Browsing by Subject "literacy"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Final-year teacher training students' perceptions of THRASS
    (2010) Chigona, Agnes
    Our purpose was to see if THRASS (Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills) is a programme that should be taught to Foundation Phase (FP) and Intermediate/Senior Phases (ISP) pre-service teachers at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). The term 'literacy' is defined as an evolving, developing and complex concept, not only because it describes a set of practices, but also because it is context-driven. The THRASS programme is fundamentally for teaching phonics, and is described as being at the 'word' level teaching of literacy. We argue that word level teaching should be done in context and within texts. A mixed method research design was used in order to provide better understandings and answers to the research question: What are the BEd 4 students' perceptions of THRASS? A questionnaire and two focus group interviews were used to gather data. Qualitative data were analysed, using an inductive approach. The findings confirm that pre-service teachers going to teach in schools feel prepared to teach reading, but not spelling or creative writing.
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    How can Speech Language Therapists and Audiologists enhance language and literacy outcomes in South Africa? (And why we urgently need to)
    (AOSIS, 2011) Kathard, Harsha; Ramma, Lebogang; Pascoe, Michelle; Jordaan, Heila; Moonsamy, Sharon; Wium, Anna-Marie; Du Plessis, Sandra; Pottas, Lidia; Khan, Nasim Banu
    Basic education in South Africa faces a crisis as learners fail to achieve the necessary outcomes in the related areas of language and literacy. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, we aim to describe and discuss the education crisis by outlining the educational landscape, relevant policy imperatives and implementation challenges in post-apartheid education. The systemic factors contributing to the literacy crisis are emphasised. Secondly, we argue that speech language therapists and audiologists (SLTAs) have a role to play in supporting basic education in South Africa through developing language and literacy. It is suggested that the professions of speech-language pathology and audiology must be socially responsive and population-focused in order to make meaningful contributions to development in South Africa. The potential roles of SLTAs are discussed with suggestions for further actions required by the professions to enable a contextually relevant practice in a resource-constrained environment.
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    Is inclusive education our answer to increased literacy? Examining the impact of inclusive education in the South African schooling system on the literacy and well-being of learners
    (2026) Schmid, Maxine; Kubeka, Khosi
    Literacy plays a pivotal role in shaping academic success, mental well-being, and future socioeconomic outcomes. In South Africa, however, many high school learners in under-resourced communities continue to face poor literacy outcomes, despite the implementation of inclusive education policies. This study aimed to investigate the extent of low literacy levels among Grade 8 and 9 learners and to examine the relationship between literacy proficiency, inclusive education practices, mental well-being, and external social factors. A quantitative, descriptive research design was employed. The study sampled 181 learners from two high schools in Cape Town, situated in historically disadvantaged areas. Data were collected using a standardised literacy assessment and a self-report questionnaire that measured perceptions of inclusive education, experiences of social exclusion, and mental health (using the DASS-Y scale). Findings revealed that while learners perceived their schools as inclusive and felt supported by teachers, overall literacy scores remained low. Statistical analysis showed a weak correlation between inclusive classroom practices and literacy performance. Instead, external factors such as poverty, household instability, and psychological distress had a stronger association with poor literacy outcomes. Learners with lower literacy scores were also more likely to report feelings of social exclusion and mental health challenges. The study concludes that classroom-based inclusive practices, while important, are insufficient on their own. A more holistic approach is needed—one that integrates mental health support and addresses the broader socio-economic barriers impacting learners. These findings underscore the need for policy and programmatic responses that target both the academic and emotional needs of learners in marginalised contexts.
