M.Ed. / Eleven official languages are distinguished in South Africa. Although multilingualism is characteristic of the South African society, it is still a relatively new phenomenon in South African public schools. For the teacher it offers a multilingual classroom - a great challenge on account of the unfamiliar phenomenon. Many demands are made on the teacher's skills in order to accompany pupils whose home language may differ from the medium of education. Most teachers do not, however, possess the necessary skills and they apply a "hit-and-miss" method in order to accompany these pupils adequately. This presents a special challenge, particularly to the grade one teacher, since grade one pupils are expected to express their needs in words. The grade one teacher is therefore self-reliant in accompanying these pupils without receiving any educational accompaniment herself. Hence the teacher finds herself in an educational situation which is dangerously unfamiliar. From the perspective of educational psychology, this educational situation is regarded as hampering to both the child and the teacher. The educational psychologist consequently faces a special challenge to intervene in an effort to ensure that the accompanying process between teacher and pupils goes smoothly. This study aims to explore and describe how the grade one teacher experiences multilingualism and to establish guidelines for the educational psychologist for the accompaniment of grade one teachers in multilingual classrooms. An explorative, descriptive, contextual and qualitative study was carried out with a view p obtain insight and understanding in respect of the grade one teacher and how she experiences multilingualism. The phenomenological interviewing method was used to collect data. The interviews were audiotaped and then transcribed. The sample population consisted of four grade one teachers who were specifically selected for the purpose of the study. The data were processed according to Tesch's method and the services of an independent coder were obtained. The results of the interviews are organised in main categories. These categories are: : i) multilingualism as straneous for the teacher; ii) multilingualism hinders the effective flow of activities in the classroom; and iii) a creative problem solving attitude. Guidelines for the accompaniment of teachers in a multilingual grade one class by the educational psychology are discussed according to the above three categories. This classification was interdependent because, when one aspects is dealt with, another is essentially affected. For this reason, the educational psychologist's accompaniment of the grade one teacher should follow a holistic approach which addresses all three aspects. Finally, it is clear that multilingualism in the grade one class has many facets. In general, it appears that the grade one teacher experiences many constraints and that the educational psychologist can provide meaningful accompaniment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:9049 |
| Date | 13 August 2012 |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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