Yael Shalem | University of the Witwatersrand (original) (raw)

Papers by Yael Shalem

South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality, 2019

The distribution of educational inequalities in South Africa clearly reflects economic and social... more The distribution of educational inequalities in South Africa clearly reflects economic and social patterns of inequalities, whereby poorly-resourced schools are also the ones with the less able teachers. This suggests that access to meaningful learning opportunities is a fundamental equality distribution imperative. In South Africa, the challenge is specific – for historical reasons of poor schooling and a racially segregated and unequal training system, the majority of teachers, more so in poor socio-economic provinces, display weak professional knowledge. Our aim in this chapter is two-fold: first, to analyse different teacher development models which have been tried since the early 1990s, bearing in mind the gaps in teacher knowledge evidenced in research. Second, to critically examine what begins to be agreed upon and what remains in dispute in the international and national literature about a new model of teacher development. Targeting teachers from poorly performing primary schools, the new model foregrounds curriculum coverage and tight regulation of a set of teaching practices in specific subjects – language and mathematics. To investigate this, we borrow Elmore’s idea of reciprocal accountability, which he defines as: for every unit of changed performance that is required, an equivalent unit of support and capacity building is expected to be invested.

Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 2022

Background Rigorous assessment of the effect of malaria control strategies on local malaria dynam... more Background Rigorous assessment of the effect of malaria control strategies on local malaria dynamics is a complex but vital step in informing future strategies to eliminate malaria. However, the interactions between climate forcing, mass drug administration, mosquito control and their effects on the incidence of malaria remain unclear. Methods Here, we analyze the effects of interventions on the transmission dynamics of malaria (Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum) on Hainan Island, China, controlling for environmental factors. Mathematical models were fitted to epidemiological data, including confirmed cases and population-wide blood examinations, collected between 1995 and 2010, a period when malaria control interventions were rolled out with positive outcomes. Results Prior to the massive scale-up of interventions, malaria incidence shows both interannual variability and seasonality, as well as a strong correlation with climatic patterns linked to the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Based on our mechanistic model, we find that the reduction in malaria is likely due to the large scale rollout of insecticide-treated bed nets, which reduce the infections of P. vivax and P. falciparum malaria by 93.4% and 35.5%, respectively. Mass drug administration has a greater contribution in the control of P. falciparum (54.9%) than P. vivax (5.3%). In a comparison of interventions, indoor residual spraying makes a relatively minor contribution to malaria control (1.3%-9.6%). Conclusions Although malaria transmission on Hainan Island has been exacerbated by El Nino Southern Oscillation, control methods have eliminated both P. falciparum and P. vivax malaria from this part of China.

South African journal of higher education, 2013

The authors examine students perceptions of the written assessment tasks in a BEd first-year cour... more The authors examine students perceptions of the written assessment tasks in a BEd first-year course. The article is an attempt to engage seriously with student perceptions of the various elements of assessment, and to make explicit their understanding of the textual forms appropriate for academic writing. The analysis presented in this article draws on data gathered from three focus-group discussions with 18 first-year students about their experiences of assessment and shows that behind what appears as a lack of understanding of basics, such as referencing rules, lies a misrecognition of the textual forms appropriate for academic writing, in short, of academic criteria. We use the notion of discontinuity to describe the difficulty students experience (particularly low-achieving students) regarding academic writing in comparison to their experiences of school writing. The analysis demonstrates three different discontinuities. Firstly, in comparison to school writing all the students,...

Introduction to PILO and its Theory of Change The Programme to Improve Learning Outcomes (PILO he... more Introduction to PILO and its Theory of Change The Programme to Improve Learning Outcomes (PILO hereafter), an education NGO, started the Jika iMfundo improvement campaign in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in 2014 as a large-scale provincial educational intervention whose form and focus were rather different from those of other Provincial Departments. Jika iMfundo is holistic in its targets – to improve the work of districts, Principals, School Management Teams (SMTs), Heads of Department (HoDs) and teachers in more than 1000 primary schools in two KZN districts. It aims at improving the curriculum coverage in these schools and is based on the belief that such long-term sustainable intervention requires the development of a collegial professional culture in the education system. PILO’s philosophy is to encourage all stakeholders at school and district level to work together more professionally, to develop new relationships and practices which will assist in improving coverage of the Curriculum ...

The main aim of this short introductory article is to provide a context for the three articles th... more The main aim of this short introductory article is to provide a context for the three articles that follow. It begins with a brief review of literature pertinent to student success or failure in the academy and then moves to a description of the background of a research project, which investigated the cognitive and academic literacy demands of formative and summative assessment tasks for first-year students in the Bachelor of Education (Bed) programme of the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand (WSoE).

