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Background: Learner performance in literacy in the primary education sector is in a state of crisis in South Africa. Whilst many more learners have physical access to education post-1994, the quality of education remains polarised along socio-economic lines. This article sets out to engage with current literature on literacy interventions implemented in South Africa in order to develop an understanding of the key features of interventions, which affect positive change. Aim: This review provides an overview of the scope and type of primary school-level literacy interventions embarked upon in the last 15 years in South Africa. An analysis of some of the key findings on the impact of these interventions is provided. Method: A systematic review was conducted using the key words 'literacy intervention' and 'reading intervention'. The selection of articles was further refined with a specific focus on primary school interventions in South Africa. Results: The review focuses on specific literacy interventions where 'intervention' is defined as active and purposeful engagement to improve decoding, vocabulary, fluency and/or comprehension of primary school learners. This article reviews the documented literacy interventions and draws out some of the key features of successful interventions. It also makes broader reflective comments about what this exercise reveals about the state of literacy interventions in South Africa. Conclusion: Interventions have generally been ad hoc and uncoordinated and have not wrought systemic change. Moving forward in a coordinated manner must be based amongst other things on learning from interventions that have been reviewed here.

Background: The study on which this article is based investigated the Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching (MKfT) that a well experienced Grade 2 teacher utilized when teaching counting. Aim: In this paper we share excerpts from one of the lessons of this Grade 2 teacher, which we analyzed to illuminate the various domains of MKfT and their interconnectedness in the teaching of counting. Setting: The research was conducted in a former Model C school in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Method: Using a case study methodology, 15 Grade 2 mathematics lessons were observed, video recorded and transcribed. Two formal interviews based on two selected video-recorded lessons were conducted to understand this teacher's practice. The data were analysed using Deborah Ball and colleagues' MKfT framework. Results: The study found that Foundation Phase mathematics teaching requires the knowledge and tactful employment of all six knowledge domains as described in the work of Ball and colleagues. The Knowledge of Content and Teaching (KCT) domain, was found to be essential in teaching counting in Grade 2. The other five domains supported and informed the KCT domain. Conclusion: We suggest from the insights gained here that research examining the MKfT that competent teachers draw on in teaching Foundation Phase mathematics could assist in developing curricula for in-service and pre-service teacher education programs.

The advent of a democratically-elected government in South Africa in 1994 disrupted the erstwhile synchrony between the schooling system, teacher education system, curriculum and pedagogy. Yet many South African teachers continue to express their teacher identities much like they did prior to 1994. The explanations posited for why this is the case tend to focus on systemic arguments. Notwithstanding their importance, these arguments render teachers as products of the social system. In this paper, it is argued that reflexivity is central to the emergence and expression of teachers' identities. Reflexivity refers to the mental capacity to consider oneself in relation to one's social contexts and visa versa. The modes of reflexivity of a grade 3 teacher are examined to demonstrate how she mediates the social structures that condition the emergence and expression of her primary mathematics teacher identity. Drawing on a social realist analysis of narrative data and classroom observations, the paper traces her identity historically into the present. The paper suggests that over the years her concerns in the world, and modes of reflexivity, have changed. These are key to understanding the decisions she makes in the classroom and how she deals with the social structures that condition the manner in which she expresses her role as teacher, that is, her primary mathematics teacher identity. The shift in her primary mathematics teacher identity has led to her reproducing the old roles of the teacher as exemplified in the pre-1994 curriculum. While the paper is located in the South African context, the implications for teacher education have international significance.

In this paper we examine the extent of the focus on number sense, enabled and accompanied by the development of efficient strategies for mental maths, in the foundation and intermediate phase. We do this through documentary analysis of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) for these phases and the Annual National Assessments (ANAs). We argue that number sense and mental agility are critical for the development and understanding of algorithms and algebraic thinking introduced in the intermediate phase. However, we note from our work with learners, and broader evidence in the South African landscape, that counting-based strategies in the foundation phase are replaced in the intermediate phase with traditional algorithms. We share experiences in the form of vignettes to illuminate this problem. Whilst literature and the CAPS curriculum emphasise the important role of mental computation within number sense, we note that the ANAs do not include a "mental mathematics" component. This absence in assessment, where assessment often drives teaching, is problematic. We conclude with the suggestion that research be conducted into the viability/appropriateness of an orally administered mental mathematics assessment component in the ANAs as a way to establish a focus on number sense across the foundation and intermediate phases.