection to this, knowledge and multimodal artefacts are presented as fixed, and learners are not given an opportunity to engage them fully nor to question, even in the isiZulu lessons where the language of instruction correlates with most learner's home language.
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    A case study of the curriculum logic of a South African university degree programme in sports management and its appropriateness to the labour market
    (2021) Landman, Megan; Cooper, Linda
    Over the past 50 years, sport has undergone a process of commercialisation and professionalisation, and has become “big business”. It now requires adequately trained professionals to manage the daily operations of sport businesses. The question in which this research originated was: are universities able to provide the kind of education needed to equip managers with the knowledge and skills necessary to manage sport in South Africa? The specific aim of this study was to determine the curriculum logic of a selected South African university degree programme in sports management and its appropriateness to the labour market. There has been little research in the South African environment in terms of how sport management is taught. Several studies have, however, been done elsewhere, showing that there is a need for a systematic study of sport management in academia, that sport and business need to be studied congruently and that sport management curriculum should move away from the science of movement (Masteralexis et al., 2015; Skinner et al., 2015). Adopting a qualitative, case study approach, and after an initial stage of desk-top research, one South African university undergraduate programme in sport management was selected for indepth research. Data was collected by making use of the curriculum details found on-line in the university's yearbook, as well as by conducting one in-depth interview with a faculty staff member. Each of the modules across all three years of study, as well as the interview with the member of faculty were analysed, on two levels. In the first level analysis, the curriculum was analysed using international guidelines provided by sport management programme accreditation bodies in the United States which identify the core elements that should form part of a sport management curriculum. The second level of analysis draws on conceptual models from the field of curriculum studies to evaluate the curriculum logic of the chosen sport management curriculum. The work of Gamble (2006, 2009, 2016) was drawn on to identify the dominant knowledge type in the curriculum, Shay's conceptual model (2011, 2013, 2016) was used to describe the nature of the coherence of the curriculum, the work of Barnett (2006) was used to analyse the recontextualisation of the curriculum, and the work of Allais and Shalem (2018) was used to examine the relationship between the curriculum and the labour market. These analyses illuminated the overall nature of the programme in terms of its selection, sequencing, pacing, recontextualisation, curriculum coherence and directionality. The study found that this case of a sport management degree did not meet the curriculum requirements stipulated by the North American guidelines. The findings were that the curriculum is comprised mainly of principled knowledge and it is a conceptually (as opposed to contextually) coherent curriculum with the majority of its modules pedagogically recontextualised. Shay and Gamble's conceptual models yielded conflicting analyses regarding the type of curriculum: in terms of Shay's model, the University of Johannesburg's (UJ) curriculum is a professional qualification, whereas Gamble's model suggests that UJ's curriculum is a general formative undergraduate degree. The pacing of the curriculum showed evidence of trying to cover too many modules and insufficient time to cover key areas in sufficient depth. The overall conclusion was that the curriculum is attempting to cover too much in three years and that it should perhaps look at becoming more focused. This can be done by strictly following the guidelines given by the North American bodies, leading to the curriculum being an occupational one that is linked closely to the labour market, or it could focus on becoming a professional qualification where it focuses more on theory and applied knowledge but in a selective way so as to ensure that it allows for a more in-depth study of the modules. Or the curriculum could settle for being a general formative degree that specialises in the postgraduate programme.
