Although education in South Africa has undergone several changes since 1994, it is still in a phase of transition and development. Educational policy is continually being improved upon. With the introduction of the new education policies, there will be a greater need for trained learning support specialists to observe, test, diagnose and intervene with an appropriate assessment and programme as early as possible in the learners’ school career. Structure of Intellect (SOI) is a tool that can be used by these support specialists, who will be qualified to assess and intervene when learners are experiencing difficulties with learning. The SOI assessment and programme form a unit and are interrelated. At the time of this study, the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, is advocating that learners should be able to learn in their choice of home language, that is, any one of the eleven official ones in South Africa. In the meantime, many of the learners are learning in English as the main language of learning. This poses difficulties for many learners, who may be experiencing other, but related learning barriers. There is a need for a programme that will be able to develop the intellectual abilities of learners so that they can be successful in their learning. The SOI programme, designed in America and used successfully in many countries, is available for use in South Africa and has the potential to make a contribution to the educational sphere in this country. The focus of this study is the possible adaptation of this programme for use with English second-language learners. The design is one of evaluation research, emphasising process evaluation, with an overlap into programme monitoring. This research is predominantly qualitative in nature, with some quantitative information in the form of graphs and statistics. From four themes extrapolated from the data, answers to the research question were fully discussed and were reported in a qualitative approach. The themes of socio-economic influences, the learning environment, affective influences on the learner, and language and literacy were all found to be inextricably interwoven in the learners’ lives and affect them in many ways. Socio-economic influences are particularly relevant to the South African context, as there is still widespread poverty amongst a large part of the population. The learning environments in which children develop influence their interest in and ability to learn. Affective views of learners about themselves have profound effects on their motivation to learn. Language and literacy are currently at the heart of many difficulties experienced within the field of education. Erhman (1996:137) emphasises the importance of emotions and language learning in the following statement: “Every imaginable feeling accompanies learning, especially learning that is as closely related to who we are as language learning is.” Although many challenges face learners in South Africa today, one of the major ones being learning in a second and sometimes even a third language, findings from this research reflect that the SOI programme should and can be adapted for use with English second-language learners in urban South African schools. The study concludes with recommendations relating to changes to the SOI programme as it relates to vocabulary, diagrams, and the way in which instructions are given in the South African setting. The results indicate that there is scope for further research using other SOI materials, which could be suitably adapted for the South African context. / Mrs. J.V. Fourie
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:9664 |
| Date | 24 June 2008 |
| Creators | Copeland, Carolin Fay |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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