5.2 DISCUSSION
5.2.3 Creating an Environment to Support Meaningful Learning
One of the major observations was that all the Physical Science classrooms of the four schools were poor learning environment. All the classrooms had bulletin boards but there were no displays. The displays that one can expect to find in a classroom include: classroom rules, charts, newspaper and magazine cuttings, learner work, models, and photocopied materials. Clearly any school can afford to have some of these materials, irrespective of the financial conditions. Muijs and Reynolds (2001) concur with this argument:
An aspect of a pleasant classroom that the teacher has a large amount of control over is creating attractive and pleasant displays (Muijs and Reynolds 2001:60).
By control Muijs and Reynolds (2001) seem to suggest that besides being easily accessible, physical resources can be manipulated easier than other factors, such as psychological and social factors in a classroom. It is argued that the environment influences the behaviour and attitude of the learners. Moos (1976), for example, has this to say:
"The environment exerts considerable influence on human behaviour and constitutes a major determinant of effective functioning and satisfaction among milieu inhabitants" (Moos, 1976 cited in Fraser, 1981:3).
The environment may play an aesthetic effect which can influence the attitude and disposition of the learners. Colourful and bright displays can cheer-up the classroom and make it more pleasant environment while also giving the educator the opportunity to allow peripheral learning to occur (Muijs and Reynolds, 2001). It is argued that pleasant learning environment can motivate learners and improve the attitude of the learner and enhance learning.
Another issue that emerged in the study is that schools lack a "culture" of resource development. The use of the word "culture" suggests that this lack of creativity to develop resources is something that educators inherited from their teachers. In the past, during the time of Bantu Education, educators were forced to stick to the syllabus and prescribed textbook. Creativity was discouraged. They had to teach the factual knowledge that was required for examination purposes. Development of resources in this study means development of textual material and other artifacts such as teaching aids, charts, models, worksheet, development of more context based exercises for class work and assignment, and raising funds in order to buy laboratory equipments.
It was evident that educators were still relying on prescribed textbooks. The only thing they developed were the notes which was a summary of the textbook. The exercises which are found at the end of each chapter were recycled from examples, through class work exercises, assignments, tests and examination. Educators did not design their own problems for assignments and tests. Anyone who completed a teacher-training course would have used a teaching aid or/and a chart during training. But once the educators become qualified they forget about the teaching aids. The four educators were no exception. There was no evidence to indicate that they do use teaching aids.
With respect to laboratory activities, data revealed that learners were not given a chance to do practical work, laboratory activities were limited to demonstrations. It was found that There were a number of reasons for this, firstly, there was a shortage of resources. In one case (School D) the educator could not even do a demonstration, because there was no apparatus.
School C had very little equipment, but the educator borrowed some from a College of
Education, some few kilometers from school. School A and school B had apparatus but not adequate for individual learners. However, learners could have hands-on-experience if working in groups. Secondly, data revealed that educators took responsibility to do demonstrations because of security reasons. Educators were saying that learners break apparatus when they do experiments. The third reason was the pressure to complete the syllabus and prepare learners for examinations. Educators argued that when learners are given a chance to do an experiment they wasted time. This was self-defeating, because learners were supposed to practice in order to gain experience. The findings revealed that the most important reasons for this lack of initiative is related to educators' beliefs and assumptions about science learning and science teaching. Educators viewed science curriculum in terms of the content covered. They believed that teaching science is about delivering the subject content in a clear and logical way only.
There seem to be a wide gap between what is expected, according to policy, and what was happening in the four schools as far as laboratory activities are concerned (DoE, 1996b). The following illustrates the situation.
Table 5.1 Nature of "Laboratory" Activities in the Four Classrooms Activity
Investigation Hands on
(following procedure) Demonstration
Teacher talk
Mr A 0 0 1 3
MsB 0 0 1 3
M r C 0 0 1 3
MsD 0 0 0 3 Rating scale: The numbers 0, 1, 2 and 3 in the table are used in the following sense:
0 = no presence 1 = minimal presence 2 = moderate presence 3 = strong presence
It has already been pointed out that educators dominated their lesson with educator talk.
However, they did some demonstrations on rare occasions. In Chapter 2 it was shown that countries such as USA, UK and Australia are opting for investigative experiment and they criticize "recipe" type experiment (see Hart et al, 2000). However, in the case studied, learners could not do even a "recipe" type experiment. In Ms D's case not even a demonstration was performed.