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    A Comparative Study of the Freirean Pedagogical Practices employed by Popular Educators in South Africa and Canada during Facilitator Training
    (2018) Steer, Ashleigh; Ismail, Salma
    This thesis sets out to explore a comparative study of four Popular Educators using Freirean pedagogical practices in Canada and South Africa and discusses how different country contexts affect their pedagogies. This study explores how critical pedagogy addresses the mobilization of theory and its application into practice in different contexts. In order to analyse and conceptualize the facilitator’s pedagogy and the mobilization of Freire’s theory into their practice; Freire’s critical pedagogical theory was drawn on as well as the theories of other critical and feminist pedagogues, some of who analyse how theory is mobilized into practice. Foley’s theory of ideology is also drawn on alongside Freire’s educational theory. Finally, theories and research examining contextualized pedagogy is employed to analyse how Freire’s critical pedagogy is applied in different social contexts. This is a qualitative comparative study and the research took place in both Cape Town, South Africa and Toronto, Canada and utilized three forms of qualitative data collection tools; interviews, observations and document analysis. The researcher observed two days of workshops for each organisation, conducted interviews with four facilitators and four participants, two facilitators and two participants from each organisation, and carried out document analysis using one organisation information brochure or website from each organisation. Key findings have suggested that the lead facilitators’ pedagogies are greatly influenced by their foundational insurgent, liberating ideologies; ideologies that have been formed over their lifetime through life experiences and engagement with influential theorists and their theories. The lead facilitators’ pedagogies in both contexts pedagogies employ aspects from the Freirean model such as guided student-centred learning. However, availability of access to resources in each context affected facilitators’ ability to engage in different forms of student-centred learning activities. The study confirmed that facilitator’s curriculums were engaging with relevant issues pertaining to students lives, but the delivery of these issues did not align with a Freirean model in both contexts. The divergence from a Freirean delivery was found to be interwoven within the power relations in the classroom. The findings revealed that is seemed difficult for lead facilitators to completely dissolve hierarchies in the classroom, even though an exchange of knowledge was greatly advocated by both facilitators and participants. This study has elucidated how important it is to consider a multitude of factors, including contextual and personal histories when attempting to appropriately contextualize pedagogical models to be conducive to different contexts.
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    A critical reading of arts education policy in South Africa
    (1999) Rabinowitz, Lindsey; Craig, A P
    The transformation of the educational system since 1994 has been marked by a multitude of policy documents envisaging change at a number oflevels. This study sets out to explore possible ways in which the arts education policy could be taken up by those who must read and act on them. i.e. educators at sites oflearning. The subject of this study are the policy documents which have been analysed through quantitative analysis and discourse analysis. Quantitative analysis assisted in the initial phase of identifying themes in the policy documents; Parker's discourse analytic framework was used to unpack the themes exposed in greater depth. The results revealed different ways of conceiving arts education, all of which have possibilities and limitations for practice. In addition, the study raised concerns regarding competing discourses across the documents, namely the hegemony of the political discourse over aesthetic considerations for arts education.
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    A cultural-historical activity theory based analysis of lecturer and student understanding of learning in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town
    (2019) Van Heerden, Thomas; Cliff, Alan
    Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) provides a framework for analysing activity systems. I use that framework to investigate teaching and learning in two first-year university mathematics courses at the University of Cape Town. The focus of this investigation is whether the different subjects of this activity system (i.e. the students and the lecturers) have different conceptions of learning, and what those possible differences mean for teaching and learning. The CHAT framework is well-suited to this type of work. CHAT’s theoretical roots are in Hegel’s dialectics and Vygotsky’s mediation. Teaching and learning are higher-order mental phenomena. Dialectics allow us to aggregate our data to draw conclusions about this type of higher-order phenomenon, and the notion of mediation (extended from Vygotsky’s initial work by Leont’ev and others) provides a means to understand how learning happens. Data are collected both through face-to-face interviews with a small group of subjects (n = 6) and more broadly through an online questionnaire (n = 55). The face-to-face interviews and the questionnaires make it clear that students and lecturers do have different conceptions of learning; in the language of CHAT, there are tensions in the system. These tensions can be categorised into two major themes: what students do and how they do it. These tensions will not be easily resolved; I suggest teaching some meta-cognitive skills rather than only mathematics as a first step.
