Tanya Bekker - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Tanya Bekker
Frontiers in Education
IntroductionSouth Africa embraced the move to inclusive education after the political transformat... more IntroductionSouth Africa embraced the move to inclusive education after the political transformation in 1994 by partaking in and subscribing to the international Education for All (EFA) drive initiated in 1990 at the Jomtien World Conference on Education for All, which declared that all children, youth and adults should receive a basic education. Furthermore, the Salamanca Statement of 1994 the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) of 2006 and the Sustainable Development Goal 4 are internationally regarded as the most important influence on the transformation of education systems to become more inclusive and consequently continue to have an important influence on education policies and practices in South Africa. The key policy driving inclusive education in South Africa is Education White Paper 6 (EWP6). EWP6 affirms that teachers play a central role in implementing an inclusive education system. Therefore, training is emphasized as a key s...
South African Computer Journal, Dec 5, 2022
This article places inclusive education in conversation with digital education, and it does so fo... more This article places inclusive education in conversation with digital education, and it does so for two reasons. The first reason is that the increased use of digital education will need to be inclusive and should not result in increasing inequalities. The second reason is that the experience within inclusive education provides valuable insights which could benefit the development of digital education. This article is conceptually based, and its aim is to show how experiences in inclusive education could benefit the development of digital education and vice versa. It argues that like inclusive education, the increased use of digital education in the future will require a redefinition and revisioning of education. While policies and legislation as well as training in digital education are important, this article recommends that digital education will need to engage with the deep-seated values, beliefs and assumptions held by teachers, students, parents, and society at large, and will require careful attention being paid to the systematic organisation of online learning in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment just as inclusive education.
African Journal of Disability
Background: Although inclusive education is widely discussed, its implementation has not, arguabl... more Background: Although inclusive education is widely discussed, its implementation has not, arguably, been far-reaching. There remains a lack of specific, targeted approaches towards fully including learners with physical and mental impairments in the educational space.Objectives: This study investigated the extent of the inclusion of learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in three schools in Johannesburg.Method: A qualitative interpretivist design was adopted. Teachers who work with learners with ASD were interviewed using open-ended questions. The sampled data were analysed using thematic analysis, making use of both a priori codes and emergent codes that arose from the open-ended questions.Results: The findings reveal numerous pedagogic strategies such as differentiation, scaffolding, use of visual cues, group work and collaboration that can include learners with ASD in the classroom space.Conclusion: Teacher collaboration and teacher training are vital in ensuring that learn...
Journal of Education, 2021
Policy and legislative frameworks in South Africa mandate inclusive education that, given the con... more Policy and legislative frameworks in South Africa mandate inclusive education that, given the contextual realities of classrooms, requires teachers to be responsive to diversity. There is, however, an identified gap between policy ideals and enactment that is exacerbated by a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the nature of inclusive education and practice that is still viewed by many as being limited to considerations of special needs rather than broader considerations of diversity as well. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) has a role to play in challenging and disrupting teacher thinking to support conceptualisations of inclusive education that position teachers' responsiveness to diversity. We used the Inclusive Pedagogical Approach in Action (IPAA) Framework (Florian & Spratt, 2013) since it focuses on inclusive pedagogy as a way of thinking about and practising inclusion to support the learning of all. We conducted the qualitative research at a public urban university in Jo...
South African Journal of Education, 2021
One way in which the practice of inclusion can be actualised in classrooms is through the use of ... more One way in which the practice of inclusion can be actualised in classrooms is through the use of consistent, appropriate differentiated instruction. What remains elusive, however, is insight into what teachers in different contexts think and believe about differentiation, how consistently they differentiate instruction and what challenges they experience in doing so. In the study reported on here high school classrooms in a private and a government school in Lesotho were compared in order to determine teachers’ thoughts and beliefs about differentiation, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and the challenges faced by teachers who implement this inclusive practice. Sampled teachers offered their views on what they understood differentiated instruction to be, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and identified challenges via an administered questionnaire. Data analysis was based on frequency counts and bar charts for comparative purposes. Findings indicate that privat...
Journal of Education, 2021
In this article, we view epistemological access as organising systematic teaching and learning, a... more In this article, we view epistemological access as organising systematic teaching and learning, and we focus on teaching and learning online during COVID-19 pandemic conditions in 2020. We used a Survey Monkey questionnaire with two universities in South Africa that moved their teaching and learning online to survey whether lecturers thought that the extent of epistemological access was affected when this happened. Our findings indicate that lecturers feel that the emergency teaching and learning did compromise their teaching, and, while most used existing face-to-face materials online, and some changed the content when they went online, they changed the assessment formats. We argue that these changes, although understandable given pandemic conditions, did not necessarily constitute the kind of carefully designed, paced, sequenced, and assessed online teaching and learning that also enhances epistemological access. We indicate that if one is to accept that the so-called new normal i...