This paper explores the relationship between education and levels of poverty and inequality in So... more This paper explores the relationship between education and levels of poverty and inequality in South Africa, the country with the world’s worst inequality. The World Bank argues that one of the most important contributing factors to this inequality is poor schooling in South Africa. The dominant strand of educational research and policy thought in South Africa draws on Human Capital Theory and is promoted by a group of economists who have become influential in educational research and policy, ‘The Stellenbosch School’. In this paper we argue against two strong claims made by the Stellenbosch School and the World Bank. The first is that educational inequality is being reproduced by teacher unionization; weak teacher content knowledge and pedagogical skill; wasted learning time; and weak institutional functionality. These are, according to the Stellenbosch School, the four binding constraints which prevent improvement in education, and therefore prevent improvement in the economy. How...

Journal of Education, 2017

Lesson plans are advocated as useful forms of teacher support because they can expand a repertoir... more Lesson plans are advocated as useful forms of teacher support because they can expand a repertoire of teaching practices. But what kinds of scripted instruction can effectively guide and improve teachers’ instruction and how can lesson plans achieve that? This article examines the nature and purpose of the scripted lesson plans (SLPs) used in the Gauteng primary education system and then investigates how teachers enacted these routinised SLPs. Through a review of the literature on teaching English language and on SLPs, the article assesses the opportunities and challenges afforded by the Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics Strategy’s (GPLMS’s) lesson plans for Grade 3 English as First Additional Language (FAL). Then, through an analysis of an English FAL lesson taught differently by two teachers, it points to the many professional judgements made by the teachers as they enact the prescribed teaching routine. Our analysis suggests, firstly, that the knowledge resources given to ...

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2019

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2016

Debates about the relation between educational theory and teaching practice are embodied in asses... more Debates about the relation between educational theory and teaching practice are embodied in assessment tasks that prompt student teachers to relate theoretical concepts and simulated or directly experienced practice-based contexts in relation to one another. To establish clarity on the ways in which theory and practice can be positioned in relation to one another in application tasks, the authors revisit the debate between Hirst and Carr (2005) about the role of theory in and for education. They analyse examples of assessment tasks according to a typology showing how such tasks demarcate conceptual and contextual objects of study in ways that are more or less visible to students. They argue that the more visibly the concepts are demarcated, the greater the possibilities are for student teachers to develop systematised bodies of educational knowledge that are able to provide organising insights into their developing practice. While the authors concede that there might be valid pedagogical reasons for doing so, they argue that when conceptual objects are less visible to students, the underlying message that is transmitted to students is that educational theory is neither specialised knowledge nor is it distinctively different from their common-sense perspectives. This approach is less likely to promote their acquisition of systematised knowledge for and of practice.

Pythagoras, 2016

Teachers come across errors not only in tests but also in their mathematics classrooms virtually ... more Teachers come across errors not only in tests but also in their mathematics classrooms virtually every day. When they respond to learners’ errors in their classrooms, during or after teaching, teachers are actively carrying out formative assessment. In South Africa the Annual National Assessment, a written test under the auspices of the Department of Basic Education, requires that teachers use learner data diagnostically. This places a new and complex cognitive demand on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. We argue that teachers’ involvement in, and application of, error analysis is an integral aspect of teacher knowledge. The Data Informed Practice Improvement Project was one of the first attempts in South Africa to include teachers in a systematic process of interpretation of learners’ performance data. In this article we analyse video data of teachers’ engagement with errors during interactions with learners in their classrooms and in one-on-one interviews with learners (17 ...

There is growing consensus in international and local literature that, to be effective, professio... more There is growing consensus in international and local literature that, to be effective, professional development activities (PDAs) should focus on ways of teaching that improve learners' learning, but there is no clear consensus on the teaching focus and the form in which teacher learning is organised. Drawing from literature on teacher knowledge, in particular Shulman's distinction between subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), this article critically reviews the PDAs provided by the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE), South Africa. It identifies 2009 as a turning point in the GDE provision of PDAs. Until 2009, most PDAs were targeted at the improvement of a few discrete aspects of teacher practice, to comply with a new curriculum framework. Around 2009, the GDE turned towards scripted teaching in a form of standardised lesson plans, to engineer a whole new practice for teachers in order to improve learners' results. The argument of this article is t...