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    A cultural-historical analysis of Grade 9 History curriculum and its pedagogical resources for learners' conceptual development
    (2021) Mutheiwana, Pertunia; Hardman, Joanne
    This study examines the extent to which the South African Grade 9 History Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document and its supplementary teaching resources (learners' textbooks and teachers' guides) outline knowledge focused on concept development in learners. The development of concepts requires learners' mediation in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) where consideration and subsequent linkage of three knowledge forms namely: scientific concepts, everyday concepts and procedural knowledge is necessary. In light of this, a topic titled ‘National Party and apartheid' is analysed across the CAPS document and its teaching resources to examine the extent to which they outline these knowledge forms for concept development. Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory and the work of Neo-Vygotskians are used as the theoretical framework for the analysis of data in this study. The findings show that the CAPS document offer guidance to teaching resources on the necessary knowledge forms required to afford learners with full development of historical concepts outlined under the ‘National Party and apartheid' topic of the CAPS document. This is because a curriculum document is only designed to offer guidance and not to elaborate on content. As a result, teaching resources should elaborate on the contents of the curriculum and add sufficient knowledge forms. According to Vygotsky and Neo-Vygotskians, full concept development can only be possible if scientific concepts are made visible, sufficiently, and explicitly defined, linked to everyday concepts and procedural knowledge. This study shows that teaching resources failed to implement this fully. This study concludes that for teaching resources to afford learners with conceptual development, all three knowledge forms should be sufficiently and explicitly outlined and the necessary linkage between them made. This will, in turn, provide the teachers with sufficient and explicit pedagogy in the ZPD thereby affording learners with conceptual development. The development of concepts is necessary for South Africa because it helps to reduce social inequalities created in the past as well as granting learners the opportunity to live and work in a globalised environment. It is recommended that teaching resources prioritise the aims of the CAPS document by outlining knowledge forms for concept development.
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    A multimodal social semiotic analysis of lecturer pedagogy for the physics concept of angular motion in physiotherapy education
    (2022) Gabriels, Sumaya; Muna, Natashia; Le Roux, Kate
    Angular motion is a foundational concept in physiotherapy, applied when measuring joint range of motion (rom) in assessment and treatment of patients. Accordingly, first-year physiotherapy students are commonly taught rom measurement skills in their applied Physiotherapy course and are introduced to the concept of angular motion in their Physics course where their learning is primarily assessed through problem-solving. However, studies of student learning of angular motion show that while students can solve problems, they do not always have the necessary conceptual understanding to use their procedures appropriately and flexibly in other disciplines. Physics education researchers also demonstrate that accessing, learning, and communicating the conceptual and procedural knowledge involves using the affordances of multimodal language. Thus, a promising line of inquiry is how lecturers use the affordances of multimodal language in pedagogy to create opportunities for students to develop both conceptual and procedural understanding. My study focuses on a lecturer's pedagogy for the concept of angular motion in a Physics course for first year physiotherapy students at a South African university. Specifically, I use a multimodal social semiotic perspective to describe what and how she uses the affordances of multimodal language − verbal talk, written text, images, symbols and symbolic equations, gestures, and objects − to give presentational, organisational and orientational meanings. I also explain her pedagogical choices in the meaning-making process. In this focused ethnographic study, I observed lecture recordings to produce data on the lecturer's pedagogy. A subsequent semi-structured interview with the lecturer was analysed to understand the lecturer's choices. The multimodal social semiotic analysis shows that the lecturer organised her pedagogy to develop both conceptual and procedural meaning, while also relating these meanings to problem-solving, and to orientate students to the relevance of angular motion in physiotherapy. This organization was informed by her comprehensive understanding of the physics content, and its relation to the Physiotherapy course and physiotherapy practice, and the experiences and resources of the students in the class. Evident in her pedagogy was a pattern of starting with a focus on conceptual meaning using verbal talk, images, and gestures, following which she integrated symbols and symbolic equations which functioned as a link to focussing on procedural meaning as applied in problem-solving. This study contributes to existing physics and physiotherapy education research, an in-depth description and explanation of a lecturer's motivated, contextualised use of multimodal language to give meaning to the physics of angular motion for physiotherapy. These learnings and the multimodal social semiotic tools by which they were produced can be put to work in education development practice with disciplinary lecturers. Specifically, they serve to make explicit the affordances of various language modes for communicating particular conceptual and procedural meanings as a relevant for physiotherapy for planning pedagogy.
