Consolidating Research and Comparing Practice: What funders need to know for meaningful engagement with literacy in South Africa (original) (raw)
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Reading & Writing
This article evaluates South African research from two annotated bibliographies on reading in African languages at home language level (2004-2017) and South African research on teaching reading in English as a first additional language (2007-2018). It also aims to provide guidelines for addressing these weaknesses. Methods: Examples of 70 quantitative and qualitative research studies from the annotated bibliographies were critically analysed, identifying key weaknesses in the research as a whole and examples of excellent quality. Results: Weaknesses evident in the research reviewed, suggested greater consideration is needed to lay sound methodological foundations for quality literacy research. Three methodological issues underlying local literacy research that require greater attention are research design, selection and use of literature and research rigour. High-quality research examples are referenced but, for ethical reasons, examples of what we consider to be flawed research are described generally. Guidelines are offered for addressing these pitfalls that, in our view, contribute to research of limited quality. Since many universities require submission of a journal article as a requirement for postgraduate students, preparation for such an article is considered. Conclusion: While this article is not intended to be a comprehensive guide, we hope it is useful to supervisors, postgraduate students and early career researchers currently undertaking, or planning to undertake, literacy research and to writing for publication.
A review of South African primary school literacy interventions from 2005 to 2020
South African Journal of Childhood Education, 2021
Background: Learner performance in literacy in the primary education sector is in a state of crisis in South Africa. Whilst many more learners have physical access to education post-1994, the quality of education remains polarised along socioeconomic lines. This article sets out to engage with current literature on literacy interventions implemented in South Africa in order to develop an understanding of the key features of interventions, which affect positive change. Aim: This review provides an overview of the scope and type of primary school-level literacy interventions embarked upon in the last 15 years in South Africa. An analysis of some of the key findings on the impact of these interventions is provided. Method: A systematic review was conducted using the key words 'literacy intervention' and 'reading intervention'. The selection of articles was further refined with a specific focus on primary school interventions in South Africa. Results: The review focuses on specific literacy interventions where 'intervention' is defined as active and purposeful engagement to improve decoding, vocabulary, fluency and/or comprehension of primary school learners. This article reviews the documented literacy interventions and draws out some of the key features of successful interventions. It also makes broader reflective comments about what this exercise reveals about the state of literacy interventions in South Africa. Conclusion: Interventions have generally been ad hoc and uncoordinated and have not wrought systemic change. Moving forward in a coordinated manner must be based amongst other things on learning from interventions that have been reviewed here.
International Review of Education, 2019
The aim of this article is to examine literacy and numeracy scores of learners who participated in the South African Kha Ri Gude Literacy Campaign. Analysing the learning outcomes of the 2011 cohort of a total of 485,941 participants, the authors seek to identify variations between the learners' achievements across the eleven official South African languages. Besides exploring the relationship between the literacy and numeracy assessment scores by language, the authors also analyse these scores against various relevant features of the learners' profiles such as their residential type (rural village, urban township etc.), regularity of class attendance and previous school attendance, if any. They asked ten language experts who had been involved in the development of the campaign's learner materials to rank the various languages according to their level of difficulty with regard to literacy learning and to interpret the variation in learner achievement scores across the South African languages. This interpretation demonstrates that the challenges of teaching and learning literacy and numeracy in South African languages go beyond the difficulty levels established on the basis of linguistic criteria. The authors contend that future literacy programmes will have to take existing hierarchies and inequalities among language groups into account and devise differentiated strategies to achieve parity of learning.
The road to reading for South African learners: The role of orthographic depth
Learning and Individual Differences, 2014
The study examined profiles of reading skills and cognitive skills for South African children from schools that differed in opacity of medium of instruction. The sample included 122 third graders instructed in Afrikaans (transparent language), 109 in Setswana (transparent), and 127 in English (opaque). The link between cognitive skills (short-term memory and working memory) and reading comprehension was expected to be mediated by phonological awareness, word fluency, text fluency, and vocabulary. Multigroup invariance analyses revealed differences in strength of relations between cognitive skills and reading skills across mediums of instruction. For English, phonological awareness played a smaller and vocabulary a larger role compared to Afrikaans and Setswana, largely in line with theories on orthographic depth and reading; furthermore, predictors of reading comprehension showed weaker interrelations in Afrikaans and Setswana. Our study stresses the need to align reading instruction with orthography.
An investigation into the early literacy skills of English second language learners in South Africa
Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 2020
This study employs the Comprehensive Emergent Literacy Model (CELM) theoretical framework, as it refers to the impact of context on learning early literacy skills. It is relevant to this study as the participants were English second language learners from cultures, communities, and demographics different from those of English first language speakers in South Africa. Early literacy skills, specifically phonological awareness (PA), are predictive of later literacy success. Many English second language (EL2) learners are unable to develop language and early literacy skills. Foundational skills such as general PA skills, often need explicit instruction to prepare the learners to learn to read in English. Twenty-one EL2 Grade 1 learners in an English medium private school in South Africa were selected as participants. Early literacy skills were assessed at the beginning of Grade 1. Reading, spelling, and reading comprehension skills were assessed after two terms in Grade 1 to determine i...
This research explores the challenges and dynamic interplay between literacy instruction, first and second language instruction, and language of teaching and learning in 12 KwaZulu-Natal primary school classrooms using direct observation, and teacher and principal interviews. This research suggests that South African learners who speak an African language at home but learn in English, even if from Grade 4, likely have a harder time learning and growing their literacy skills in the new language because they have not built a solid base of literacy skills in their home language; and, without those literacy skills or a significant vocabulary in the second language, they will have a hard time learning the knowledge and skills that are meant to be learned through official curriculum. In the South African context, this is exacerbated by the fact that teachers are under-prepared for the task of teaching English as a second language or even literacy in the home language.
2013
This qualitative case study examines language and literacy practices in English as a second language (L2) in a South African 4 th grade classroom, and to a lesser extent in the foundation phase grades (grades R-3), where literacy was in the students' home language, Zulu. Although I was interested in the 4 th grade class as a whole, to illuminate my understandings of the students' practices in this class, I chose six focal students. Through performance assessments in Zulu and English, I examined the focal students' strengths and weaknesses in these languages. In addition, I tried to gain insights into their home language and literacy practices, and also establish if there were any tensions between these practices and the school language and literacy practices. Throughout the study, I was guided by sociocultural and cognitive-linguistic theories of language and literacy. I collected data from the focal students-four of which I used to present findings-the 4 th grade teacher, the foundation phase teachers, the principal, and the parents/guardians of vii Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction .
Educational Research (ISSN: 2141-5161) Vol. 10(1) pp. 180-191,Available online@http://www.interesjournals.org/ER , 2019
Studies have proven that the Basic Education Department in South Africa faces a numerous challenges as learners fail do well in areas of language and literacy. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it describes and discusses the basic education current situation by outlining the educational landscape, relevant policy imperatives and policy implementation challenges in postapartheid education. Secondly, it argues that Indigenous African languages have a role to play in improving the ailing basic education sector in South Africa through its contribution as an alternative tool to learning and assessment of learners. It is further suggested that the initiatives of literacy development must be socially responsive and population-focused in order to make meaningful contributions to the literacy development in the South African education sector. The potential role of African Indigenous African languages is discussed with suggestions for further actions required for schools and the basic education department to enable a contextually relevant practice in a resource-constrained education system. Keywords: Indigenous African languages, literacy, basic education, foundation phase, intermediate phase.