This study explored students' mathematics-related beliefs and the relationship between the beliefs and their strategies for solving non-routine mathematical problems. The study was guided by Daskalogianni and Simpson's 2001 belief systems categories and strategies for non-routine mathematical problems. The participants were 625 grade 11 students…

The purpose of this research was to explore South African Grade 11 learners' conceptual understanding of "image formation by lenses". The participants for this study were 70 Grade 11 learners from a selected senior secondary school in Mthatha, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The qualitative approach employed in the study made use of…

A new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) was introduced in South Africa in 2012 to, among others, drive a learner-centred and constructivist approach to practical work in the high school subject Physical Sciences. This study investigates teachers' concerns with the implementation of practical work in Physical Sciences. A survey of…

Purpose: An emphasis on school performance is not just a national issue, but must be examined within the global context. Successful leadership is ensured by school leaders' compliance to a set of basic practices within particular school contexts. The impact of leadership styles on performance, the work environment and job satisfaction is…

Challenges and changes in the South African education system could have an impact on teachers' professional wellbeing, which, in turn, results in changes in teacher retention rates. The leadership of the school principal directly influences teachers' experience of professional wellbeing. Some research focuses on teacher wellbeing and plenty of…

Noise, although ubiquitous, is seldom considered as a factor that may impede learning. In South Africa, most learners are multilingual and learn in English, which is their second language. Most noise studies have been conducted in the Global North, where the school context differs from the Global South. In this article, using questions selected…

This article reports on the design of the Professional Development Needs Analysis Questionnaire for Deputy Principals (PDNAQ) to measure the problems they experienced and the skills they needed. In the literature, no validated questionnaire to measure the problems experienced and skills needed by deputy principals in South African schools was…

This article reports on a study investigating physical sciences teachers' stages of concern (SoC) profiles during the implementation of the curriculum and assessment policy statement (CAPS) in South Africa. Throughout reform implementation, it is conceivable that teachers go through different SoC, ranging from giving low priority to the reform…

I report on an investigation into a group of Free State educators' recognition of bullying, their reactions to incidences of bullying, and their perceptions of the effectiveness of a number of bullying prevention strategies. The research instrument was a synthesis of the Delaware Research Questionnaire and questions based on findings from previous…

Learners' attitude to learning science plays a vitally important role with respect to career choices. This study reflects on the nature of the learners' attitude towards science and the effect of gender. A total of 547 Grade 7 learners from an urban district of Gauteng Province (South Africa) were administered a questionnaire to probe their…

South Africa has a high rate of substance abuse among youths both in and out of school with East London in the Eastern Cape Province experiencing an increase in young people ages 20 years and below seeking treatment for substance abuse. The purpose of the study was to explore the knowledge of high school learners (grades 10 to 12) regarding…

In this paper, we compared the levels of awareness, knowledge and attitudes (AKA) about environmental pollution of secondary school students from two South African provinces. The purpose was to determine the levels of AKA between students living under different environmental conditions. These two groups were students from a coal-mining province…

The South African secondary school curriculum emphasises the importance of science process skills in its respective natural sciences curricula. The purpose of this study was to explore the views of student teachers with regard to the importance they attach to these skills. A 14-item questionnaire was administered to 75 third- and fourth-year…

Mathematics is a key subject necessary to the promotion of economic development, particularly in developing countries; however, South African learners perform poorly in Mathematics when benchmarked against their counterparts in other countries. One way to address this issue is by taking cognisance of the learners' learning styles when teaching.…

This article reports on using open-response questions to reveal the level of, and change in, conceptual understanding of a small sample of Grade 11 learners of trigonometry in a South African high school. The investigation used learner response sheets in a regular classroom with the teacher as researcher. Combining the idea of concept image and…