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    A neo-Vygotskian comparative analysis of the availability of simple scientific concepts in science in the English National Curriculum Year 1 and the South African National Curriculum and Policy Statement Grade 1
    (2022) Grüner-Hegge, Sophia Victoria; Hardman, Joanne
    South Africa continues to lag behind other countries in mathematics and science in benchmarks tests such as the TIMSS tests. The importance of teaching science early in the school curriculum has been established in research. However, some research indicates that the scientific concepts made available to teachers and students in the Foundation Phase are lacking in depth and are, in fact, not full scientific concepts (Morris, Hardman& Jacklin, 2016). In a bid to establish to what extent scientific concepts are made available to students and teachers, this study analysed and compared the availability of “simple scientific concepts” on the topic of plants for children in their first year of formal schooling in the South African and English National Curricula, as well as educational materials from these countries. This study is continuing the work conducted by Morris, Hardman, and Jacklin (2016), who analysed the prevalence of simple scientific concepts in the Grade R curriculum and materials in South Africa. The notion of a simple scientific concept is derived from Neo Vygotskian elaborations on scientific and everyday concepts, where simple scientific concepts are the foundations for the development of more complex scientific concepts. A rating scale based on these ideas was used to analyse the materials for simple scientific concepts. The findings of the current study found that in both countries' curricula and materials are largely composed of “potential scientific concepts”, which are concepts that have the potential to be translated from an everyday concept into a scientific concept by the teacher (if they have sufficient knowledge). Overall, the findings are of concern as studies show that teachers in both nations feel ill-equipped and are lacking in confidence to teach science, and since there are so many potential scientific concepts the teachers must be knowledgeable in order to translate them into scientific concepts for their students. In conclusion, the implications of this study are that the curricula and materials for Year/Grade 1 children in these nations are not conducive to them acquiring simple scientific concepts.
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    A posthuman reconfiguring of philosophy with children in a government primary school in South Africa
    (2021) Reynolds, Rose-Anne; Murris, Karin
    This thesis reconfigures Philosophy with Children and its community of philosophical enquiry pedagogy through posthumanist theories and practices. Philosophy with Children is an emerging movement in South Africa and there is currently very limited research on its implementation, especially in a whole primary school setting in the South. Critical posthumanism provides the theoretical framework to analyse philosophical enquiries as more than linguistic and always already material. I theorise with and draw on transdisciplinary scholarship and practices of philosophers/ theorists/ researchers/ practitioners in the fields of Critical Posthumanism, Philosophy for/with Children and Philosophy of Childhood. In this study, the community of philosophical enquiry is both the methodology for my teaching as well as my research methodology. I facilitate thirteen communities of philosophical enquiry with all seven grades of one government primary school in Cape Town (159 children in total). An embroidered tapestry of the school is used to provoke each of the thirteen intra-generational philosophical enquiries. Temporal and spatial diffraction (Barad, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2017) is adopted as a posthuman methodology to re-turn to the data in this experiential, dis/embodied and experimental research project. The communities of philosophical enquiry as pedagogical events generate video-recordings, audio recordings, photographic images, video stills, artwork and transcripts. The co-created data is diffracted through each other and re-turned to again and again. Through tracing the material-discursive entanglements in each of the methodological ‘steps' of a community of philosophical enquiry, my research contributes to the importance of doing justice to the more-than-human as well as children in educational research. The land, school, tapestry as provocation, making of the circle, thinking and drawing as enquiring and other materials show the inclusion of the more-than-human and why this matters. My research does not only give different answers about the inclusion of child and the more-than-human but also asks different kinds of questions that cannot be separated: ethical, philosophical, political, ontological, epistemological and aesthetic.
