The Dynamic Classroom
Contextual Pitfalls: Focusing on Capacitating Teachers to Teach in a Diverse Learning Environment
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mirna Nel, Mary Grosser, Magda Kloppers, Stef Esterhuizen
In 2001 South Africa moved to a more inclusive education approach with the introduction of Education White Paper 6 (EWP6). The goal of this policy is to ensure that all learners receive quality education. A pivotal strategy to ascertain this goal is to capacitate teachers in applying a variety of teaching strategies to address learners’ diverse needs in one classroom. However, sixteen years after EWP6 this appears to remain an unattainable goal. Several research studies report on the poor quality of education in South Africa, asserting that teachers struggle to cope with the diverse learning needs in one classroom. The purpose of the research project, reported on in this presentation, was to empower teachers in employing the Six-Bricks Lego and Six Thinking Hats strategies to improve learners’ thinking, language, perceptual, socio-emotional and motoric skills. A mixed-methods research approach using a quasi-experimental design was employed. Three primary schools were purposefully selected to use as pilot projects. Contextual factors as possible variables impacting on the research were thrashed out beforehand with the help of an advisory committee. However, during the implementation expected and unforeseen contextual issues challenged the researchers to recognise that these issues can become pitfalls in conducting authentic research.
Differentiating Learning for All Students: An Innovative School-university Partnership Initiative to Support Pre-service Teacher Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Teresa Angelico, Larissa Mc Lean Davies, Melody Anderson, Daniela Acquaro
The process for constructing this rubric facilitated the development of a shared understanding, between teachers, pre-service teachers and academics, of how to differentiate teaching to cater for diverse needs of students in various educational contexts. This common understanding provides the basis for a collaborative approach to the assessment of pre-service teachers’ performance during professional experience placements. Drawing on a variety of sources of data, including surveys, interviews, and course and subject reviews, the researchers found that process of collaboratively designing and implementing a government funded project enabled school and university staff to develop a shared understanding of how best to support pre-service teachers during placements, through provision of feedback and assessment of teaching practice using the differentiation rubric. The focus on the professional development and engagement of teachers supported schools to build their capacity to support pre-service teachers during placement. The findings have implications for providers of initial teacher education as they seek to ensure that their pre-service teachers successfully transition to work by better preparing them to be responsive to the needs of all.
Participatory Parity : Classroom Engagement and Epsitemological Access
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Garraway
The paper explores the type and quality of students’ classroom engagement and draws from the conference theme of "serving students" needs/challenges in pedagogy and curriculum and Knowledge ecologies: linking research and teaching in higher education. This is particularly relevant in South Africa where students have highlighted their sense of alienation form university discourses. Of interest is the extent to which students experience some measure of parity of participation (from the work of Nancy Fraser) in these engagements. Such “participatory parity” broadly refers to students being able to act on a more or less equal footing with their peers and lecturers, and is in response to increasing diversity of students and the importance of ‘hearing’ their voices. Though much has been written about student engagement and its educational value (e.g. Tinto), such engagement is not typically examined through Fraser’s parity lens. Such parity matters because students are able to experience themselves as valued participants in the social world of the university. However, as what is being discussed is the university classroom, parity of participation in itself is not the only outcome, it is also gaining access to disciplinary knowledge through such participation. In order to examine the nexus between participatory parity and knowledge access a methodology for examining participation drawn from activity theory is mobilised. The paper then concludes with reflecting on the usefulness of using this theory and also the usefulness of promoting participatory parity in classroom engagement, as the research is taken back to the lecturers concerned.
Finding and Making Free Space to Teach Biology Well
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sharon Pelech
How can biology teachers create free space for their students to experience science as a living discipline where students can develop a love for science within the demands of overbearing curricular content and limited time? Using Hermeneutic inquiry, the research in this proposed paper examines how teachers experienced these tensions within their classrooms and the impact on students' engagement in biology. In addition, faced with possible curricular changes through many countries going through attempts for major curriculum redesign, many teachers in this study demonstrated a form of pedagogical conservatism where change becomes restricted to minor adjustments. The proposed paper will, therefore, explore what seems to be a double conundrum wherein teachers claim they would like to create free space for their students but, when the possibility emerges, teacher have difficulty seeing how things could be otherwise. This paper will identify what free space may look like in practice and some of the "taken for granted" assumptions that obscure further possibilities for what teaching biology could mean.
