The Science Made Sensible (SMS) programme began as a partnership between the University of Miami (UM), Florida, USA, and some public schools in Miami. In this programme, postgraduate students from UM work with primary school science teachers to engage learners in science through the use of inquiry-based, hands-on activities. Due to the success of…

The skill of reading is regarded as the cornerstone of literacy learning in the foundation phase. Although it is the most complex skill to master, it forms part of literacy teaching. Most learners begin schooling without having any kind of exposure to reading. This lack of exposure introduces a number of challenges, which are consequently…

How might Life Skills be conceptualised in the Foundation Phase of schooling when a tradition of feminist literature has revealed the regulation, denial and the silencing of both gender and sexuality in early childhood? This article presents one Grade 2 teacher's perspective of addressing sexuality education in an impoverished township primary…

The purpose of this research was to develop the Caring School Leadership Questionnaire (CSLQ) as a valid and reliable instrument to measure the extent of care being given by school leaders (principals) to teachers. The research involved 1,041 teachers and 65 principals from 68 primary schools in the North-West Province of South Africa. The…

In this paper analysis of Grade 3 mathematics teaching in South Africa shows evidence of associations between teaching and learning outcomes in an adapted learning study. The intervention dealt with partitioning and part-part-whole relations, taking a structural approach within tasks and representations. Our analysis of this teaching emphasizes…

We argue that opening a space for dialogic, imaginative writing in the classroom can create entry points for a culturally responsive writing pedagogy (CRWP). We explore how collaborative writing for a pre-existing community digital platform (FundZa) and audience aids the implementation of CRWP in a creative writing course for South African…

This paper reports on the findings from individual interviews and focus group discussions involving six teachers implementing the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum (SMC) in the Foundation Phase (Grade R to Grade 3) in a school in South Africa. The interviews presented an opportunity to explore teachers' experiences with their attempts to use the…

Qualitative investigation can provide invaluable information towards understanding the influence of school nutrition education (NE). The study explored teachers' perceptions of the immediate impact of NE on learners' eating behaviours. Twenty-four primary school teachers in the Bronkhorstspruit district, Gauteng, South Africa, who taught nutrition…

The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) carries out large-scale cross-national research studies in member countries in the Southern and Eastern Africa region. It aims to assess the conditions of schooling and performance levels of learners and teachers in the areas of literacy and numeracy. SACMEQ has…

Today's learners are born into a multimedia world and feel quite comfortable in an electronic learning environment. The high-quality sound, realistic colour images, graphics, narrations, real-time recordings and full motion videos from multimedia, which are integrated in History lessons, are what the learners of today want and need in their…

Thirteen years have passed since the Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, implemented the National Policy on Religion and Education in 2003 (South African Government 2003). The policy provided a new framework to promote diversity by educating young people about the religions of others as well as respect towards freedom of religious expression, a…

In this paper we highlight teacher experiences of the administration of high-stakes testing, in particular, of the 2012 Annual National Assessments (ANAs). The exploration is based on data gathered across two primary numeracy teacher development projects in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng in the form of open-ended questionnaires designed to elicit…

When academics, who occupy a traditional position of power and privilege, engage with community members whose thinking, attitudes, and responses have been shaped by ongoing sociohistorical oppression and disadvantage, democratic participation is not easy to attain. Yet, unless community members feel able to participate freely, the valuable local…

In South Africa, very few standard-setting exercises are carried out in education and, if they are, teachers are not involved in their execution. As a result, there is no clear understanding of what the standard is and how it was arrived at. This situation is compounded when teachers are held accountable when learners do not meet the prescribed…

This paper contributes to the theory and evidence that mathematical cognition is embodied. Drawing on the practices of primary teachers in South Africa engaged in a longitudinal research and development project -- Wits Maths Connect--Primary -- we report on aspects of lessons aimed at developing number sense through whole-class teacher-learner…