Search

In many universities offering qualifications in education, Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy features prominently in curricula for pre-service teachers of English. Student teachers are prepared with the knowledge and skills that enable them to use approaches from critical pedagogy to teach English effectively in their classrooms upon graduation. Critical pedagogy affords pre-service teachers of English training in teaching critical literacy, a pedagogy of self-empowerment, and tools for teaching critical thinking. However, student teachers may not easily exploit these affordances when they start to teach since many constraints in the school system may impede the effective implementation of critical pedagogy in the English classroom. These constraints include the inflexible Annual Teaching Plan, the practice of teaching for assessment, and contradictions in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). As a result, there is a disparity between the vision of teaching English in critical ways on the one hand and opportunities to realise this vision within the structures of South African policy on the other. In this article, we explore this disparity and its implications for learning to teach English within a critical pedagogy framework.

Acquiring a basic knowledge of philosophy is usually a deprioritised choice for students in undergraduate programmes. Even a basic philosophy course is seldom mandatory in the hard sciences, although it may be an option in the social sciences. While many undergraduate teacher education programmes have stand-alone courses in the philosophy of education in general educational studies courses, philosophical inspiration is largely drawn from continental philosophy. The extent to which preservice teachers see the wider relevance and application of philosophy of education to the school subjects they teach is uncertain. Also, contemporary philosophy of education courses in the (South) African context may still be paying homage to Western, Eurocentric philosophical canons, despite calls by the student collective in South Africa for African contextual relevance. I present an account of a curriculum initiative in a teacher education course that attempts a disruption of traditional western canons that underpin economics and economic education. I argue that disciplines such as economics are fertile spaces for engaging teacher trainees in a philosophical exposé, with a view to contesting the universality of the philosophies of (economic) sciences to explain contemporary societal crises. I present insights into how the philosophy of education might be conceptualised as an across curriculum competence as opposed to an insular, stand-alone offering.

Teachers in public sector technical and vocational education (TVET) colleges in South Africa have recently moved into the 'required to be professionally qualified' category. Required professionalism differs from enacted professionalism, so the research study on which we report in this article sought to understand how National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) lecturers in Engineering Studies and Business Studies comply with, accommodate, or resist the institutionalised professional culture(s) of their colleges and classrooms. We gathered data through surveys and focus group interviews from 205 lecturers in 10 TVET colleges in five provinces for this study. We found a "dual narrative" of professionalism. NC(V) teachers aspire to a distinctive vocational pedagogy that confirms their status as professional TVET teachers, but it is beyond their reach when institutionalised professional cultures constrain rather than enable. They, therefore, describe the cultural milieu of college and classroom in terms of idealised educational values (as they would like them to be rather than as they are) to enable, potentially, an enacted professionalism that allows them to cope with restrictive and assessment-dominated professional cultures as currently experienced.

In this commentary, we engage with Yunus Ballim's article in this issue that explores how academic freedom can enhance teaching, learning, and institutional culture in South African universities. Ballim uses the concept of negative freedom to show how the institutional culture and everyday practices of universities can play a vital role in shaping students' learning and development. Negative freedom is the degree to which an external power interferes or constrains the choices that people have, limiting the area of action in which they are free to be or do what they want. This creative approach to the issue of academic freedom takes the debate beyond the freedom to choose what is taught or researched at universities and the relationship between universities and the state. We call for further exploration into how student agency is conceptualised from this perspective, questioning how university-society relations intersect with forms of academic freedom.

In this paper, I argue for approaches to teaching, learning, and student development to be considered as important facets of the way in which the principles of academic freedom are conceptualised at university. The idea of academic freedom has been significantly expanded and better nuanced, particularly in its meaning at South African universities in the post-apartheid years, than the earlier T. B. Davie formulation that is more strongly focused on institutional autonomy aspects of academic freedom. Considerations of institutional autonomy relate to the positive freedoms that universities are to enjoy. However, I argue that consideration of student development in an academic freedom context requires that universities give thought to the negative freedoms that students are to enjoy such as the freedom from harm, or prejudice, or cycloptic approaches to ways of knowing. This requires careful attention to all the interactions that students will have with the university, particularly with the ways in which patterns of exclusion and prejudice are woven into institutional culture in ways that hamper their learning development.

Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) concept of assemblage, in this paper we address 12-13-y ear-old girls' experience of sexual violence as a materially embedded, relational, and affective event. In doing so, we contribute to the understanding of how girls are both constrained by violent gendered cultures in school and of their capacity to resist such violence. We give attention to sexual violence as an assemblage of materialities in the form of bodies, objects, expressions, spaces, and ideas that connect in ways that affect what girls can and cannot do within a specific place and moment in time. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we show how the assemblage creates the potential to challenge dominant gendered scripts that structure girls' experience in schools but also point to the disabling environments that curtail such potential. We argue that while the assemblage produces agentive capacities, it may simultaneously constrain them. We conclude by offering possibilities to address sexual violence through addressing gender norms while including boys in gender transformative work.

South Africa has high rates of HIV infection among its young population, high rates of unintended pregnancy among the youth, and extremely high rates of gender-based violence. Given all this, it is essential that young people be taught skills that will enable them to manage their sexuality. Schools have been shown to be best placed to provide accurate and relevant information on young people's sexualities. Through the Life Orientation (LO) curriculum, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) offers age-appropriate sexuality education as a response to these concerns. However, research in sexuality education shows that there is a lack of guidance and preparedness by educators, and this hampers how sexuality education is delivered in South African schools. A recent attempt by the DBE to upscale and strengthen the sexuality education curriculum in South African schools was met with resistance from parents and other lobby groups. This resistance was driven across many different media platforms, and particularly through an online hashtag #LeaveOurKidsAlone, largely on Facebook and Twitter. Through this resistance, we are introduced to parents/adult response to the teaching and learning of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in South African schools, a voice that has been missing to a great extent in this debate. Working within a broad feminist qualitative framework, I use critical discourse analysis to map out some of the key discourses emerging from the #LeaveOurKidsAlone resistance in an attempt to understand how parents/adults use social media to resist CSE in South Africa. I foreground critically adult voices and the implications of these for the teaching and learning of CSE in South African schools.

In this qualitative phenomenological study, we explored the pedagogical content knowledge and skills needed by Life Orientation teachers to implement a group investigation cooperative teaching approach. This study is based on constructivist theory and employed purposive sampling. Seven teachers from selected secondary schools in the Northern Cape province, South Africa, participated in face-to-face interviews. Data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis; it was supported by the literature review and by constructivist theory. Findings revealed that the participants' lack of adequate Life Orientation content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge has an impact on their teaching praxis. We found that challenges such as the lack of training in implementing group investigation prevent them from participating in such practice. It is therefore recommended that the Department of Basic Education develop strategic plans and training sessions to promote the use of group investigation as a school-based professional development initiative. Further research on group investigation to benefit in-service Life Orientation teachers may pave the way towards the establishment of professional collaboration as a sustainable practice among them.

Career decision-making is a challenge to most learners in secondary schools in South Africa. In this study, we examined the influence of selected social factors (influence of older siblings, peer influence, teachers' influence, and career information services) on career decision-making of Grade 12 learners in township secondary schools in South Africa. We adopted a correlational survey research design. The sample size of 260 learners was obtained using the stratified random sampling technique. The questionnaire that included reference to peer influence, teachers' influence, career information service, influence of older siblings, and career decisionmaking was used to collect data. We used Cronbach's alpha coefficient analysis to measure the internal consistency of the questionnaire; all sub-scales had excellent internal consistent reliability. We used the Kaiser-Meyer-Oklin measure of sample adequacy (KMO Index) and the Bartlett's Test of Sphericity to confirm internal validity. We analysed quantitative data using inferential statistics such as Pearson Product Moment Correlation, linear, and multiple regression analysis. According to the findings, the strongest correlation was between teacher influence and career decision-making (r=.643, n=204, p.01), followed by the relationship between career information services and career decision-making (r =.607, n=204, p.01) while peer influence had the least relationship to career decision-making (r (204) =.514, p.01. The influence of older siblings also had a significant direct relationship with career decision-making among the Grade 12 learners (r=.566, n=204, p

