Faculty of Education
School of Educational Studies
Department of Curriculum Studies
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Research examines what it means to be both mother and academic in the competitive world of higher education. Challenging the dominant framework that views the academic mother as the subject of inevitable tension, this research establishes how these identities come together and settle within the lived experiences of the academic mother. The research composes rich biographical narratives of academic mothers who recently completed their PhDs. It offers the first-ever studies on this complex subject in South Africa, and one of the few such works in the world. The findings will appear in book form in 2006/7.
Contact person: Dr V Pillay.
This research seeks to design and implement an intervention based on the theory of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) in order to determine whether such an intervention would improve the mathematical understanding of learners in Grade 8 remedial mathematics classes. RME is based on the notion that mathematics is a human activity that involves the process of 'mathematization' i.e., moving from the informal understandings of learners to more formal and abstract mathematics. The focus of the research is on the key number concepts of place value, fractions and decimals. In the process of conducting this research we also seek to assess the viability and emerging characteristics of an intervention based on the theory of RME among low achievers in mathematics classrooms.
Contact person: Ms HE Barnes.
Our research suggests that the apparent elusive nature of learning styles account for the often unpredictable array of personal thinking style preferences. Sternberg’s work proposes that understanding information systems and the way we manage them will influence the way we think and learn. To assess this proposition, the Sternberg-Wagner Self-Assessment Inventory was applied to a sample of 503 first-year university and college students at five institutions in South Africa. The first-order and second-order factor analyses reaffirmed the presence of multiple self-management preferences among the distance learners included in the sample. Another preference indicated in the analysis was the association between an executive and a conservative thinking style, the existence of learners who prefer to be critical and analytical when reviewing learning material, and learners who apply a variety and wide range of techniques and strategies when problems have to be solved.
Contact person: Prof WJ Fraser.
During 2004 the Joint Centre for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education was successful in attracting substantial funding for the Dinaledi Leadership Development Project of the Department of Education. This project focused on the development of instructional leadership skills among principals and deputy principals in the 102 selected schools identified in the Ministry of Education's national science and technology strategy. The project was funded through a grant from USAID. In addition to providing training in high school leadership, an accompanying research project sought to document the ways in which these selected principals practice instructional leadership in science and mathematics classrooms. The emerging data suggests that exemplary principals move comfortably, but with great skill, from their more familiar roles as managers to less familiar roles as leaders who inspire teachers and generate resources to support science and mathematics achievement in their schools.
Contact person: Dr LC Jita.
The aim of the research was to develop a conceptual framework that describes what it means to teach in a South African high school. This research draws on new international literature on the context and processes of teaching. Thus it examines teaching as work rather than teaching as pedagogical function — the latter body of work being more familiar to the education literature. Our interest in documenting teaching as work is to understand the day-to-day routines of teaching, the rythms of work that teachers perform, the historical origins of teaching behaviour, and what sustains the labour of teaching in South African contexts. It is argued that by re-casting teaching as work we can begin to understand why changing teaching is so difficult under post-1994 educational reforms where the focus is almost completely on the teacher as the rational professional implementing change.
Contact person: Dr KE Weber.
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