Pythagoras, 2014

With the increased use of standardised mathematics assessments at the classroom level, teachers a... more With the increased use of standardised mathematics assessments at the classroom level, teachers are encouraged, and sometimes required, to use data from these assessments to inform their practice. As a consequence, teacher educators and researchers are starting to focus on the development of analytical tools that will help them determine how teachers interpret learners’ work, in particular learners’ errors in the context of standardised and other assessments. To detect variation and associations between and within the different aspects of teacher knowledge related to mathematical error analysis, we developed an instrument with six criteria based on aspects of teachers’ knowledge related to explaining and diagnosing learners’ errors. In this study we provide evidence of the usability of the criteria by coding 572 explanations given by groups of mathematics educators (teachers and district officials) in a professional development context. The findings consist of observable trends and ...

School of Education University of KwaZulu-Natal …, 2004

The orientation of the grammar of vertical discourse is Towards the future on the basis of an inv... more The orientation of the grammar of vertical discourse is Towards the future on the basis of an invisible past, And the invisible past is a whole re-contextualising apparatus.. . So there is a vast invisibility behind Any sentence in vertical discourse, vast invisibility. (Basil Bernstein, Cape Town, 1997). Recent studies on teacher education which have investigated the complex conceptual base of teaching (Darling-Hammond et. al., 1999; Darling

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2009

This article examines the practices, norms and values that constrain or enable successful partici... more This article examines the practices, norms and values that constrain or enable successful participation of undergraduate students at a South African university undergoing a radical change. We look at four constructs about the resources that Wits students draw on when they negotiate their integration into the Wits culture of academic performance. The four constructs are: (i) internal regulation, which refers to the ways in which students experience the difference in relation to authority when compared to their school experiences; (ii) individual responsibility, which is related to the distribution of responsibilities between ‘the student’ and ‘the institution’ in relation to the process of learning and teaching; (iii) explicit and implicit rules, connected to the ways in which students get to understand how the Wits learning environment works; and (iv) re-visiting the familiar, which points to students’ experiences of failure and alienation and how these experiences elicit past experiences of racial oppression.

Pythagoras, 2013

Mapping onto the mathematics curriculum-an opportunity for teachers to learn.

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1999

This paper draws on research conducted with schools located within the Johannesburg area of the G... more This paper draws on research conducted with schools located within the Johannesburg area of the Gauteng province in South Africa. The findings of two research projects are analyzed in relation to discourses of school effectiveness. The first project was the School Effectiveness in South Africa project (SESA) initiated by Advancing Basic Education and Literacy and some members of the Education Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in 1992. The second project upon which this paper draws is one that was initiated by the Gauteng education Minister, Mrs. Mary Metcalfe,via the establishmentof a Committee for the Culture of Learning and Teaching in 1995. Despite the many differences that characterized these two projects, they both point importantly to ways in which black schooling in South Africa is occurring. They provide empirical evidence of the kinds of forces with which schools contend daily, the nature of actors involved within them, and the differences and similarities among them. We do not, h...

Curriculum Responsiveness in Higher …, 2004

In the aftermath of apartheid and apartheid education, South African universities are exploring w... more In the aftermath of apartheid and apartheid education, South African universities are exploring ways in which they can make their curricula more responsive to the needs of under-prepared students. There are many possible kinds of 'curriculum responsiveness'. This paper focuses on 'curriculum responsiveness' for epistemological access. It explores what it means to be responsive to both epistemological activities underpinning systematised forms of inquiry synonymous with academic practice and to the needs of under-prepared students in relation to these. The main focus of the paper is on the practices which constitute academic knowledge as fundamentally different from everyday-life ways of making meaning. This account entails an examination of the analytic logic of academic practice and the social conditions which underpin it. This account includes an analysis of the systematic inquiry through which university studies fulfil their necessary functions. The paper explores ways in which under-preparedness for such practices may be demonstrated, particularly in relation to "text-based practices" (Wertsch, 1991). It concludes with an examination of ways of initiating newcomers into these specialised activities of academic meaning making. This paper is based upon, and developed from an earlier paper we wrote on 'Curriculum Responsiveness' commissioned by SAUVCA and published in H. Griesel (Ed.) Curriculum Responsiveness: Case Studies in Higher Education, 2004. Pretoria: South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association. 2004. A significant proportion of students currently entering South African universities today, are first generation university students who have had little access to social networks with reservoirs of experiences of university study, 1 and therefore have minimal support for apprehending the nature of university study, or the workings of the institutional culture of the university. This problem is compounded for students who were subjected to the worst knowledge practices of apartheid education. Such practices were highly