School teachers must be prepared for ongoing, unpredictable and rapid changes in the world, therefore, they need specialised and general knowledge to be able to think independently and imaginatively. The purpose with this article was thus to report on the effectiveness of a self-directed professional development (SDPD) intervention that guided…

Current research around the middle grades has brought a heightened attention by teachers, policymakers, and researchers recognizing that this stage is a time when a students' health and social and emotional well-being directly impacts their academic progress. To date, school leaders and teachers have not been well served by explicit resources for…

Background: The high number of poor-performing learners in reading comprehension in South African schools is a concerning factor that calls for studies to mitigate this problem. The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2021 indicates that about 81% of South African Grade 4 learners who participated, failed to reach the…

Education is critical in fostering sustainable development (SD) in a world that faces many environmental problems. The integration of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in technology education (TE) can enhance the realisation of SD goals. However, teachers' views on the integration of IKS in teaching technology towards education on sustainable…

Understanding ecological concepts is crucial in tackling environmental issues like climate change, pollution, and habitat destruction. These concepts also serve as a teaching framework, encouraging learners to effect positive change. This research was conducted with grade 9 learners from three schools in Bloemfontein, South Africa, randomly…

This paper investigated the strategic devices that can be used to enhance the accounting cash journals content knowledge (ACJCK) of Grade 9 economic and management sciences (EMS) teachers. The study was qualitative, with three participants selected from one rural school in the Thabo-Mofutsanyane education district. The interviews were used to…

Background: The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study of 2016 lays claim to the need for critical thinking to be developed since, in the South African context, 78% of learners could not even retrieve explicitly stated information (lower-order thinking) from texts, as opposed to 4% in the rest of the world. Critical, higher-order…

Background: Although one of the most significant educational goals is to teach learners to comprehend written texts, the Global Education Monitoring Report (UNESCO 2021) identified that many children and adolescents have not acquired the minimum proficiency in reading even at the end of their secondary school career. South African literacy rates…

"Hall of Heroes," a digital game, was used to compare social and emotional skills of 63 adolescent female students matched for age across Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Participants were assessed on six social and emotional competencies during game play, namely impulse control, cooperation, communication, social…

This study explored what challenges teachers experienced when integrating indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), which are culture specific, into practical work in natural sciences classrooms with diverse learners. Using an exploratory qualitative case study based on an interpretive paradigm, three natural sciences teachers and two subject advisors…

Problem-solving is of importance in the teaching and learning of mathematics. Nevertheless, a baseline investigation conducted in 2016 revealed that mathematical problem-solving is virtually missing in South African classrooms. In this regard, a two-cycle design-based research project was conducted to develop a professional development (PD)…

Although physical education (PE) provides a school-based platform for the enhancement of learners' physical health, implementation challenges can have a detrimental effect on learners' motivation to participate in physical activities and their fitness levels. Within the framework of the Self-determination Theory (SDT), meeting learners' basic…

Sensemaking is pivotal in shaping organisational activities, such as instructional leadership actions in schools. This study used sensemaking to explore the outcome when two middle schools with similar multi-deprivation settings followed different instructional leadership enactment trajectories for science and mathematics. Two schools with…

In this article I provide an account of my use (in a particular context) of a 'post qualitative inquiry' approach, with my recognition that ways of approaching issues to be explored with participants, and the method of exploration, carry social and ecological consequences. The research was initiated in a school in South Africa with a sample of ten…

This qualitative study explored the level of implementation of the policy of inclusion within selected high schools. The policy of inclusion is one of the key policies enacted by the Department of Education in South Africa since the demise of apartheid. The implementation of the inclusive approach is reported to be facing multiple challenges. In…