In this paper, we report on the use of multiple platforms to circumvent challenges associated with non-attendance because of limited accessibility to conventional video conferencing digital tools such as Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) and Blackboard collaborate. One hundred and sixty-five participating pre-service teachers were given the autonomy to connect using any of the given platforms from a prescribed list that worked for them. The platforms' attendance tracking systems were used to gather data. The findings revealed that using multiple online platforms lowered the challenges associated with lack of access to high-end technological tools and resources. Most of the registered pre-service teachers attended an average 60% of the live classes and 50% of the students strongly agreed that they had followed the recorded sessions. Multiple platforms afford pre-service teachers a choice on what works better for them based on the technology to which they have access to and with which they are familiar.

Xenophobia poses a threat to social cohesion in South Africa. It is vital that pre-service teachers engage with their beliefs and attitudes about this phenomenon, so that they can promote socially inclusive education in a way that is sustainable. In support of the March 2019 National Action Plan in South Africa to address racism, including xenophobia, we recently undertook a small-scale research project, underpinned by the notions of diversity and inclusivity, at a Higher Education Institution, in the School of Education. In this article, we offer a methodological contribution in arguing for the efficacy of empathetic-reflective-dialogical re-storying as a teaching-learning strategy that contributes to transformed teaching praxis. This could provide a pathway to social inclusivity for education. This teaching-learning strategy serves a decolonial agenda in changing the way in which teaching-learning takes place. We explored various perspectives and positions with regard to the other in the interests of building a sustainable foundation for future generations to live with dignity, regardless of ethnicity.

Pandemics leave long-term consequences in their wake. The Covid-19 pandemic reached catastrophic levels in Africa, similar to what it did in the rest of the world. Rural schools in developing countries, already reeling from extreme poverty and economic vulnerability, have borne the most severe brunt of the pandemic. In this study, we explore the effects of Covid-19 on rural schools in Lesotho using data from semi-structured online interviews with 10 rural-based teachers. We address two questions: "What are the effects of Covid-19 on rural schools in Lesotho?" and "What steps have been taken to mitigate the effects of Covid-19-induced school closures in Lesotho?" Findings show that enforced school closures meant to contain the spread of Covid-19 disrupted rural learners' lives. Innovations to mitigate the effects of the pandemic bridged the gap between the classroom and totally remote settings by introducing online education that, however, remains elusive for most rural learners.

Social sustainability is paramount for peaceful and inclusive societies. It embraces all cultures and civilizations while promoting that these contribute to, and are crucial enablers of, sustainable development. One aspect hereof is knowledge-what is taught and who decides. South African students remain frustrated with the Eurocentric and Western dominated university curriculum. This was made evident in the iconic 2015 student protest movement that, along with current and preceding protests laid bare the stark inequalities that persist in higher education and students outcries for socially relevant education that acknowledges the global South. In this article, we draw on data that emanated from qualitative interviews conducted with ten North-West University postgraduate teacher education students to unlock their concerns and aspirations for a decolonised curriculum in higher education. Students expressed their concerns with the political nature of the systems of power in higher education that are exclusionary, the need for the curriculum to be contextualized, and the tendency for decolonisation to be perceived as a threat. Students voiced their aspirations for a decolonised curriculum by specifying the importance of decolonisation as a process through teaching approaches like storytelling. We propose restorative learning as one avenue in response to students' outcries for the need to be critical of abyssal thinking and to challenge the root of hegemonic knowledge systems in such a way that decolonising the curriculum can be attuned to sustainability aspirations related to justice and social equity.

As an educator for inclusion and social justice, it is essential to be self-reflective about all aspects of identity that relate to diversity and differential power relations. As part of this commitment, I am part of a group of critical academics and practitioners who comprise the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) Special Interest Group on Self-Reflexive Methodologies. In this paper, I include reflections on two artworks I created during self-reflexive exercises using visual methodologies. The first artwork led to my interrogating aspects of meaning and identity as a white person in post-apartheid South Africa. What emerged was, first, the need to confront my privileged racial identity that had been fashioned in a divided and exclusive past and second, I needed to reposition myself beyond my white socialisation, recognising the possibility of new frames of understanding and new identities, new social spaces, and new communities beyond the historical differences that keep South Africans separated and alienated. Critical reflection on the second artwork reveals embedded commentary on the need to challenge patriarchal articulations of the professional identity and dominant discourses of learning and teaching in academia. What emerged was the possibility of how lost feminine aspects of knowledge could inform teaching and learning strategies. These strategies could then contribute to a critical pedagogy that challenges the prevailing system of social relations and disrupts and unsettles the stereotypical assumptions of a dominant masculine discourse in academia. Here, I highlight the effectiveness of using visual methodologies to explore various aspects of identity, especially relevant for educators as transformative agents educating for inclusion and social justice.

