A research report is submitted to the School of Education, Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education by combination of coursework and research
Johannesburg, 2016. / This qualitative study aimed to understand teachers’ identities and teaching practices in the Gauteng Primary Literacy and Mathematics Strategy. The research, which is a case study, was conducted with six Foundation Phase teachers, which included two Heads of Department (HODs). The setting of the study was a primary school that was declared underperforming in 2013, after the low performance in Annual National Assessments. The prescriptive syllabus type of curriculum known as the Gauteng Province Literacy and Mathematics Strategy (GPLMS) was implemented due to the low Grade six Mathematics results. Semi-structured interviews were the primary research instruments used to generate data on how teachers understood their identities and teaching practices in a GPLMS school.
A major finding was that teachers renegotiated their identities in order to deal with the changing teaching context that came with GPLMS. The study identified three groups of teachers who dealt with the changes in different ways: their learning trajectories and communities of practice, along with their personal identities shaped the ways in which they responded strategy. The teachers had a good sense of teacher identity before being declared underperforming. Another major finding was that teachers changed their pedagogical approaches order to teach according to the detailed, prescriptive lesson plans. What is problematic is that some teachers resorted to skipping some parts of the content, prescribed in the lesson plans, in order to finish the syllabus on time. Of great concern is that none of the participants received training on using the GPLMS or even CAPS from their district: teachers ought to have sound pedagogical knowledge that can ultimately afford epistemological access to the learners. Research on teachers’ identities and understanding teaching practices cannot be ignored since they teachers at the forefront of knowledge delivery. / LG2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/23661 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Moremi, Tsholofelo |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (89 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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