A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of Witwatersrand, in
partial fulfilment for the degree of Masters of Mathematics Education by coursework and
research report. Johannesburg, March 2017. / The current mathematics curriculum in South Africa require that learners are provided with
opportunities to develop abilities to be methodical, to generalise, to make conjectures and
try to justify and prove their conjectures. These objectives call for the use of teaching
strategies and tasks that support learners’ participation in the development of mathematical
thinking and reasoning. This means that teachers have to be cautious when selecting tasks
and deciding on teaching strategies for their classes. Tasks differ in their cognitive and
difficulty levels and opportunities they afford for learner to learn mathematics competently.
The levels of tasks selected by the teachers; the kinds of questions asked by the teachers
during the implementation of the selected tasks and how the questions asked by the teachers
and the teachers’ actions at implementations affected the levels of the tasks were the focus
of this research report.
The study was carried out in one high poverty high school in South Africa. Two teachers were
observed teaching and each teacher taught their allocated grades. One teacher was observed
teaching Grade 9s while the other taught Grade 11s. Both teacher taught number patterns at
the time their lessons were observed. The research was qualitative. Methods of data
collection and instruments included lesson observations; collection of tasks used in the
observed classes, audio-taping and field notes. Pictures of the teachers’ work and copies of
learners’ workbooks also provided some data.
The analysis of data shows that the teachers not only selected and used lower-level cognitive
demand and ‘easy’ tasks, that did not support mathematical thinking, but also did not lift up
the levels and/or maintain the ‘difficulty levels’ of the task at implementation. Teachers were
unable to initiate class discussions. Their teaching focused on ‘drill and practice’ learning and
teaching practices. / LG2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/23569 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mdladla, Emmanuel Phathumusa |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (ix, 88 leaves), application/pdf |
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