Results
4.3 Incorporating cultural beliefs about lightning
4.3.3 Findings from Interviews
The interviews were based on learners’ responses from the worksheets and Pre- and Post- Assessment as explained in section 3.7.5. These interviews were meant to determine what learners learned from this kind of a teaching sequence (operational research question 3), and how this teaching sequence affected the way learners take decisions on relevant daily issues (operational research question 5). After careful study of learners’ responses, questions were designed for individual learners. In this way, I had the opportunity to understand why learners thought they have learned certain concepts or achieved certain learning outcomes.
The interviews revealed that some of the learners like L2, L4, and L5 have an idea of what electric discharge and induction are all about. For complete interviews with these learners please see Appendix K. However, all learners were interviewed individually, these learners’
individual interviews (L2, L4, L5) were selected as samples because they were not shy during the interviews. They were free and open to talk about their experiences and to share their ideas about their prior-knowledge about lightning. Other learners were free to share their ideas during the learner-centred class discussions, but said very little or kept quite during the individual interviews.
L2 is one of the learners who continued to believe that lightning (legadima) is a natural phenomenon, whereas tladi is caused by people. This is part of the interview with L2:
L2: Eh, in my culture there is another form of lightning called tladi, they say it is caused by people, and before the lessons that’s what I thought.
T : What do you think now?
L2: I still agree, but now I know more about lightning, about natural lightning.
L4 believes that after the teaching and learning process, he understands that lightning is neither caused by people nor birds; he also believes that he now has the responsibility to educate his community members about lightning, when asked what kind of responsibility, this is how he responded:
L4: Eh, is, is the responsibility to tell my community about lightning; to tell them how to protect themselves against lightning…I will tell them to put lightning conductors on their houses, not motorcar tyres.
T : If your community members can tell you that here is a person, he has just struck another person’s house, and they found him washing in the river. What will you do or say?
L4: Well, they usually find them.
T : Is that true?
L4: Yes!
T : So, what will you say to them?
L4: Actually there is no tladi, is just what people believe.
L5 believes that lightning (legadima) and tladi is one and the same thing; he believes that tladi is just another name (traditional or cultural name) for legadima. This is what he said during the interview:
L5: Before the lessons, I thought legadima is tladi, but now I think I know that legadima is not tladi. Tladi is traditional, is a traditional name of lightning (legadima), is a cultural name.
These interviews are more informative than the answers that were provided in the Pre- and Post-Assessment. They reveal that learners did learn something from this teaching sequence though in different ways. For example, L2 indicated that he learned more about the scientific view of lightning, and he boldly added that this does not affect the way he feels about tladi.
This implies that from now on the two concepts (legadima and tladi) will co-exist in this learner’s mind, when and how to use them will depend on the prevailing situation. The interviews indicated that there were two other learners who held the same view as L2 (L6 and L11), while L4, L5 and other six learners (L1, L3, L7, L8, L9, L10) changed their original ideas about the two types of lightning, they think that the scientific view of lightning helped them to realize that tladi is just another name for legadima (in other words they do not believe in the existence of tladi anymore). L4 and three other learners mentioned that it is important for other learners and community members to know about the scientific view of lightning. However, the interview with L4 above indicated that when learners are confronted with real life situations they tend to accommodate or rely on their indigenous ways of understanding the phenomenon of lightning. This shows that one intervention cannot make a big difference in the way people make sense of the things that happen around them.
This chapter has the kind of the results that were obtained during the execution of different data-collecting techniques. There were a few challenges that I was faced with. However, as the process unfolded; that is, as learners were introduced to more science concepts in electrostatics, they gradually gained more knowledge and a better understanding of the scientific view of lightning. Some of the learners’ cultural beliefs about lightning were modified. It was however, not easy to modify these cultural beliefs, especially the belief that people can manipulate lightning. Some (3) of the learners who achieved most of the learning outcomes, and developde a better understanding of the scientific view of lightning, continued to believe that there are people out there who have some supernatural powers that are beyond their comprehension. This observation suggests that indigenous beliefs about lightning did not prevent learners from understanding the scientific view of lightning, instead this motivated learners to want to know more about the scientific view of lightning.
The activities mentioned in this chapter are some of the activities that provided learners with opportunities to explore conflicts between scientific and indigenous ways of understanding the phenomenon of lightning, and this led to the modification of other learners’ beliefs on lightning. During the interviews four learners indicated that they have already shared what they learned about lightning (scientific view of lightning) with their relatives and other learners, which I hope will promote scientific literacy in as far as lightning is concerned in this society.