The need for nations to enhance their competitiveness by leveraging the imperatives of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has seen major shifts in teaching and learning strategies employed globally by educators. Research in Zimbabwean education has pointed to a gap in teachers' competence in the use of information communication technologies (ICTs) for teaching. Using the UNESCO ICT competency for teachers and Bernstein's (2000) theory of the pedagogic device we propose a conceptual framework for the pre-service ICT curriculum at four Zimbabwean secondary school teachers' colleges in relation, in particular, to the complexities present in the nexus of the curriculum's architecture, pedagogy, and delivery context. The framework suggests strategies on how this curriculum could address the gap in the teachers' competencies through effective integration of content, knowledge, skills, technology, and pedagogy into the salient contextual aspects of the country's education sector, given the constraining shortage of ICT resources.

Historically, the concept of Head of Department (HOD) in a university context has been understood as a one-person role. Despite the increasing complexity of the role, the position remains exclusive and, for many academics, undesirable. Reliant only on a single individual, the position, located at the centre of complex relational interfaces, is known to generate tension and role ambiguity between the scholarly project on the one hand, and management and administrative matters on the other. In response to this problematic, in this paper, we draw on a higher education leadership study that explored the take-up of a distributed leadership approach in an academic department in a South African university. Framed by a socio-cultural conceptualisation of distributed leadership comprising a leader-plus and a practice aspect, we designed the research as an exploratory case study. Participants included the academic and administrative staff in the department and qualitative data was generated through document analysis as well as individual and focus group interviews. Findings revealed that the framework provides a useful analytical tool for departmental leadership, understood inclusively and expansively beyond the formal HOD position. Offering an empirical case of a distributed leadership approach in an academic department, we contribute to a gap in the literature and argue for further studies in other faculties and universities in the global south.

This qualitative study proffers ways of reframing the policy trajectory for inclusive education in Malawi. The study involved a document review of inclusive education policies and strategies and in-depth semi-structured interviews with mainstream teachers at a secondary school in Malawi. The results from the document review show that the framing of the education policies and strategies regarding inclusive education pedagogy as an educational practice is influenced solely by learners' cognitive proficiencies. However, the analysis of the semi-structured interviews points towards multi-scalar pedagogical responses to inclusive education. Therefore, I argue that the framing of inclusive education policies and strategies ignores crucial interactive schooling systems such as the onto-pedagogical framings of mainstream teachers and specialists that shape pedagogy in the context of inclusivity. The study concludes that inclusive education policy formulation and implementation requires interactions among and across schooling systems, such as mainstream and specialist teachers, and not merely attending to the epistemological needs of learners. I recommend a bio-ecological systems policy reframing that could help the Malawian and other southern African education systems to use different factors that influence inclusive education.

Effective professional development contributes to improved teacher knowledge and practice as well as deep and meaningful student learning. Despite professional development being cited by the South African Department of Basic Education as a priority goal, teacher professional development activities have been inadequate. In this article, we use a socio-cultural perspective to investigate the pedagogical affordances of digitalisation and technology integration. This study is part of a larger mixed methods study but for the purpose of this article we focus solely on its qualitative results. The aim of the study was to understand teachers' best practices with digital technologies and how these technologies are being used to inform the 21st century classroom and encourage a learner-centric environment. The findings reveal weaknesses in the professional development activities regarding digital technologies and learner-centric pedagogies that are generally episodic, one-size-fits-all events focused largely on technical knowledge. The chief impediment towards learner-centric pedagogies and the implementation of technology-enhanced teaching and learning is the misalignment between teachers' digital abilities and the demands of the 21st century technology-equipped classrooms. Our recommendation is the continual situated professional development of teachers, including the creation of professional learning communities and the harnessing of digital technologies to provide an effective blended approach to teacher learning and instructional delivery in the 21st century.

