Background/purpose: Technology education (TE) offers hands-on activities through a design process to be an environmentally-oriented subject. TE can be used to reduce littering, an environmental problem that also has health implications for modern-day society. This research study sought to explore the challenges that impede TE teachers in…

The intervention programmes have a direct influence on teachers' knowledge of teaching different topics. This paper focuses on how Grade 8 natural science teachers' knowledge developed during an intervention programme. Eight schools were selected to participate, and 25 Grade 8 Natural Sciences teachers from Gauteng province participated. Data were…

Background: While the concept of translanguaging has gained significant traction in education in multilingual contexts, it is also debated and contested. Claims are made about what translanguaging can and cannot do, how different it might be from code-switching, whether it arises from a single repertoire of language resources or from use of…

COVID-19 has permeated news since December 2019 and has impacted all areas of life. Despite widespread coverage of COVID-related risks, there is limited understanding of adolescent resilience in Global South contexts (e.g., Africa) and against the backdrop of COVID-19. We, therefore, conducted a qualitative secondary analysis of 79 documents…

This paper report on first-year student teachers' reflections on the difficulty levels of mathematics concepts in the senior phase baseline assessments. This paper emanated after first year student teachers completed the baseline assessments for each of the three grades in the senior phase, Grades 7, 8, and 9. One hundred and sixteen (116) first…

Problem-based learning (PBL) has the potential to enhance both cognitive and affective engagement but has been criticised for being unsuitable for learners with low levels of knowledge and skills, such as South African learners from poor backgrounds. In such cases, guided problem-based learning (GPBL), which includes direct instruction and teacher…

Background: Our article argues that the role of translingual instruction in mathematics classrooms is under-recognised in South Africa, as policymakers, teacher educators, teachers, learners, and parents assume that mathematics is just about numbers and calculations and not language. This is despite findings on the value of using children's…

Indications are that cyberstanders can be negatively affected by witnessing cyberbullying incidents and are even more likely than direct victims of cyberbullying to report symptoms of stress. However, cyberbystanders are understudied in the cyberbullying literature because most research predominantly focuses on perpetrators or direct victims of…

In 2013, as a strategy to enhance academic performance, the South African Department of Basic Education (DBE) published several English Across the Curriculum (EAC) manuals to guide in-service teachers who did not have prior knowledge of how to integrate the teaching of content subjects with language learning. The DBE introduced the EAC strategy as…

School science subjects may be informed by curriculum ideologies such as discipline-centered, service-centered, student-centered, or citizen-centered ideologies. The distinct characteristics of each ideology complicate the extent to which science subjects could integrate different curriculum ideologies. Consequently, the present research explored…

One of the main objectives of international large-scale assessments is to make comparisons between different countries, education policies, education systems, or subgroups. One of the main criteria for making comparisons between different groups is to ensure measurement invariance. The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance…

The present study explores the validity of inferences that may be drawn from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) learner achievement data by measuring the South African curriculum-TIMSS alignment for the Grade 8 science assessments from 2007 to 2019. The Singapore curriculum--TIMSS alignment indices are a fair…

The calculation of the total surface area of prisms forms part of the Mathematics curriculum in South Africa. This paper explores Grade 8 students' errors when learning about the surface area of prisms. The study was guided by the interpretive paradigm and adopted a qualitative approach in a form of a case study design. Data from diagnostic test's…

Responding constructively to unexpected events during a lesson is a particularly challenging facet of teaching. This study aimed to investigate how a secondary school mathematics teacher responded to learners' unexpected or unplanned offers in the teaching of algebra. A total of three sequential lessons were video recorded and the quality of the…

Mathematics is a gateway to science-related careers and all stakeholders want to improve the achievement levels in mathematics. In this study we use data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2015 to investigate the association between the learner situational factors of gender, grade level age appropriateness, school…