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    A sociological analysis of phonics lesson plans across four structured pedagogic programmes in South Africa
    (2022) Boyd, Colleen; Hoadley, Ursula
    Nationally, there has been widespread acceptance that South Africa's schooling system faces a literacy crisis. In response to this, school improvement efforts have taken the form of structured pedagogic programmes – “a triple cocktail” of interventions that offer teacher training, resource provisioning and lesson plans in an attempt to alter teacher's pedagogy and improve learning outcomes. Focusing on lesson plans (also referred to as teacher guides) that attempt to structure phonics pedagogy, this study uses a Bernsteinian framework located in the sociology of education to analyse the various ‘controls' the lesson plans place on pedagogy. It considers how these controls relate to the literature on effective phonics instruction as presented by the International Literacy Association. In addition, the study considers the various controls alongside an analysis of the level of scripting within each case, locating the discussion within current debates on the appropriate degree of scripting in lesson plans. The study finds that there are differences between the lesson plans in terms of the controls offered particularly as these relate to notions of effective phonics instruction and levels of scripting. In conclusion, this research argues for expanded lesson plans that further exteriorise the phonics curriculum by offering more explicit evaluative criteria and increased scripting that further supports teachers in enacting effective, and contextualised, phonics programmes.
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    A study of learning, knowledge and processes of reflection within the worker education project
    (2010) Abrahams_N, Nazli; Soudien, Crain
    There are over a million women domestic workers in South Africa who are largely overworked, underpaid, unprotected, and undervalued and who are entrenched in a system that denies and reduces the value of their work and their skills. Such conditions are invariably tied to contexts that are historically located. Domestic work is both necessary and valuable; however, in a context dominated by the structured social inequalities of race, class and gender, both their roles in society and their various skills and capacities are too often overlooked. Domestic workers have had to acquire a range of skills to effectively carry out the work they do and the learning involved is more often than not informal and tacit and the learning outcomes (skills, competencies, and knowledge) are not accredited or formally validated by society and institutions of education. The Worker Education Project, hosted by the South African Domestic Services and Allied Workers Union, which formed the context of the present study, was designed as an educational process in support of steps taken by domestic workers to organise themselves and develop and give expression to their own capacities to improve their living conditions. This study explores and tells the stories of women's lives as domestic workers and speaks of their experiences as women, as black women, and as domestic workers. To ground my analysis and my discussion, I provide an overview of the broad theoretical approaches that bear out the women's stories that turned on five sub-plots: learning, knowledge, alienation, their needs and desires, and the various relations of power that mediate their lives. In analyzing the said and done of the women, the very point is to attempt to understand how the women attach meaning to their lives. The research findings were drawn from semi-structured interviews, workshop facilitation and participation, and observations in situ. The results showed that the women learned from their experiences and through social participation in union activities, and that learning did not comprise only of hard skills, but that the women learned about themselves through processes of reflection. The research also revealed power as a prevailing condition (both complex and at times contradictory) central to all of the women's stories, operating in all spheres of their lives. This study attempts to open a political space for change and would like to suggest that learning is no less learning when the actors are domestic workers.
