Namibian teachers’ perceptions and practices of teaching mapwork

This article addresses the problem of consistently poor learner performance in mapwork in secondary school geography in Namibia from the perspective of teachers. It presents the findings of a qualitative case study focused on understanding geography teachers’ perceptions and pedagogical practices of mapwork. Data were generated through a questionnaire administered to thirty teachers in fifteen secondary schools in the Ohangwena Region of Northern Namibia, and interviews and classroom observations were done with a purposive sample of three teachers. The study draws on Shulman’s ideas of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (1986, 1987) to interpret what the three teachers say about the teaching of mapwork and how they teach it. The findings reveal that the teachers are conscientious but ill-equipped to teach mapwork. Their classroom practices focus on teaching discrete map skills and procedural knowledge with little if any, attention given to spatial conceptual understanding and application of knowledge to solve problems. The study provides insights that may be of value to teachers, teacher educators and Senior Education Officers in Namibia and other southern African contexts when addressing the problem of low learning outcomes in mapwork.

Headteachers’ Management Styles and Teachers’ Role Performance in Secondary Schools in Tororo District, Uganda

This mixed-methods study stems from the poor learner performance in secondary schools in Tororo District, Uganda, which connoted low teacher role performance and gaps in headteachers’ management styles. Management styles of 28 headteachers and role performance of 294 teachers were investigated. Headteachers mainly used democratic management style, 21 (75.0%); followed by balanced-oriented style, 6 (21.43%); and laissez-faire style, 1 (3.5%). Teachers’ role performance was moderate ( M = 64.75, SD = 10.80). Significant relationships existed between people-oriented ( r = .127, p = .029) and task-oriented ( r = .132, p = .024) management and teachers’ performance. Recommendations for improvement were advanced.

Negotiating course material to counter poor learner motivation

This paper details a teacher-implemented intervention, negotiating learner-generated materials, with the aim of improving low levels of learner motivation. This had resulted from the introduction of a problematic entry test policy acting as gatekeeper to an internationally-accredited diploma course in the learners’ specialized technical subject. For the learners, successful completion of the diploma course would guarantee social and financial benefits including promotion, increased salary and prestige within the military institution. However, an order came from the commanding officer that learners would only be accepted onto the diploma course if they attained an IELTS test score of Band 5. This requirement was not attainable by the learners in the time available and represented a threat to their career aspirations, which would negatively affect them personally, economically and professionally. Consequently, there was a substantial drop in learner motivation. An intervention was constructed and conducted during the course over a two-week period to supplement students’ course book in order to counter such poor levels of motivation. The study was set within the critical paradigm, using quantitative and qualitative data collecting methods to answer my research question: “To what extent does the intervention (asking learners to choose a topic, select original material, and suggest the type of tasks to be produced for the material) have a positive effect on learners’ levels of motivation?” Key findings included an observed increase in learner engagement and a greater level of concentration than in recent classes together with reduced learner worry about the IELTS test. Several conclusions are offered as to the efficacy of conducting such an intervention and how it could impact on learner motivation.

Fit for Purpose: Using a Distance Education Approach to Support Underperforming Schools in South Africa

This article explores the South African government’s national school workbook intervention aimed at addressing poor learner performance in the context of teacher under-preparedness and curriculum reform. It shows how the workbooks use a distance education approach to provide pedagogical and content support for teachers, albeit in the context of classroom teaching, to compensate for teachers’ pedagogical challenges. This article uses a mixed methods research approach to explore how teachers, learners and parents used the workbooks and shows that while the distance educational design scaffolded teaching, additional support is necessary to enable the intervention to be more impactful.Â

Towards a leadership programme for primary school principals as instructional leaders

This study set out to explore primary school principals’ instructional leadership. The study addressed a key issue in the school improvement literature, pertaining to the curriculum leadership of principals. The literature is not entirely clear about which leadership characteristic is more likely to produce the most favourable outcomes in terms of improved learner outcomes, in other words, how the curriculum has been implemented and how leadership in this regard has been effected. The article argues that robust training and development in instructional leadership practices become necessary to support school leaders in this regard. In South Africa, based on numerous reports of poor learner outcomes in schools, we question whether principals possess the necessary skills required to lead and manage curriculum in schools. In this article, the views of five principals, who have completed the Advanced Certificate in Education: School Leadership and Management (ACESLM) programme, are examined. Findings indicate that not all principals who participated in the study are fully conversant with their roles and responsibilities as instructional leaders. They mainly interpret their functions to be purely managerial and to be leaders and administrators of schools. Thus, whilst some understanding of instructional leadership was apparent in some of the principals’ responses, it is the authors’ views that ACESLM, as a leadership development programme, needs to be redesigned to include greater focus on instructional leadership.

Overview of Segregated Development in South Africa and Its Implications in the Provision of School Libraries

Prior to1994, South Africa’s education system was influenced by racial dynamics which had implications for the development, provision and distribution of human, financial and material resources. This paper presents the overview of segregated development in South Africa and its implications for the provision of school libraries, to support teaching and learning in selected schools in KwaZulu-Natal. It sets out to describe the understanding and the extent of segregated development in the provision of library resources at Gilonki Secondary school and to establish the perceptions of educators and school management for the importance of teaching and learning. This paper seeks to establish the policies/measures which were being put in place to redress these anomalies. Furthermore, this paper observes that development was retarded as evidenced by the poor provision of important resources such as school library services, resulting in poor learner performance, limited ability to excel in reading and mathematics, lack of appropriate study areas, and difficulties in providing extended tasks on class exercises, among other factors. The study concludes that segregated development has had negative implications for the provision of school libraries, and subsequently for the teachers’ and learners’ performances. The study recommends a swift rolling-out of processes to redress challenges of the past.

Towards an Analysis of Poor Learner Performance in a Theoretical Computer Literacy Course

An alarming number of learners in Accounting at a large distance teaching university fail an introductory course in computer literacy. The lecturers proposed over a period of three years various methods of studying and preparing for the examination in the subject, but with limited success. The problem seems to start at school level even as early on as primary school education. Distance-teaching institutions are furthermore faced with the absence of a classroom environment, a facility which many learners, fresh from school, still have a need for. However, having marked a few thousand scripts twice a year over the past three years, the lecturers identified a number of subproblems all part of the larger problem of learners having to use English as their second or third language to master a content subject. Other problems include an inability to determine the relevance of a formulated answer to a question.

The Polyphony of Learning in the Learning Disabled

The predominant view in the learning disabilities field conceptualizes the development and continuation of dysfunctional cognition as something that can be described primarily in terms of neurological functioning, perception, information processing, or problem solving. I have criticized this viewpoint maintaining that social relationships, which by the standard learning disabilities (LD) definition are excluded as being responsible for the disabilities, need to be regarded as the context in which disabled cognition is created and embedded (e.g., Coles, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1984). In this article I will discuss some of these social relationships in the learning of the learning disabled by analyzing the process in a clinical session during which an illiterate adult successfully learned. Surprisingly, with few exceptions (e.g., Feuerstein, 1979; Stone & Wertsch, 1984), few studies have been conducted on the process of successful learning by the learning disabled in an instructional situation. I say surprisingly because it seems that a transformational approach through which a poor learner learned might uncover cognitive and associated activity otherwise obscured in the study of disabled learning through the educational products, usually test results, of good and poor learners.