The extended lockdown in 2020 found South African educators employing innovative strategies to teach and assess Foundation Phase learners. Educators had to make do with reduced hours in the classroom and experienced new challenges in delivering curriculum content to learners that had barely grown accustomed to the formal classroom setup. Empirical…

Foundation phase teachers in South African schools follow a socio-constructivist approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics, which entails that learners experiment freely with concepts and are encouraged to communicate and share their thoughts and ideas. In an effort to understand the impact that the physical learning environment, such…

This article presents a comparative case study on the ways in which children's school ecologies facilitate their adjusting positively to first grade in risk-filled contexts in South Africa and Finland. The insights of two children (one South African, one Finnish) from socio-economically disadvantaged communities, their teachers, parents and…