This study forms part of a larger study (Roux, 2020), which looked at the equivalence of a literary text across English, Afrikaans, and isiZulu from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). PIRLS is a large-scale reading comprehension assessment that assesses Grade 4 students' reading literacy achievement. PIRLS Literacy 2016 results for South African Grade 4 students indicated poor performance in reading comprehension, with approximately eight out of 10 Grade 4 students who could not read for meaning. Descriptive statistics led to the Rasch analysis, which was conducted using the South African PIRLS Literacy 2016 data. Even though the Rasch analysis indicated differential item functioning across the three languages for this specific passage, there was no universal discrimination against one particular language. By conducting differential item functioning, it was possible to determine whether the selected text had metric equivalence, in other words, whether the test questions were of similar difficulty across languages.

This paper describes the changes made to the administration of assessments in the second design trial of the Maths Intensive course at a comprehensive university in South Africa because of Covid-19. The course was designed in direct response to poor attainment in the Primary Teacher Education project's mathematics test. Building on positive findings of improved attainment evident in the first design cycle, the Maths Intensive course was further refined for a second cohort of students, and shifts in attainment were once again analysed. The Covid-19 lockdown meant that student could not write the post-test on campus. As a result, the post-test data were not used to measure impact but, instead, were used to establish what the student teachers knew and were able to do at the end of the course. The Maths Intensive test framework mapped the test items to the learning outcomes for the course. Facility scores revealed areas where students were capable and areas where they still required support. The assumption that students would use calculators in un-invigilated circumstances was challenged, and requires further research. These findings may be of interest to lecturers and teachers seeking to develop assessment reports that provide useable information to improve their instructional design and teaching practice. They may also be of interest to academics and training providers designing mathematics education programmes for initial teacher education or for ongoing professional development courses for teachers in primary schools.

The feedback aspects of formative assessment are an indispensable tool for improving teaching and learning. In this study, we report on findings about mathematics teacher educators' conceptions of feedback and how their conceptions translate into practice when conducting assessments in mathematics modules. In our qualitative study, underpinned by an interpretive paradigm, data were generated through semi-structured interviews, lecture observations, and textual analysis of students' scripts from six mathematics teacher educators purposely selected across three teacher colleges. Findings revealed that the teacher educators' knowledge and practices of feedback are foregrounded on providing corrective measures to students' weaknesses. This means when giving feedback, mathematics teacher educators focus on how well students can solve the task at hand-with limited attention to helping students regulate their own learning. We argue for the need to revise current policy to expose teacher educators to best practices and to engage with relevant literature on formative assessment and effective feedback.

This article is a collective project. It is a rhizome-article that is an assemblage of five heterogeneous essays that trouble dominant practices of assessment, generally, but also within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors problematise standardisation, measurement, quantification, and other technologies of performativity that dominate contemporary assessment practices in schools and universities. In the essays, the authors invigorate lines of flight from dominant assessment practices and do so in the interest of assessment that is more humane and socially just. They point out that, as with anything else, a rhizome-article also has lines of articulation/connection and invite readers to invigorate these as they read the essays. The authors of this article draw on the works of several scholars but do so to think with them rather than having their work framed by them.

The development of critical pedagogical approaches in teacher education (TE) in the South African context is imperative given the deepening crisis in the public schooling system in the country. Public discourse and debates amongst scholars suggest that education for critical citizenship and the development of substantive democracy are under threat. In order to advance education in support of substantive democracy, TE requires critical reflection and engagement with teaching practices that promote the development of citizenship for critical engagement and participation in the socioeconomic transformation of South Africa. This paper argues for the development and application of innovative approaches to teacher preparation that challenge the neoliberal attack on public education and the suppression of emancipatory practices amongst teachers. These approaches include a conscientious examination and application of community mapping as a pedagogical instrument that acquaints student teachers with, and deepens their understanding of, the contextual realities of educational experiences in poor and working-class South Africa. Drawing on case studies of community mapping, our paper argues for critical engagement in the teaching academy with the theory and practice of teacher preparation towards transformative work and an exposure to educational praxes that better prepare student teachers for a vocation that embraces the philosophies, methodologies, and ethics of critical pedagogy. The main thesis of this paper is that community mapping is a critical and transformative pedagogical tool that should be integral to teacher preparation in South Africa.

