Abstract
Past research has highlighted the correlation between reading skills and academic success yet there continues to be an under-emphasis on the development of reading skills at the earlier grade levels in South Africa. This paper discusses aspects of a study conducted on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and how it affects literacy teaching at Grades 3 and 4 levels. This is part of a mixed methods, multiple case study that was carried out at two Midlands schools in Kwazulu-Natal Province, between 2015 and 2017, with a total of 8 Grades 3 and 4 teachers. Data was collected by means of 35 recorded video lessons of language and reading teaching. The teaching practice of the teachers were captured via a classroom instrument called the Facilitative Orientation to Reading Teaching or FORT. The purpose of the instrument was to capture what teachers do when they teach reading that either helps or hinders literacy acquisition, and its design was based around current best practice in teaching. The teachers were separated into two groups: one that used additional training for literacy teaching and one that only used the Curriculum Assessment Policy education system (CAPS) current in South Africa. Findings were that, although the PCK of additionally trained teachers in this study has been shown to positively affect reading teaching practice, there are aspects of their PCK that remain resistant to change.
Presenters
Kellie SteinkeLecturer, Faculty of Development, University of Mpumalanga, Mpumalanga, South Africa Rosemary Wildsmith-Cromarty
Research Professor, Research and Innovation, North-West university
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
PEDAGOGICAL, CONTENT, KNOWLEDGE, GRADE 3, GRADE 4, LITERACY, READING, TEACHING
