CHAPTER 5: PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS
5.2 CASE STUDY NO. 1: MRS CLOETE (HEAD OF DEPARTMENT -
(HEAD OF DEPARTMENT - LANGUAGES)
5.2.1 Personal background
Mrs Cloete (not her real name) is a female aged 48 years, who acquired her Bachelor of Arts in Education, which is a 4-year teaching qualification with English and Afrikaans as her major courses, 25 years ago. Her teaching career started 23 years ago at a secondary school in Capricorn District, where she produced excellent results from the first year of her teaching career. Mrs Cloete grew up on a farm around Sterkloop area, where she learned informal Northern Sotho language from farm workers who worked at her parents’ farm. She is born from Afrikaans speaking mother and English speaking father, and she is
married to an English husband. Her knowledge in both languages is excellent.
She can talk Northern Sotho language, but cannot read nor write in this lang- uage. She was promoted to the current Winpot school as Head of Department for languages, seven years ago. She is part of the School Management Team responsible for the three official languages offered at the school, namely.
English first additional language (FAL); home language (HL), Afrikaans first additional language (FAL); home language (HL) and Sepedi home language.
Six (6) teachers report directly to her. In moderating teachers’ and learners’
work in Sepedi, she is assisted by the senior teacher, Mr Raphala.
Her duties include, among others, is to ensure that:
• the right curriculum is implemented.
• assessment tasks are moderated, and facilitates (i.e. prepare and present) her own lessons.
• teachers and learners attend to classes.
• there is curriculum coverage, i.e. according to prescribed pacesetters.
• the right set books are used.
• the teachers and learners keep portfolios of evidence of performance.
• class visits are conducted, i.e. ensure that the number of periods on the general timetable correspond with policy requirements.
In moderating school-based assessment (SBA), Mrs Cloete ensures that:
• tasks cater for all the cognitive levels, as outlined in Bloom’s and Barrett’s taxonomies.
• tasks are in line with subject assessment guidelines (SAG) before they are administered (pre-administration moderation).
• marking is of quality, i.e. memoranda are used to mark learners’ answers (post-administration moderation). In cases of essays, the correct and ap- proved rubric and marking codes are used.
• tasks are administered as prescribed in the assessment policy.
Other duties that Mrs Cloete is responsible for are:
• Organise and facilitate meetings of her own department.
• Facilitate the formation and functioning of subject committees (she is the chairperson and overseer of languages committees).
5.2.2 School
The Winpot English Medium High School was established in 1964, in an urban area, in one of the towns in the Waterberg District of the Limpopo Province (former model C school). It started with 360 learners and 12 teachers. The school has currently enrolled 1800 learners and 60 teachers. The classrooms are sufficient to accommodate all learners.
The school has a fully equipped and functional library, science and languages laboratories and sports grounds for different sporting codes such as basketball, netball, cricket, rugby, soccer, tennis, hockey and indoor swimming pools.
There is a big hall which can accommodate about five hundred people seated.
On the stage of the hall, there is a piano and above the stage there is a flag of the country, the Republic of South Africa (RSA). Next to the country’s flag, there is a Waterberg Municipality emblem. At the back of the hall there are adminis- tration offices, and in front of the offices there is a board where names of head girls and boys are written in gold.
The school draws its learners from the middle class community of the town itself and its peripheral townships and villages. It is a fee paying school, on quintile 5 in terms of school funding modes. This means that it receives less norms and standards funding from the government, because the community it serves, is composed of those parents who can afford to pay for the education of their children.
At this school, language of learning and teaching (LOLT) is English and there are also a few Afrikaans-speaking learners who are taught through the medium of Afrikaans language. Sepedi is taught as home language (HL) only to a section of black learners.
5.2.3 Classroom context
Mrs Cloete’s class is the second from the administration block on the ground floor of the eastern wing of the school building. The classroom is big enough to accommodate 30 learners, well spaced to allow the teacher to move freely between rows of learners, as she facilitates. Window panes are painted from outside and the learners inside the classroom cannot see the learners outside, and vice versa. The temperature of the classroom is kept cool in summer and warm in winter by an air conditioner so that it is not necessary for the learners to open windows. The classes of the whole school are kept clean by the general cleaners. The floor of Cloete’s classroom, just like all other classrooms in the school, is covered with dark brown wood. The walls, between windows are full of pictures. Some of the pictures displayed in English indicate the usage of prepositions, letters of the alphabet, homonyms, to name but a few. The most part of the front wall is occupied by a green chalkboard and the most part of the back wall is a notice board where Mrs Cloete’s notices are pinned on it. Some of the papers on the notice board are results of the tests, assignments, projects, research, and other formal recorded tasks of the learners. Graphs are also available indicating performances of learners per task (performances of learners is indicated by histograms and other forms of graphs). Once in every other day, learners visit notice board to see whether there are no new announcements.
Mrs Cloete communicates with them by notices on the notice board. Most pictures on the wall are written in English, but there are a few in Afrikaans and Sepedi as well.
Mrs Cloete’s table is big enough, with side a drawer on the left. Files are kept in two steel cabinets. One steel cabinet contains learners’ files while the other contains files of educators for languages. In learners files, there are learners’
evidence of performance, and evidence of school based moderation by the School Management Team, authentication form, where the learner declares that the work inside the file is his or hers, among others.