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    A study of the representational use of aggregates in the pedagogic elaboration of addition and subtraction in the Department of Basic Education Grades 1 to 3 Numeracy workbooks, prescribed for use in state funded South African schools
    (2023) Wust, Heidi; Davis, Zain
    Cognitive science demonstrates that a sensitivity to aggregates (groups, collections, classes, categories) forms part of the biologically endowed human (core domain) capacity for dealing with quantity, along with an ability to compute using aggregates, both approximately and exactly. Core domain computations using aggregates serve as a basis for the growth of noncore mathematical computations and principles, following exposure to number enculturation and the counting algorithm, both of which are enhanced by the growth of linguistic competence. The study focuses on the pedagogic use of the class of small, discrete aggregates in the teaching and learning of natural number addition and subtraction across the Foundation Phase of schooling. The central concern is the computational processes that use discrete aggregates, and operations over such aggregates. The six 2021 Department of Basic Education numeracy workbooks (Mathematics in English) for Grades One to Three, prescribed for use in state-funded SA schools, constitute the archive of information from which the data is produced for the study. The study adopts a computational analytic approach conditioned by the proposition that all thought is computational, entailing the use of operations over domains of objects that serve as arguments (inputs) and values (outputs). A mathematised notion of representation—as a structure-preserving mapping—comprised the chief analytical resource for describing computations related across representing and represented computational structures. The analysis, firstly, proceeds descriptively. The unit of analysis is a Task, made up of Subtasks containing Exercises, so that the analysis of a Task proceeds by way of an analysis of its Exercises. Only Tasks employing discrete aggregates for the purposes of teaching addition and subtraction are analysed to reveal the representations used by identifying the computational structures and the relations between such structures. Typically, the representations used in Tasks entail mappings from operations over discrete aggregates to operations over the natural numbers. As a further means of gauging the extent of the range of mappings/operations and structures identified across the workbooks, the descriptive data is extended by the use of quantitative databases, summarising and totalling all identified mappings/operations and structures. The study found that: (1) operations over discrete aggregates are used extensively as a ground for addition, subtraction, natural number order relations, and number partitions, including the use of iii partitions for teaching place value in the base-ten natural number system; (2) counting is the primary computational resource for relating operations over discrete aggregates to operations over the natural numbers; (3) addition and subtraction are often derived from operations over discrete aggregates in a manner that privileges a unary rather than binary form; (4) the treatment of discrete aggregates, together with the use of partitioning, suggests that aggregates are conceived of in a manner that has more affinity with fusions than with sets; (5) the general semantic basis for addition, subtraction and partitioning appears to be the universal cognitive operation referred to as merge (and its derivatives, unmerge and purge) as used by the human conceptual-intentional system.
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    A synthesis of cognitive science research on the mental number line, and its relation to the pedagogical use of number lines in the teaching of elementary arithmetic in the Foundation Phase of schooling
    (2022) McNamara, Ellen; Davis, Zain
    In this paper, I examine how biologically endowed computational systems help to frame our experiences as it relates to using the number line in school mathematics. This study is a synthesis of the research findings in cognitive science and mathematics education to elucidate the mechanisms that underpin the connection between the mental number line in humans and its relation to the growth of mathematical knowledge in young children. This reported research drawn together here shows how we draw on core domain knowledge (the object tracking system (OTS), the approximate number line (ANS) and the mental number line (MNL) to construct mathematical ideas. The OTS allows us to track individual items, which provides us with the notion of exact number and the ANS creates an intuitive number sense from which we intuit that a collection can be assigned a cardinal value. Language mediates the integration of knowledge of the ANS and OTS to overcome the limits of the core systems and build the exact number system. I review the literature to investigate spatial numerical associations and the properties of the internal number line and to clarify the relationship between cognitive development, cultural factors and education. The synthesis concludes by using the ideas of representations and structure preservation to examine how closely the number line aligns with our natural intuitions about magnitude and number and the implications this has on education. I argue that educators need to understand how biologically innate conceptions of number guide subsequent learning and provides us with a foundation for domains such as mathematics. This insight will enable educators to select teaching models that build on from our intuitive notions of number and understand why certain concepts are difficult for children to understand.
