Research Articles (School for Social Sciences and Language Education)

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    Interrogating the current imagination of early childhood teacher education through dialogical processes
    (Department of Communication Science, University of the Free State, 2012) Ebrahim, Hasina Banu; Koen, Mariëtte; Martin, Colwyn
    In order to reconceptualise and redesign initial teacher education programmes it is imperative to critically examine what exists. The aim of this article is to shed light on the dialogical processes a team of early childhood teacher educators undertook to make explicit their current understandings of teacher education in an undergraduate Bachelor of Education qualification. The sensitising concepts of dialogue, communication, transformatory learning and reflection informed the study. A qualitative approach enabled through documentary analysis, conversations amongst teacher educators and their narratives were used to produce the evidence. The findings of the study show that dialogical processes unfolded as action-oriented strategies towards achieving a particular goal (i.e., change in teacher education) have the potential to allow teacher educators to reflect on, participate in and trouble existing frames of reference and develop sensitivity to new framings.
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    Understanding the linkage between university students' and instructors use of online resources and their academic attainment in social studies
    (Horizon Research Publishing Corporation, 2021) Ajayi, Thomas; Amosun, Peter A.; Ige, Olugbenga A.
    Few decades ago, the Internet became a new home for academic research and a spot where teaching and learning materials could be found. A cursory look at previous studies on university instructors’ use of online resources shows intermittent influence students’ academic outcomes in Nigerian schools. Although, several efforts have been put in place to establish a cordial and steady relationship between university instructors’ use of online resources and the students’ academic attainment in Nigerian schools, it seems that there is paucity of studies on the linkage between university instructors’ use of online resources and students’ academic attainment in Social Studies. This research explored the relationship between Social Studies lecturers’ use of online resources and students’ performance in the course. This study adopted descriptive research using correlational design, and purposive sampling technique. 398 students at two Bachelor of Education degree-awarding institutions in Nigeria responded to the questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentage, mean and standard deviation and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The outcomes of this discourse indicated no significant relationship between Social Studies lecturers’ use of online resources and students’ performance in the course. Additionally, it was evident from the results that the extent to which Social Studies students’ use of online resources in the selected tertiary institutions in Nigeria was high. This paper, therefore, concludes that the use of online resources has no significant relationship with students’ performance in Social Studies. It was recommended that university instructors should grasp a new means in the use of online resources in the classroom in order to foster a good lecturer-students interaction that would eventually results in great academic attainment of students in the course.
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    Managing diversity in schools: the place of democratic education and ubuntuism in South Africa
    (AOSIS, 2021) Omodan, Bunmi I.; Ige, Olugbenga A.
    South African classrooms were highly diversified. The problem, however, was that although democracy has been a critical characteristic of South Africa for over two decades, it is still a very vague concept to many. A teacher who truly understood democracy knew that it was not just about freedom of self, rather the freedom of all, treating others humanely and with kindness. Making power a variable accessible by all was the only way to which diversities can be ameliorated. Observation and personal experiences showed that there were discriminations of many kinds in some high schools. Therefore, to address these maladies, the importance of democracy in diversity must not be jettisoned because they work hand-in-hand. Ubuntu philosophy was used as a theoretical framework, whilst transformative paradigm piloted the study. Participatory research (PR) was adopted as a research design to enable the people student-teachers to jointly participate in this research. Observation and reflections were used to collect data within the high schools in the Free State province of South Africa. Thomas and Harden’s three steps of thematic analysis was used to analyse data and the result show that language, cultural and personal relativism, learning impairment and comprehensibility were the dominant challenges faced in diversity management in schools. On the other hand, inculcation of classroom relationships and a sense of belonging, training and retraining of teachers and students were found to be perfect solutions that can nip these problems in the bud. The present study, therefore, concluded that the value of teachers’ and students’ development towards diversity management must be addressed.