African Journal of Disability, 2021
Background: Despite a commitment to achieving inclusion for all by the Botswana government, the e... more Background: Despite a commitment to achieving inclusion for all by the Botswana government, the enrolment of students with disabilities in Botswana’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions is still fraught with confusion as reflected by its practice and implementation. Exclusionary rather than inclusive practices remain prevalent.Objective: This study explores students with mild intellectual disabilities’ experiences of inclusion or exclusion in TVET institutions using key concepts of the Capability Approach.Method: A phenomenological interpretive qualitative design was adopted. One government, technical vocational institution, offering programmes for students with disabilities in Botswana was conveniently selected. Fourteen students were purposefully selected from this institution based on the criterion that they were students with mild intellectual disabilities. Individual interviews served as the data collection method to enable participants to voice ...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
The sudden move to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has created an influx of epistemo... more The sudden move to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has created an influx of epistemological, psycho-social, emotional and financial challenges for first year students. Lecturers and academics had to find creative and sustainable ways of ensuring that all students were epistemologically included. New policies and practices were introduced rapidly at universities to facilitate the unavoidable move to online learning. As initial teacher educators at a public University in South Africa we noted that the sudden move to working online has presented various challenges to first year students’ overall well-being which has further exacerbated issues of exclusion and marginalization for many. We argue that it is against this backdrop that this paper explores how the move to online learning has affected first year students’ overall well-being, at one teacher education institution. The Index for Inclusive Education was used as a theoretical lens to explore student’s perceptions of t...
Teacher dispositions, knowledge, and skills influence decision making and pedagogical choices in ... more Teacher dispositions, knowledge, and skills influence decision making and pedagogical choices in the classroom. The various pedagogical choices that teachers make can result in an emphasis on "difference" that excludes rather than includes, and they can be represented as a spectrum of more, or less, culturally responsive teaching. Pedagogical choices are typically informed by underlying belief systems related to beliefs about teaching and learning; dispositions and the knowledge and skills developed as teachers (Yero, 2002). If, as Villegas and Lucas (2002) contended, there are six identifiable characteristics of culturally responsive teachers that lead to culturally responsive pedagogical choices in the classroom, then higher education institutions should be raising the consciousness of preservice teachers in this regard. Student teachers enrolled in South Africa's Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme complete a one-year course after an undergraduate...
Frontiers in Education
IntroductionSouth Africa embraced the move to inclusive education after the political transformat... more IntroductionSouth Africa embraced the move to inclusive education after the political transformation in 1994 by partaking in and subscribing to the international Education for All (EFA) drive initiated in 1990 at the Jomtien World Conference on Education for All, which declared that all children, youth and adults should receive a basic education. Furthermore, the Salamanca Statement of 1994 the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) of 2006 and the Sustainable Development Goal 4 are internationally regarded as the most important influence on the transformation of education systems to become more inclusive and consequently continue to have an important influence on education policies and practices in South Africa. The key policy driving inclusive education in South Africa is Education White Paper 6 (EWP6). EWP6 affirms that teachers play a central role in implementing an inclusive education system. Therefore, training is emphasized as a key s...
South African Computer Journal, Dec 5, 2022
This article places inclusive education in conversation with digital education, and it does so fo... more This article places inclusive education in conversation with digital education, and it does so for two reasons. The first reason is that the increased use of digital education will need to be inclusive and should not result in increasing inequalities. The second reason is that the experience within inclusive education provides valuable insights which could benefit the development of digital education. This article is conceptually based, and its aim is to show how experiences in inclusive education could benefit the development of digital education and vice versa. It argues that like inclusive education, the increased use of digital education in the future will require a redefinition and revisioning of education. While policies and legislation as well as training in digital education are important, this article recommends that digital education will need to engage with the deep-seated values, beliefs and assumptions held by teachers, students, parents, and society at large, and will require careful attention being paid to the systematic organisation of online learning in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment just as inclusive education.
African Journal of Disability
Background: Although inclusive education is widely discussed, its implementation has not, arguabl... more Background: Although inclusive education is widely discussed, its implementation has not, arguably, been far-reaching. There remains a lack of specific, targeted approaches towards fully including learners with physical and mental impairments in the educational space.Objectives: This study investigated the extent of the inclusion of learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in three schools in Johannesburg.Method: A qualitative interpretivist design was adopted. Teachers who work with learners with ASD were interviewed using open-ended questions. The sampled data were analysed using thematic analysis, making use of both a priori codes and emergent codes that arose from the open-ended questions.Results: The findings reveal numerous pedagogic strategies such as differentiation, scaffolding, use of visual cues, group work and collaboration that can include learners with ASD in the classroom space.Conclusion: Teacher collaboration and teacher training are vital in ensuring that learn...