This article focuses on the attempts to construct the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) in South Africa, and some of its educational implications. Using Foucault's (1972) notion of enunciative modalities, and drawing empirically on statements made by the World Economic Forum, the South African government, and some South African universities, the article shows that it is people in governments, the economy, and academia who are positioned as the authorities of delimitation who define what the 4IR is, and who bring it into visibility. The article then shows that, inevitability, STEM matter, instrumentalism, and benevolence are the coordinates around which the 4IR is being articulated. In discussing these coordinates, some of the educational implications of such articulations are explored. These include the technicist way in which education is viewed, the lack of adequate recognition of the inequalities in the educational system, and the problems with customised curricula that 4IR assumes, and which erode the possibilities of developing deep learning.

The need to identify and address South African school leaders' challenges in developing an inclusive education culture frames the purpose of this study. A qualitative methodology using a multiple case study design in three secondary schools was employed. Data collection ensued through focus group interviews with school management teams (SMTs) and teachers. The findings highlight areas that both challenge and overwhelm SMTs. These areas include the inadequate implementation of the screening, identification, assessment and support (SIAS) policy, the need for parent support for inclusivity, and inclusive pedagogy limitations. Furthermore, there is a need for human and financial resources to support inclusive education. The study proposes a framework that clarifies the role of the SMT in facilitating inclusivity. The framework posits the need for visionary, strategic, and social justice leadership, focuses on ways to transform the school culture, and offers practical guidance for translating the SIAS policy into practice.

The ongoing armed conflict in Cameroon has resulted in thousands of attacks on schools, yet education cannot wait for conflict to stop. This study sought to determine the effects of the ongoing armed conflict on classroom activities in operational schools in affected areas in Cameroon. Using a mixed method sequential exploratory design, qualitative data were collected from 19 teachers through open-ended questions and analysed using thematic analysis. Qualitative findings were used to design a questionnaire, administered to 652 teachers, and analysed using multiple response and the chi-square and equality of proportion test. Findings presented indicate that attendance, content delivery, safety, discipline, and assessment have been significantly hampered. However, classroom attendance was most significantly (p = .001) affected, disrupting teaching and evaluation with differing effects found across locations and school types. It was concluded that teaching and learning activities are ineffective and may result in further damaging effects-requiring more practical actions on school sites.

Pre-service teachers (PSTs) are expected to effectively integrate their content knowledge with their knowledge of teaching when teaching classes after qualification. This integration can, however, be challenging for PSTs because the two components are often taught separately at teacher education institutions. This qualitative case study investigated the possibilities of integrating the teaching of the two components at a South African university educating future science teachers. Data in the form of video-recorded lectures, video-stimulated recall interviews with a teacher educator, and focus group interviews with 15 PSTs were collected. Data analysis was mainly deductive informed by the topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge conceptual framework. Many opportunities for integrating methodology were created by the teacher educator while teaching meiosis content. The study concludes that integrating methodology when teaching content courses is possible. However, the integration should include explicit discussion of the pedagogical reasoning behind the visible teaching routines.

Whilst the virtual classroom has become the most tenable alternative to address educational needs under the circumstances of the Covid-19 crisis, most universities in Zimbabwe have been found wanting-lacking responsive information communication technology (ICT) infrastructures and techno-savvy human capital. This exploratory study employed in-depth telephone interviews with five purposively sampled deans, lecturers, and disadvantaged students-one each from each of five universities (three state, and two private). Forty more students for five focus group discussions were selected through stratified random sampling. Our study adopted a qualitative approach to collect, present, and analyse data. The key finding was that Covid-19 has certainly amplified the digital divide and preexisting inequalities in institutions of higher education, particularly in developing nations like Zimbabwe. Further, the study revealed that a techno-based curriculum delivery approach becomes discriminatory and intensifies social exclusion because some students living in poverty struggle to access the e-learning resource materials. In Zimbabwe, the situation has become dire and complicated because of the economic meltdown prevailing in the country. Universities as service institutions are thus encouraged to invest heavily in ICT infrastructure, and the government to subsidise the cost of internet bandwidth and data bundles to enable students to access the e-learning materials.