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    Academic Portability and Parity within the TVET and Higher Education Institutions in Western Cape
    (2023) Ansen, Ernestina; Badroodien, Nur-Mohammed
    After 1994, in South Africa the key education policy focus was how to reconfigure and transform the education system to create meaningful pathways and supports for school leavers to navigate sustainable incomes and life trajectories. Given the legacies of inequality and historical neglect, an abiding focus was on how better to connect education and work for the majority of South African school leavers. One of the identified pathways was to encourage the pursuit of skills in the occupational and vocational arenas amongst learners and school leavers. A significant challenge for the reconfiguration of the education system was how to give learners access to different kinds of education and training, not only at the school level but also at the Further Education and Training (FET) level and at university level, and to ensure that pathways were available for learners to easily move between the different levels. This required a new system and a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) that allowed levels of parity and portability across a basic education and training band, a further education and training band, and a higher education band, which were intended to better connect learners, education service providers, and industries throughout. This study explores the level of parity and portability within the education system developed after 1994, concentrating on the connections created between the further education and training band and the higher education band. The study more specifically examines levels of parity and portability between the National Accredited Technical Education Diploma (NATED) qualification offered at TVET colleges (at the FET band level) and those respectively offered via university of technology (higher education or HE band level) qualifications. It illustrates this by focusing on the NATED Report 191, which has an artisanal focus, to show how education-industry links operate differently in the TVET sector as opposed to the Higher Education and Training (HET) sector, and how this influences how portability and parity occur across the two sectors. Business Studies is used as a case study to demonstrate the unique relationships that exist between companies, education service providers, and learners, and to show how these tiers differ between the TVET and HET sectors. Using purposive sampling, the qualitative study conducted a variety of semi-structured interviews with provincial education officials and institutional education practitioners within the Western Cape, the purpose of which was to get insight into their understanding of the different programmes at the various band levels, and their connections. The overall goal was to better understand whether learners were being properly prepared - with a good balance of theory and practice, and appropriate courses at different band levels - to achieve a consistent, quality, and sound educational base on which to develop their further development (DoE, 1998). The study provides a variety of insights into why there is currently little or inadequate articulation or portability between TVET college business studies programmes and related university of technology programmes, and the role of the NATED Report 191 in perpetuating this. The study offers important concerns at a time where the South African state is urging post- secondary school learners to enrol in the TVET sector, claiming that this will provide equal possibilities to those who wish to pursue further education in university settings.
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    Access to academic literacy : a study of the economics language and communications tutorial at the University of Cape Town
    (2001) Baker, David Scott
    In recent years, many universities have begun to recognize the importance of providing students with some form of access to academic literacy, particularly within the learner's chosen field of study. In order to address these needs at the University of Cape Town, many disciplines now require a first-year course which aims to equip learners with the language and communication skills, which are necessary in order to successfully complete a university degree. Students in the Economics department enroll in a discipline-specific, writing-intensive course which runs throughout the first year of the learners' university experience. The focus of this study is to examine this tutorial in terms of how it meets, or fails to meet, learners' needs in terms of developing appropriate academic writing skills for students pursuing an economics degree.
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    Accommodation or confrontation? Some responses to the Eiselen commission report and the Bantu education act with special reference to the Methodist church of South Africa
    (1991) Rundle, Margaret; Kallaway, Peter
    This study was undertaken at a time when South African politicians and educators are facing the challenge of a major restructuring of the education system, and at a time when the the Methodist Church of South Africa is being encouraged, by some, to become more involved in the provision of education again. It focusses on the three events - the appointment of the 'Commission of Inquiry into Native Education' (usually referred to as the Eiselen Commission), the Report of that Commission, and the Bantu Education Act of 1954 which led to the introduction of the system of Bantu Education in 1955. Consideration is given to the responses of various 'liberal' and 'radical' groups to those events.
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    Acquiring & forgetting a second language : a study of three children aged 5-11 years
    (1983) Keogh, Susan Elizabeth; Young, Douglas
    This investigation is concerned with what three children remembered or had forgotten of a second language after an interval of two years. An in-depth study, consisting of recognition and recall tests, was made of 13-year-old identical twin girls and their 9-year-old brother, who previously had been English/French bilinguals. A phenomenological approach was taken, which included the children's reaction to the tests, and their description of the personal framework within which the learning and forgetting had taken place. The findings, which are suggestive due to limited data, are: first, cognitive and maturational differences between the children caused the twins to retain more recognition and active recall of French than their brother; second, the twins showed a surprising difference in their recognition of French, pos9ibly caused by affective factors; third, all three children showed strongest recognition in the area of semantics, while in recall they retained phonology best; fourth, in the tests, habit memory and episodic memory were more durable than semantic memory. The investigation is a first step towards understanding how children forget a language in which they have been submersed.