Abstract
English continues to be the primary language of instruction in South Africa, despite numerous studies and language policy documents recognising the importance of learning in one’s mother tongue for at least the first three years of school. Regardless of learners’ mother tongue, about 65% of South African parents want their children to be taught in English during the foundation phase. As a result, most black parents disregard the linguistic, educational, and emotional difficulties that come with an English education, jeopardising their children’s access to quality education. In the context of this study, this shows that children whose home language is isiXhosa are learning mathematics in English – a language they are not proficient in – thus excluding them from worthwhile learning opportunities. Unfortunately, this pattern has a significant impact on South African learners’ mathematics abilities and is thought to be one of the causes of South African schools’ poor mathematics performance. It should be noted that, when the government had the chance, most of the terminology of the African languages had not been worked on since 1996, even though the phenomenon of second and third language education is attributed to the legacy of apartheid, where English was seen as the language of liberty and power. Up to this point, the government has only offered little evidence that South Africa’s language policy has successfully “graphised” and “codified” African languages. The difficulties of balancing the priorities of all 11 official languages and the slow linguistic development of African languages, including their failure to become relevant to literature, science, and technology, are two factors that contribute to the implementation’s failure. Additionally, it is challenging to standardise African languages because it is difficult to find precise, widely used mathematics terminology translated from English into an African language. Therefore, despite numerous research-based strategies, the nation’s indigenous African languages have not been able to match the Afrikaans and English levels of academic and technical accuracy. Due to the variety of ways that languages are currently used, teachers face significant difficulties in this area. Recent research claims there is a dearth of teachers who can concurrently teach mathematics and a second language. Furthermore, the truth is that African languages still lack proper mathematical registers. In this regard, research has pointed out the necessity to develop and incorporate adequate teaching and learning strategies into teachers’ pedagogical repertoires to support learners who speak African languages to become truly proficient in the use of English for learning mathematics. However, research on what constitutes effective mathematics instruction for isiXhosa-speaking learners in South African English Grade 1 classrooms is lacking.
From the above-mentioned standpoint of English language learners (i.e. isiXhosa-speaking learners) who must learn mathematics in a second language (in which they are not all proficient), we sought a theoretical framework that could demonstrate how mathematics is learned for proficiency in a second language. The five-stranded model of mathematical proficiency developed by Kilpatrick, Swafford and Findell (2001) and Vygotsky’s learning theory (1978), which both place an emphasis on children’s cognitive development and mathematical proficiency development, were used to interpret the empirical part of this study. The importance of language and communication is illustrated by Vygotsky’s learning theory, which takes a multi-semiotic approach to learning and cognitive development. Support from the teacher that is tailored to the learners’ needs to assist them in achieving particular learning objectives is referred to as “scaffolding” (zone of proximal development). The purpose of “scaffolding” in this study is to help the isiXhosa-speaking learners to become proficient in mathematics by focusing on their needs. This suggests that the teacher should be able to put together and use a wide variety of semiotics to aid the learner in developing mathematical proficiency. Additionally, the teacher must be able to recognise and correct learners’ mistakes. Aside from that, the scaffolding should focus on all five strands and the different ways teachers teach each learner to master mathematics in each strand, as shown by the interconnected strands of proficiency.
To better understand how to use teaching and learning strategies to improve isiXhosa-speaking learners’ understanding of mathematics in English Grade 1 classrooms, the focus of this article was to explore, describe, and understand Grade 1 teachers’ perceptions on this topic. This study uses a qualitative research approach along with an adapted interactive qualitative analysis (IQA) systems method to gather in-depth information about current mathematics practices in English Grade 1 classrooms. With the IQA systems method framework, researchers can conduct systematic, rigorous, and reliable research. Thus, the IQA systems method was selected as the technique most suited to examining the constructed meanings of the participants in current mathematics practices. In contrast to other qualitative methods, the IQA systems method also limits the subjectivity and bias of the researchers by allowing participants to analyse and interpret their own data. In this regard, participants describe their experiences with the phenomenon and use thematic content analysis to pinpoint emerging themes and their connections from their point of view. By focusing on the research aim, which was to explore, describe, and understand how Grade 1 teachers are using teaching and learning strategies to enhance isiXhosa-speaking learners’ understanding of mathematics in English Grade 1 classrooms, we were able to address the research problem and provide an answer to the research question. By purposefully choosing four primary schools in the Western Cape Metro East Education District, we used the purposive sampling technique to draw a sample from the population. Eleven (11) Grade 1 teachers from public and private primary schools, who teach mathematics to learners with isiXhosa as their home language, in Grade 1 classrooms with English as language of learning and teaching (LoLT), participated in this study. The participants were chosen so that they could give us a rich and thorough description of their beliefs, perceptions, and feelings regarding the use of teaching and learning strategies to improve isiXhosa-speaking learners’ understanding of mathematics in English Grade 1 classrooms. We used an adapted IQA data collection technique to gather the information. In this regard, two focus group interviews were used to collect the data for this study. Following the focus group interviews, the constructed interview framework was used to guide the semi-structured individual interviews and the field observations of the mathematics lessons.
The data analysis was conducted in three phases. The first phase entailed the analysis of the unstructured, open-ended focus group interview where the participants were actively involved in the data analysis process. During this interactive session, the focus group participants brainstormed and recorded on cards (inductive analysis) their beliefs, perceptions, and feelings regarding the following research statements (based on the research question): 1) Tell me what you think or feel or call to mind when I use the term mathematical language; 2) Tell me about your understanding of teaching and learning strategies to enhance mathematical understanding; 3) Tell me about your experiences of teaching and learning strategies to enhance mathematical understanding; and 4) Tell me how you are using teaching and learning strategies in your classroom to enhance isiXhosa-speaking learners’ understanding of mathematics. The deductive analysis activity that followed the brainstorming involved the participants grouping and sorting the written cards into categories that made up the themes. Descriptive paragraphs were provided for the written themes, and these served as the framework for the individual interviews. The second phase of the data analysis took place when the transcribed semi-structured individual interviews were analysed with the aim of identifying patterns using John Stuart Mill’s Analytic Comparison technique (Neuman 2014). This Analytic Comparison technique makes use of the “method of agreement” and the “method of difference” which were used to identify patterns between the themes while the data were analysed. The same Analytic Comparison technique was applied in the third phase when the transcripts of the lesson observations of the teaching events in the mathematics classrooms were analysed to gain a chronological perspective on what happened in each of the individually interviewed participants’ lessons. A synthesis was developed by comparing the data analysis of the individual interview transcripts with the data analysis of the transcripts of the lesson observations of teaching events in the mathematics classrooms. The purpose of this comparison was to determine whether the data collected from the participants during the interviews corresponded (or differed) with the data from the teaching events in the mathematics classroom. The findings provide a clear description of current teaching and learning strategies used by teachers to support isiXhosa-speaking learners’ understanding of mathematics. Additionally, findings concerning teachers’ needs in terms of pre- and in-service training, as well as other challenges, were pointed out. Conclusions were made in terms of Vygotsky’s learning theory within the intertwined mathematics proficiency model of Kilpatrick et al. Based on these findings, practical recommendations were proposed regarding teaching and learning strategies for mathematics support to isiXhosa-speaking learners in English Grade 1 classrooms.
Keywords: foundation phase; intertwined mathematics proficiency model; isiXhosa-speaking learners; language of learning and teaching (LoLT); mathematical support; teaching and learning strategies; Vygotsky’s learning theory
● The photo on the featured image of this article by geralt was obtained from Pixabay.
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