Teachers at primary and secondary education levels are required to hold a professional qualification but, at the higher education level, all that is required is content expertise. This may well contribute to South Africa's low university throughput and retention rates, in response to which, since 2004, the state has provided ZAR5.5 billion in the form of the Teaching Development Grant (now the University Capacity Development Grant) to address poor completion rates. We present an analysis of the use of the grant across the sector using a social realist framework. Every academic and student has themselves been taught and so have developed untheorised assumptions about curriculum and pedagogy. Such common-sense assumptions about teaching and learning often serve to reinforce the status quo, which is particularly problematic in a sector with poor and racially differentiated throughput and success rates. Many initiatives funded through the grant evidenced a reliance on common-sense assumptions rather than on theorised accounts. In particular, student development often took the form of remedial, add-on initiatives that left the mainstream curriculum untouched-and staff development was often generic and short term. We also found that expertise in academic development, which could potentially challenge common-sense assumptions, was unevenly distributed.

This article emphasises the motivation for a methodological representation choice that captures teachers' voices in a Small Island Developing State context during the introduction of a curriculum reform. The diverse voices of teachers as they inhabit a context that gears towards compliance and managed intimacy demands are explored through the representational choice of an ethnodrama. Narrative inquiry led to an ethnodrama representation that protected the anonymity and confidentiality of participants and simultaneously revealed multiple forms of agencies in entangled spatial and temporal dimensions. The findings foreground teachers' choice of agencies and representations that serve different interests influenced by whom they dialogue with in specific spaces. With a fictionalised future enactment of the ethnodrama at the end, this article closes with teachers negotiating their agency and opening reflections for future research in new normal Covid-19 spaces.

The conceptualisation of schooling is often based on "ideal children" in "ideal situations." However, in determining the level of participation for children who are considered vulnerable in schooling, it is important to understand the lived experiences of these children. In this study, migrant children (particularly undocumented ones) in South Africa are the focus, and their lived experiences were considered through reflections from their parents and teachers. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, and analysed using a constant comparative method of qualitative analysis within a grounded theory approach. The study found that challenges affecting migrant children's schooling include the lack of documentation, language barriers, issues of transition and adaptation (discrimination), and the inability to access further education. Strategies were identified to address the challenges, including schools liaising with the Department of Home Affairs, implementing cultural diversity programmes within the school, and through deliberate inclusive programmes.

Educators in schools for the past two decades have been faced with the problem of disruptive behavior in classrooms. The rate and extent to which schools in Jamaica and elsewhere have been experiencing disruptive behavior among students has generated the attention of many within the classrooms and in another places. The present study examined school personnel perceptions of the causes of disruptive behavior among a set of grades 9 and 11 students in a corporate area high school and the impact that disruptive behavior had on their own and their classmates’ achievement. It also examined how educators respond to students who are consistently disruptive in the classroom. The primary data collecting instruments used to conduct this case study comprised: semi-structured interviews, observation, and the reviewing of archival data on students’ academic performance. The results of the study revealed that school personnel hypothesized several causes of disruptive behavior in classrooms. These were inclusive of parental influence and home environment, community environment, peer influence, socioeconomic status, difficult personal circumstances, illiteracy, learning disability (ADHD), attention seeking, and problems with teaching. Also mentioned, were attitudes of teachers, and structural classroom dynamics. All the participants believed that disruptive behavior had a strong impact on students’ performance, a belief borne out by achievement data. The observations revealed that although teachers used a variety of approaches to respond to disruptive behavior, those approaches were almost exclusively responsive. The study suggested that specialized training, regarding classroom disruptive behavior, should be implemented to better equip school personnel with the techniques to deal effectively with classroom disruptive behavior. Keywords: Academic achievement, Disruptive behavior, Academic Performance