No formal task in languages can be administered before it is quality assured and learners’ marks cannot be recorded in mark sheets before post adminis- tration moderation is conducted on learners’ answer books. Mrs Cloete keeps
records of comments made by circuit and district curriculum specialists during school-based assessment (SBA) moderation, to ensure that corrections are made by affected teachers and resubmitted to moderation venues by Mrs Cloete herself.
Learners’ furniture is composed of a table for each learner, and a chair. A businessman in town has offered to keep the schools’ furniture in good order, at no cost of the school.
5.2.4 Research findings
5.2.4.1 Management of learner-teacher support material (LTSM)
Adjacent to Mrs Cloete’s classroom, is a language laboratory. The languages laboratory room looks like a radio studio, microphones hanging ready and ear phones on the tables like those of the radio announcers. Chairs arranged around tables that look like a wedding setting. There is a big viewing screen in front of the classroom above the green chalkboard. Dictionaries of English and Afrikaans including English – Afrikaans, Afrikaans – English, Sepedi – English, English – Sepedi, English – Zulu, Zulu – English are available. When you are in the room you don’t hear voices and sounds of people outside the room. People outside don’t hear sounds and voices of those inside the room, either. Videos and DVDs can be seen on shelves, well labelled according to contents. There are also viewing closed circuit monitors and keyboards with screens on each table.
In the library, books have been arranged according to Dewey’s decimal system and according to the subject, also. A catalogue is available to guide the library user. As in the language laboratory, there is also a Library Assistant. Learners and educators who come to loan books, have to fill in loan cards. There is also a door inside the library that opens to a storeroom where learner-teacher support material is kept. In front of the door there is a book, every item or items that is or are taken from that room is or are signed for by everyone who takes it or them.
5.2.4.2 Lesson planning and presentation
Mrs Cloete prepares lessons guided by pace setters supplied by a district cur- riculum specialist. She can plan once for ten days and encourages language teachers to do the same. As she stated:
“English FAL and HL are allocated 4 hours each every five days. The activities of one hour lesson plan will not be the same as the activities of eight hour lesson plan. The teachers’ activities of eight hours lesson plan will have to indicate that they are worth eight hours. As heads of de- partments, we have to timeously check these in educators’ lesson plans.”
Besides lesson plans, Mrs Cloete makes class visits to all language teachers, and there is a timetable available to all language teachers for such visits.
Language teachers who are available are invited to attend and observe these class visits. The observers’ comments are most welcome at the end of the presentations.
5.2.4.3 Resources and teachers’ support
The business people are determined to assist the school with the resources the school may need as a donation. A nearby platinum mine has donated R90 000 towards the buying of library books. Learners’ teacher support material are bought by the government and delivered to the school a year in advance.
Teachers are requested to order books for learners which they regard as good to supplement the learner-teacher support material supplied by the government.
5.2.4.4 Teacher-learner ratio
The ratio is 1:30 (one teacher is to thirty learners), that is 1800 number of learners divided by 60 number of teachers. This number for teachers only; it includes Principal, two deputy principals and four heads of departments, whose administrative work is such that their contact time with learners is less compared to that of assistant teachers. In order to meet its curricula needs, the school employs some educators and use funds from learners’ fees to pay them.
5.2.4.5 In-service training and teacher support
Mrs Cloete realised that it is important for teachers to be updated on amend- ments made to curricula, and therefore the school has to fund those workshops.
Mrs Cloete has recorded numbers of workshops that language teachers were invited to attend and is able to indicate that all of them were attended and even names of teachers who attended them. She has this to say:
“We cannot, as a department of languages, afford to lose information that is meant to develop us and our learners. All teachers who attend such workshops have to write reports to us and I have filed such reports as Head of Departmentfor languages. I have also sent copies of them to the Principal as evidence of attendance and also as evidence of devel- opments in our subjects.”
Mrs Cloete has also indicated that for those teachers who have to attend work- shops, their contact time with leaners will have to be shared by those remaining.
5.2.4.6 Educational excursions
Mrs Cloete reported that the parents have vowed to pay for the learners edu- cational trips and there is an Educational and Tours Policy, which is reviewable after every four years. As she reported:
“What the parents would like to know, is how the trips are going to benefit the learners. Educators to accompany the learners are not sup- posed to pay, according to the policy. We, at Winpot, are regarding sport outings as part of educational excursions, because learners who are talented in sport have a lot to gain from such trips.”
Mrs Cloete’s language learners usually visit places like publishing companies, studios of local radio stations, and language laboratories of local universities.
Learners themselves pay or request for donations of such trips.
5.2.5 Summary of Mrs Cloete
Winpot, is a former Model C school, that basically has sufficient resources that enable Mrs Cloete and other teachers to facilitate with ease. Mrs Cloete is
treating language educators as professionals. She secures appointment with them to visit their classes, and has a programme for moderating their work.
Learners are given the opportunity to visit places of interests, where most of language learners can be employed. Mrs Cloete has realised that in order to be effective, teachers have to be developed, and therefore, the school supports teachers who go for in-service training and in attending workshops. Teachers, who remain at the school, distribute workloads of teachers attending trainings among themselves. Mrs Cloete encourages language teachers to supplement classroom learning by visiting universities, publishers, and radio studios, among others.
The following case study is based on the Head of Department for Mathematics, Science and Technology.