learners in their learning is unavoidable. The 500 schools’ project was an engagement with grade 3 learners, the data from the project motivated the researcher to further investigate on how enabling and disabling environment influence learners’ learning.
3. Literature review
3.1. Enabling and disabling learning environment
Learning environment is related to supply of text books, teachers' teaching strategies and role of parents in the education of their children, schools' location and physical infrastructure. Learning environment can be positive or negative; a positive environment will enabling learning to take place while in disabling environment will make it difficult for learning to take place. Positive learning environment is a physical and emotional environment that encourages learners’ learning (Killen 2000). The learning environment includes provision of resources, infrastructure, and immediate neighbourhood of the school.
For learning to take place, the physical environment must be supportive; learners need to be comfortable before they can learn. Every learner must be able to sit down and write where a chalkboard is more visible.
4. Methodology
The study was conducted as a qualitative inquiry using focus group data. A number of ethical issues were considered: confidentiality, anonymity and privacy were respected, the consent of all participants was sought, the researcher explained the aim and purpose of the research to all participants, and feedback was given to participants, both to verify data used for analysis and to comment on interpretation.
4.1. Sampling
The sampling strategy was purposive. Thirty grade 3 learners from three rural primary schools were selected. Following concerns raised by university researchers who contact the 500 schools’ project, it became evident to investigate enabling and disabling learning environment in the schools selected to find out the effect of this environment on learners’ learning experiences and the extend which the home and school environment influence learners’ learning experience.
4.2. Data collection and analysis
Data was collected through three focus group discussions with thirty rural Grade 3 learners, one at each school. The researcher interacted with thirty grade 3 learners from three primary schools form a rural community in Mpumalanga province South Africa. The study adopted Inductive analysis of data.
The data was organised into categories and later identified patterns to find out the relationships among the categories. Significant events in the raw data emerged and were grouped into theme
5. Discussion of findings
During the discussion, learners were given the freedom to discuss their learning under two aspects:
When they learn best
When they learn with difficulty
Learners reported that they are finding it difficult to learn if teachers are emotional; in the words of one of the learners:
“I cannot learn when a teacher is angry”
It is evident that a school environment especially a classroom environment should be inviting. A grade 3 learner is still trying to find his/her foot in a school, the teacher represent his/her mother. If a teacher is angry she portrays an environment of fear which is not good for learners’ learning.
From the data analysed, it was clear that teachers’ inability to explain mathematical operations and their application disable learners’ learning. In this regard, a learner asserted that:
“It is impossible to learn mathematics if the teacher is not explaining how to multiply big numbers”
From the discussion held with learners, two categories of responses could be identified:
Things that make learners to learn best and things that make it difficult for learners to learn
6. Conclusion
The study has found that there are things that contribute towards enabling and disabling learning environment. The three schools participating in this study lack teaching resources, teachers are failing to explain the subject content to learners and are unable to manage learner discipline, they resort to corporal punishment which South Africa Schools’ Act abolished in 1996. The interplay of location, teaching strategies and school discipline is quite visible in creating enabling environment for learners’ learning.
7. Recommendation
It is on the basis of the finding indicated in this study that the researcher recommends the following model
Figure 1. Three factors to consider when creating enabling learning environment:
7.1. Teaching strategies
According to Killen (2000), there are good and bad teachers. There are teachers who made it easy for learners to learn and those who will make it very difficult to learn. One should note that no single teaching strategy is effective all the time for all learners. For the purpose of this study learning environment could enable learners to learn if teachers were creative in their teaching and used humour in explaining the content of the lesson to learners. This implies using learner- centred approaches which place a much stronger emphasis on the learners’ role in the learning process, teachers and learners cooperatively making sure that learning take place.
Learners in the study mentioned that if study materials are supplied and teachers explaining how to respond to homework questions, they will learn best.
7.2. Discipline
The Department of Education has introduced various measures to manage classroom discipline.
The study revealed, however, that learners found the methods used by teachers to manage discipline unacceptable. It assumed that it will be impossible to learn in a chaotic environment. According to learners “shouting” cannot solve disciplinary challenges. Learners are unable to learn if teacher call them names. From what learners are saying the manner in which discipline is managed in the school contribute towards disenabling learning environment, and in this type of environment, learning will be difficult.
Disorderliness contribute towards chaotic classroom.
7.3. Schools’ infrastructure
The findings of the study revealed that study material, toilets and teachers’ books were not enough and some not appropriate for grade 3 learners. The quality of school facilities also influences learners’ learning. Vulliamy (1987) found persuasive quantitative evidence of the existence of certain factors affecting learning; these include the provision of basic facilities. Vulliamy’s study was used to some extent as a yardstick in determining the viability of the school environments and its influence on learning. The three school in this study had similar problem of lack of toilets, chalkboards, books and few classroom and it could therefore declared as disabling environment that affected learners learning negatively.
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