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    Plans and interventions of South African Grade 1 educators during the 2020 lockdown period
    (OpenED Network, 2021) Grobler, Annemie
    The extended lockdown in 2020 found South African educators employing innovative strategies to teach and assess Foundation Phase learners. Educators had to make do with reduced hours in the classroom and experienced new challenges in delivering curriculum content to learners that had barely grown accustomed to the formal classroom setup. Empirical research attempted to identify the plans and approaches used by grade 1 educators. The findings may indicate best practices as experienced in this time and help to inform the approach taken during future repetitions of extraordinary circumstances. A theoretical and conceptual framework based on the current constructivist approach adopted by the Curriculum Assessment and Policy Statement (CAPS) guided the empirical research and informed the construction of the questionnaire. The key findings were themed into strategies for presenting teaching and learning, communication, and the impact on schooling. Findings were compared to the premises of the theoretical framework and conclusions drawn. It was noted that educators were hesitant to move their schooling entirely to the virtual learning platform and eager to return to the school environment. Various obstacles posed by the digital divide were flagged as threats to future situations and the involvement of parents was emphasized. The resilience of educators to continue to ply their trade, and their belief in the indomitable spirit of children, may offer conducive circumstances for future innovations in education.
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    Cyber vaticinations: a systematic review of schoolchildren's activities in the cyberspace in thirty years' time
    (Horizon Research Publishing Corporation, 2021) Ige, Olugbenga A.; Olulowo, Taiwo Grace; Shawe, Thulebona G.
    There are scholarly pieces of evidence attesting to the use of the Internet by children in a manner comparable to adult users. Many children now use mobile phones, laptop computers, and tablet PCs that are connected to the Internet to access the cyberspace and engage in any activity of interest. The Spatio-temporal communications by schoolchildren in cyberspace have reduced television viewing which in the analog era was subjected to parental control. Unfortunately, the technical nature of the Internet makes it difficult for parents to control the contents available to schoolchildren in the cyberspace. This article uses the space transition theory to examine and analyse schoolchildren’s current cyberspace activities relating to cyber dating, cybersex, cyberbullying, and online gambling to infer the dimensions that these activities would take in the next thirty years. Current scholarly articles were explicated on popular engagements of schoolchildren in the cyberspace and analysed to predict the dimensions of these activities in thirty years. This paper is of scholarly value on the vogues that would be prevalent in the cyberspace in the next generation. The emerging trends in the scholarly articles analysed were used to recommend cyber-parenting related measures on training schoolchildren in the next thirty years.
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    Active learning pedagogy for enriching economics students' higher order thinking skills
    (Society for Research and Knowledge Management Ltd, 2023) Sekwena, Gailele L.
    This paper advances active learning as a pedagogic praxis in Economics education to enrich students’ critical and higher order thinking skills (i.e., analysis, evaluation, and synthesis). The paper is grounded within Critical Theory (CT) as a theoretical lens, which gives this intellectual piece an impetus to propagate empowerment and transformation as guiding principles. The paper adopted Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a methodological approach to generating data. The two overarching research questions that developed the intellectual elements of this paper are: what are the challenges faced by Economics students in responding to higher order questions? How can active learning pedagogy be used to enrich Economics students’ critical and higher order thinking skills? A thematic analysis technique was used to analyse the discourses generated. Research shows that students find it challenging to respond to higher order questions and that Economics teaching is predominantly skewed towards the conventional lecture approach or the teacher-centred method, which often does not create opportunities for students to be actively engaged in the teaching and learning process, thus leaving them as passive recipients of knowledge. Based on the findings, this paper argues for active learning as a more unconventional pedagogy in Economics teaching to empower students to respond to higher order questions.
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    Examining relationships between sub-components of reading in Xitsonga
    (Academy Publication, 2024) Khosa, Martha
    Reading is developed over time and involves the interaction of both simple and complex skills characterised by a hierarchical sequence of foundational reading skills. However, research has shown that children who do not acquire mastery of foundational reading skills have limited chances of acquiring reading success. This study examines the relations between sub-components of reading in Xitsonga and their impact on Grade 1 learners’ reading ability. It also aims to identify which early reading skills predict later reading accomplishment. Data in this study was obtained from 75 Grade 1 learners in the Limpopo Province. The early-grade reading assessment tool adapted to Xitsonga was used to test the learners’ foundational reading skills: phonological and phonemic awareness, letter-sound knowledge, word reading, oral reading fluency and reading comprehension skills. The results present a compelling relationship between the subcomponents of reading and show that deficits in the development of foundational reading skills negatively impact learners’ ability to read. Regression analysis showed that oral reading fluency was the only significant predictor of reading comprehension. Hence, there is a need for reading to be taught and learned consciously in alphabetic languages to help learners develop their early reading skills, which play important roles in the acquisition of reading.