Prof. D. van der Westhuizen

Thesis (Ph. D. (Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / The purpose of this research was to investigate teachers’ professional proficiency in terms of geography as a subject and English as the language of learning and teaching, the level of difficulty of the textbooks in terms of their difficulty of terminologies and structure, and the impact of code-switching from LoLT into local African languages on learners’ growth in geographical terminologies and communicativeness in English thinking in geography. These issues were considered by the researcher as barriers to learning and teaching of geography in grade 12 in the Limpopo Province. For the investigation of the barriers, the researcher chose research design comprising qualitative, quantitative, explorative and descriptive approaches pertinent to the study. The central figure in the investigation was the learner; the study was underpinned by the constructivist approach. The researcher considered triangulation of methods when gathering data due to the comprehensiveness of the sought data. The method employed was to gather literature on similar studies conducted by scholars elsewhere to shed light to the researcher of the problem under investigation. Structured questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, participant observations were used to collect data on focal learning and teaching activities. The researcher was keen in determining how teachers employed their preferred methods of teaching geography and the attitudes and perceptions of the learners to the activities that were part of the lessons. The researcher involved (n=16) subject teachers, and administered a 20-item questionnaire to learners. (n=407) responded to a 15-item questionnaire. Curriculum teachers (n=10) were interviewed separately from the pool of the said (n=16), subject advisers (n=2) were interviewed to provide first-hand experience. The findings affirmed that there was poor professional proficiency; textbooks were a recognized learning barrier to second language English learners in terms of the difficulty of the language which was linked to geographical concepts coined in English, teachers’ lack of linguistic competence in LoLT to supplement the difficult textbooks. The result was that this led to resorting to code-switching that deprived learners of practice in the language to attain effective learning and good performance in examinations.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Mathematics Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / The purpose of the study is to explore the effectiveness of Annual National Assessment (ANA) in monitoring the standard of mathematics education and to assess the mathematical proficiencies tested and exhibited by Grade 9 learners in South Africa. The research problem was premised on the dearth of data that justifies ANA as an evaluative assessment. As such, the study utilised five strands which were; procedural fluency, conceptual understanding, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning and productive dispositions as a theoretical framework to assess mathematics that was tested and exhibited by learners. To explore the research problem, the study used mixed methods in the context of exploratory sequential design. Document analysis was used first to capture mathematics content and cognitive levels examined by ANA. Second, learner responses were explored using four variables of achievement levels; no response, correctly answered, incorrectly answered and partially answered. First, the results from the analysis of ANA questions indicated that ANA mostly tested questions of low complexity. Second, the results from the learners’ responses revealed that the majority of learners were not proficient to ANA irrespective of low complexity testing. Third, the Porter’s alignment index for ANA and TIMSS was between moderate and perfect. Subsequently, content and cognitive levels were misaligned in the three consecutive years of ANA testing. It implies that learners were most likely to show a deficit of higher order problems solving skills which are a prerequisite of courses in advanced mathematics. Additionally, the results suggest that ANA had challenges of reliability and validity as an evaluative assessment due to inconsistency in the testing. As such, it is recommended that the complexity of ANA be addressed, the content areas where learners are not proficient be addressed and the alignment of ANA must be frequently calculated to monitor the standard of mathematics education in South Africa effectively. Keywords Alignment index, mean deviation, strands of mathematical proficiency, systemic assessment.