Breadth and depth of curriculum are important for success in science teaching and learning. Curriculum theorists recommend less breadth and more depth than overloaded, superficial science curricula. This study investigates breadth and depth in the official biology syllabi in the seventh to eighth or ninth years in four diverse jurisdictions,…

This paper reports on the second stage of an international study exploring the future of secondary school music education. Within a discursive context that tends to regard music education as failing to meet the needs of many students, we instigated a three-step Delphi study to capture views from educators across the English-speaking world.…

This paper examines how seven teachers working in contexts of limited resources used the prescribed textbook for teaching, and the kinds of teacher-textbook relationships forged in the interactions. The study employs a sociocultural perspective to explore the processes by which teachers mobilise the affordances of the textbook to the teacher's…

The majority of LGBT research in schools has focused almost exclusively on sexuality diversity, leaving the experiences of transgender and gender diverse youth a much neglected area of scholarly inquiry. Using qualitative in-depth interviews, we explore the schooling experiences of transgender and non-binary youth in South Africa. Our findings…

Twenty years into the millennium, the world has been confronted with a pandemic that has had an immeasurable impact on the workplace, learning environment and related technologies. Technology and technological advancements are founded on three disciplines, namely Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science. Internationally, an integration of the…

The purpose of this study is to explore the perception of subject advisers on curriculum change and delivery in secondary schools. The survey design which adopts quantitative research approach was used. Random sampling procedure is used to select b samples of 300 respondents in the study who are subject advisers. Questionnaires were administered…

Background: Poor mathematics performance in South Africa is well known. The COVID-19 pandemic was expected to exacerbate the situation. Aim: To investigate Grade 7 learners' mathematical knowledge at the end of primary school and to compare mathematical performance of Grade 7 and 8 learners in the context of the pandemic. Setting: Data were…

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) education in South Africa and elsewhere has been envisioned to be a strategy that can contribute to new ways of teaching, learning and understanding. However, very few studies have assessed how GIS is taught in South African high schools. Consequently, this study aims to analyze GIS education dynamics and…

This study reports on the analysis of South African Life Sciences and Biology textbooks for the inclusion of the nature of science using a conceptual framework developed by Chiappetta, Fillman and Sethna (1991). In particular, we investigated the differences between the representation of the nature of science in Biology textbooks that were written…

The aim of this study was to explore physics teachers' ramification of theory and practices as a result of physics content and pedagogical changes in the Further Education and Training (FET) phase. The researchers adopted the mixed method research approach. The quantitative aspect involved 109 physics teachers and the qualitative approach used ten…

The stakes are high for sex education in South Africa: it has been estimated that 8.7% of young people live with HIV. Within primarily US and UK contexts, there has been much debate over the relative merits of abstinence-only and comprehensive sexual education programmes. These perspectives have largely been presented as irreconcilable, but…

Face-to-face adult communication with young people about sexuality is, for the most part, assigned to two main groups of people: educators tasked with teaching school-based sexuality education that is provided as part of the compulsory Life Orientation (LO) learning area, and parents. In this paper, we report on a study conducted with Further…

One of the major causes of the problems affecting evolution education is a lack of acceptance of this concept, particularly by some people who have strongly entrenched religious beliefs. This paper reports on a section of a study which explored the influence of the beliefs of learners in some secondary schools from the Vhembe District in the…

A study on the effect of the use of computer simulations (CS) on the acquisition of knowledge and cognitive load was undertaken with 104 Grade 11 learners in four schools in rural South Africa on the physics topic geometrical optics. Owing to the lack of resources a teacher-centred approach was followed in the use of computer simulations. The…

The potential of science to transform lives has been highlighted by a number of scholars. This means that critical socio-scientific issues (SSIs) must be integrated into science curricula. Development of context-specific scientific knowledge and twenty-first-century learning skills in science education could be used to address SSIs such as…