By asking questions, students can practice many cognitive processes, and these processes may reflect clues about their thinking skills. In order to understand students’ cognitive levels in thinking, questions can be used as agents. Doing so, this study focuses on examining students’ questions in terms of cognitive levels of Bloom’s revised taxonomy, namely, remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. For this purpose, the study followed a qualitative research design with 106 high school students and eight language and literature teachers. To capture the relevant data, students were given two types of texts (narrative and informative), then asked to generate text-based questions as well as their answers. Along with students, teachers were interviewed to find out how they direct students to ask comprehension questions according to instructional strategies they used in asking questions. The data were analyzed through descriptive and content analysis. The results showed that participant students mainly asked questions addressing at the analyze level for the narrative text, and at the understand level for the informative text. These levels are assumed as lower-order thinking skills according to the taxonomy, and possible reasons were discussed with further recommendations.

Policy and legislative frameworks in South Africa mandate inclusive education that, given the contextual realities of classrooms, requires teachers to be responsive to diversity. There is, however, an identified gap between policy ideals and enactment that is exacerbated by a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the nature of inclusive education and practice that is still viewed by many as being limited to considerations of special needs rather than broader considerations of diversity as well. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) has a role to play in challenging and disrupting teacher thinking to support conceptualisations of inclusive education that position teachers' responsiveness to diversity. We used the Inclusive Pedagogical Approach in Action (IPAA) Framework (Florian & Spratt, 2013) since it focuses on inclusive pedagogy as a way of thinking about and practising inclusion to support the learning of all. We conducted the qualitative research at a public urban university in Johannesburg, South Africa with 200 third-year preservice teachers. We analysed the data by considering preservice teachers' reflections on adapting content knowledge, their thinking about learner needs, and their selection of teaching and learning strategies. Findings indicate that preservice teachers were engaging with the theoretical foundations of inclusive education; they demonstrated awareness about issues of diversity but struggled to establish learners' diverse needs and how to address these in practice. This study suggests that preservice teachers' conceptualisations of inclusive education must be given consideration and that they require robust training on how to enact inclusive pedagogy. We recommend continued support for preservice teachers in building their capacity to enhance responsiveness in inclusive practice through ITE programmes and further research.

Efforts to recruit and retain men in the Foundation Phase (FP) teaching and learning have been made all over the world. In South Africa, School Governing Bodies (SGBs) are tasked with the responsibility of diversifying schooling by recommending to the Department of Basic Education (DBE) the employment of teachers in all educational phases. Two and a half decades after the dawn of democracy in South Africa, the teaching of children in the early years is still dominated by women. This study explores how SGBs in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa approach the employment of male teachers in FP. Using a qualitative research approach, we used a semi-structured focus group discussion to generate data with five SGB parent-component members. We analysed the data thematically and found that SGBs' employment of male FP teachers is based on societal constructions of gender over employment policy guidelines. The SGB members showed a lack of policy understanding and at times misinterpreted the policies. These findings have implications for education policymakers and teacher training institutions in facilitating the smooth incorporation of males into FP teaching.

The worldview on the rights of people with disabilities has changed in pursuit of social justice, resulting in an international increase in students with disabilities enrolling at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This supports the need to meet the challenge to transform and attain Education for All (EFA) as a global imperative. In this research, I focussed on the experiences of students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) at a South African university. My findings suggest that although HEIs have policies that promote inclusive education, many students with SLDs still experience exclusion from full access and participation in teaching and learning. I conclude that authentic inclusion of students with SLDs requires improved awareness of institutional support structures as well as an inclusive pedagogical stance from lecturers.

In this article we explore the need for ongoing support for those parents/guardians raising children with intellectual disabilities. The aims of the study on which this article builds were: (i) to explore the experiences of support offered to parents of learners with intellectual disabilities in Soweto; and (ii) to evaluate how support services affect parents' perceptions and expectations of their children's future. Thirty-five parents of learners from four schools diagnosed with an intellectual disability were purposefully selected to participate in this qualitative research, with one focus group discussion conducted at each school. Findings highlight parents' concern about their children's future when exiting the school system. Furthermore, our findings emphasise the need for ongoing support in many aspects throughout the various developmental stages of the child's life. We propose a framework for coordinated support that may serve to guide parents to support their disabled children.