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    Little pockets of hope! Shared writing, Interactive writing - a route to knowledge, understanding and purposeful independent writing
    (2026) Sangster, Karen; Guzula, Xolisa
    Acknowledging concerns raised by education officials, researchers, literacy scholars, and even the government, about the supposed inability of 81% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa to read for meaning, this research study explores alternative, integrative approaches to the recently proposed ‘scientific approach' to reading, i.e., ‘science of reading'. The aim of this case-study is to find ‘little pockets of hope' - strategies that have possibly been overlooked, undermined or under-utilised - as an alternative route to address the purported lack of literacy in our schools. Shared reading and shared writing are strategies specified in the CAPS (DBE, 2011) that can be used by teachers to model good reading and writing practices and scaffold new knowledge in a collaborative and meaningful way. Where most interventions have foregrounded reading as the most important aspect of literacy, this study reflects on the affordances offered by shared and interactive writing, including the use of multimodal strategies, for knowledge and language development as well as the development of independent writing skills. Bua-Lit (2023: 2) states: ‘'In order to read for meaning they [learners] must be motivated to make meaning.'' Shared and interactive writing approaches, therefore, not only help learners to develop meaning making skills, but also provide a means for them to reveal that they are, indeed, capable of reading with, and expressing, understanding. Approaching literacy from a socio-cultural perspective (Barton, 1994; Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gee, 2022; Bloch, 2006; Bua-Lit Collective, 2018, 2023), which challenges a decontextualised and systematic skills-based approach focused on decoding and comprehension (Pretorius & Spaull, 2022), the study emphasises the value of contextualised and purposeful writing activities, which integrate literacy practices and skills, within meaningful learning experiences. Freebody and Luke's (1990) Four Resources Model, as part of the conceptual and analytical framework, is drawn on to explore how shared and interactive writing, as pedagogical approaches, enable learners to assume the roles of text producer and text analyst. The qualitative research study was conducted as a case study of a whole Grade 3 class in an English medium quintile three school in the southern suburbs of Cape Town where many of the learners' parents, being foreign nationals, do not speak English at home. Because of the differing socio-cultural backgrounds, it was thus anticipated that the literacy practices and language repertoires, as well as the way in which the learners ‘'take from the printed word and use this knowledge'' (Heath, 1982: 319), would vastly differ, and that this would be reflected in classroom performance as well as in standardised assessment results. The main findings highlight the following aspects: • Shared writing enables teachers to scaffold new knowledge by demonstrating and modelling good writing practices. • Shared writing allows teachers to gradually guide learners towards independent writing. • Shared and interactive writing allows learners to focus on meaning making and understanding whilst the teacher initially assumes responsibility for the physical writing and language components such as spelling, grammar and punctuation. • Interactive writing motivates learners to participate in the writing process, drawing on what they already know, using multimodal strategies to illustrate their thoughts and understanding.
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    Positioning (in) the discipline: undergraduate students' negotiations of disciplinary discourses
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Kapp, Rochelle; Bangeni, Bongi
    This paper is drawn from a longitudinal case study in which the authors have tracked the progress of 20 Social Science students over the course of their undergraduate degrees at a historically 'white' South African university. The students are all from disadvantaged educational backgrounds and/or speakers of English as a second language. The paper draws on post-structuralist and post-colonial theory to trace the process by which students position and reposition themselves in relation to disciplinary discourses over the course of their senior years. The students both absorb and resist the values of their disciplines. The authors argue that the process of writing in their disciplines is also a process of working out their own identities as they try to reconcile their home discourses with those of the institution and their peers, or in some cases, confirm or shed their home identities.
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    Researching 'ideological becoming' in lectures: challenges for knowing differently
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Thesen, Lucia
    This article is a response to Haggis's injunction to 'know differently' if we are to grow our understandings of student learning. It identifies concerns that have arisen in the course of research into engagement (conceived of as 'ideological becoming') in first year lectures in the humanities at a South African university. These issues include: (a) how the co-presence of students and lecturer challenges conventional notions of 'student learning' as other; (b) the theoretical and practical challenges related to identifying fleeting 'liminal moments' in situations in which students and lecturers are co-present; and (c) what we can learn from a view of academic engagement as distributed across time and place. The tool of entextualisation is used to track participants' 'interest' across sites. The article offers a view of learning as embodied, emergent and contested, rather than neatly packaged and predictable.