In poor-performing, resource-constrained education systems, such as South Africa, solutions to improve academic achievement have tended to focus on resources and cognitive factors. An area that requires more attention is the importance of non-cognitive, psychosocial factors and their relationship with academic performance. These factors are…

Mathematics achievement is core to South Africa's readiness for digital innovation, yet current pass rates in this subject are below the global average. Simply attributing mathematics performance to intelligence does not fully account for the multifaceted reality of achievement in the subject. The current study investigated the value of both…

Folktales stem from the oral tradition passed down over generations by the people who recounted them. These tales form part of the prescribed syllabus, CAPS, in South Africa specifically for Grade 9 English First Additional (EFAL) learners. The study explored the perceptions of folktales by 9 learners and 9 teachers. It was a qualitative study…

The increased emphasis on implementing effective integrated STEM education calls for in-depth student understanding of the nature of each separate discipline. This study examined how South African Grade 9 and 10 students who had completed 'Natural Sciences and Technology' as a school subject, perceived technology and its relationship with science…

A growing concern is the low number of learners who choose to participate in music during their high school years. Extending previous research by McPherson and O'Neill, this study explored South African high school learners' motivation and value perceptions to continue with music as an elective in grade 10. A further objective was to understand…

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…

South Africa lags behind in terms of competing globally in science and technology. Thus, the purpose of the study was to investigate teacher factors that influenced learners' motivation to learn science in a secondary school. The study also aimed to determine whether significant differences in motivation regarding teacher influence existed among…

Learners have different values that could affect their learning and eventually their performance in mathematics. However, many teachers are unaware of these values. Therefore, this paper reports on a study that established the values learners consider as important in the learning of mathematics. The participants were 274 Grade 9 learners, selected…

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…

Learners' mathematics performance globally and locally has been a major concern. Learners are generally not performing well in mathematics. This is also true of learners in Kwagga West Circuit, Nkangala district in Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Performing badly in the subject negatively affects them, preventing them from progressing to the…

There is concern about mathematics success and its related pedagogy. Society has seen rapid changes in the economy and technology with a call for these changes to be reflected within the classroom. New methods of teaching mathematics are being sought with the purpose to improve teaching and learning while making mathematics relatable to the new…

Resilience can be viewed as successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances (e.g. poverty). This article reports on an investigation of which the primary aim was to establish how additional educational support enhances adolescents' resilience and academic performance. A quantitative approach was followed using two schools.…

The study investigated the relationship between South African Grade 9 teachers' and learners' perceptions and attitudes with their mathematics achievement. The study used a secondary analysis of the TIMSS 2015 mathematics data, guided by the conceptual framework model of Scheerens (2000). The quantitative data collected through teachers' and…

Awareness of one's own strengths and weaknesses during visualisation is often initiated by the imagination -- the faculty for intuitively visualising and modelling an object. Towards exploring the role of metacognitive awareness and imagination in facilitating visualisation in solving a mathematics task, four secondary schools in the North West…

In this paper we focus on how South African students' ideas about the human body are constituted in their descriptions of three different scenarios involving the pathway of a sandwich, a painkiller and a glass of water through the body. In particular, we have studied the way in which the students transferred ideas between the sandwich and the…