Journal of Education, 2021
Policy and legislative frameworks in South Africa mandate inclusive education that, given the con... more Policy and legislative frameworks in South Africa mandate inclusive education that, given the contextual realities of classrooms, requires teachers to be responsive to diversity. There is, however, an identified gap between policy ideals and enactment that is exacerbated by a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the nature of inclusive education and practice that is still viewed by many as being limited to considerations of special needs rather than broader considerations of diversity as well. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) has a role to play in challenging and disrupting teacher thinking to support conceptualisations of inclusive education that position teachers' responsiveness to diversity. We used the Inclusive Pedagogical Approach in Action (IPAA) Framework (Florian & Spratt, 2013) since it focuses on inclusive pedagogy as a way of thinking about and practising inclusion to support the learning of all. We conducted the qualitative research at a public urban university in Jo...
South African Journal of Education, 2021
One way in which the practice of inclusion can be actualised in classrooms is through the use of ... more One way in which the practice of inclusion can be actualised in classrooms is through the use of consistent, appropriate differentiated instruction. What remains elusive, however, is insight into what teachers in different contexts think and believe about differentiation, how consistently they differentiate instruction and what challenges they experience in doing so. In the study reported on here high school classrooms in a private and a government school in Lesotho were compared in order to determine teachers’ thoughts and beliefs about differentiation, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and the challenges faced by teachers who implement this inclusive practice. Sampled teachers offered their views on what they understood differentiated instruction to be, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and identified challenges via an administered questionnaire. Data analysis was based on frequency counts and bar charts for comparative purposes. Findings indicate that privat...
Journal of Education, 2021
In this article, we view epistemological access as organising systematic teaching and learning, a... more In this article, we view epistemological access as organising systematic teaching and learning, and we focus on teaching and learning online during COVID-19 pandemic conditions in 2020. We used a Survey Monkey questionnaire with two universities in South Africa that moved their teaching and learning online to survey whether lecturers thought that the extent of epistemological access was affected when this happened. Our findings indicate that lecturers feel that the emergency teaching and learning did compromise their teaching, and, while most used existing face-to-face materials online, and some changed the content when they went online, they changed the assessment formats. We argue that these changes, although understandable given pandemic conditions, did not necessarily constitute the kind of carefully designed, paced, sequenced, and assessed online teaching and learning that also enhances epistemological access. We indicate that if one is to accept that the so-called new normal i...
African Journal of Disability, 2021
Background: Despite a commitment to achieving inclusion for all by the Botswana government, the e... more Background: Despite a commitment to achieving inclusion for all by the Botswana government, the enrolment of students with disabilities in Botswana’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions is still fraught with confusion as reflected by its practice and implementation. Exclusionary rather than inclusive practices remain prevalent.Objective: This study explores students with mild intellectual disabilities’ experiences of inclusion or exclusion in TVET institutions using key concepts of the Capability Approach.Method: A phenomenological interpretive qualitative design was adopted. One government, technical vocational institution, offering programmes for students with disabilities in Botswana was conveniently selected. Fourteen students were purposefully selected from this institution based on the criterion that they were students with mild intellectual disabilities. Individual interviews served as the data collection method to enable participants to voice ...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
The sudden move to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has created an influx of epistemo... more The sudden move to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has created an influx of epistemological, psycho-social, emotional and financial challenges for first year students. Lecturers and academics had to find creative and sustainable ways of ensuring that all students were epistemologically included. New policies and practices were introduced rapidly at universities to facilitate the unavoidable move to online learning. As initial teacher educators at a public University in South Africa we noted that the sudden move to working online has presented various challenges to first year students’ overall well-being which has further exacerbated issues of exclusion and marginalization for many. We argue that it is against this backdrop that this paper explores how the move to online learning has affected first year students’ overall well-being, at one teacher education institution. The Index for Inclusive Education was used as a theoretical lens to explore student’s perceptions of t...
Teacher dispositions, knowledge, and skills influence decision making and pedagogical choices in ... more Teacher dispositions, knowledge, and skills influence decision making and pedagogical choices in the classroom. The various pedagogical choices that teachers make can result in an emphasis on "difference" that excludes rather than includes, and they can be represented as a spectrum of more, or less, culturally responsive teaching. Pedagogical choices are typically informed by underlying belief systems related to beliefs about teaching and learning; dispositions and the knowledge and skills developed as teachers (Yero, 2002). If, as Villegas and Lucas (2002) contended, there are six identifiable characteristics of culturally responsive teachers that lead to culturally responsive pedagogical choices in the classroom, then higher education institutions should be raising the consciousness of preservice teachers in this regard. Student teachers enrolled in South Africa's Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme complete a one-year course after an undergraduate...