CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS, CONCLUSION
3.6. INSTRUMENT ADMINISTRATION
104 3.5.2 Interviews
While a total of 16 teachers at public secondary schools offering Geography in Limpopo were given closed questionnaires, unstructured interviews were administered to 10 geography teachers and two Curriculum Advisers in the province.
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citizens, who would be able to cater for the maintenance and sustenance of a balanced state of the environment – necessary for their survival.
The 19-item questionnaire was administered to seventy-six (76) learner participants in the representative schools offering Geography in each district (Kreicie and Morgan, 1970: 607-610).
The probe was aimed at their levels of understanding of the value of the subject Geography in their lives. They were also asked to provide their insight regarding their roles in maintaining and sustaining the unpolluted environment for their survival. The learner participants were asked to provide their experiences acquired, and the problems they faced, in their learning of Geography in their learning environments. The problems focused on LoLT and subject-literacy competence, the Geographical concepts embedded in LoLT, the difficulty of the language (English) of the textbooks, and what their subject teachers did to help them to understand the difficult textbooks.
The tool focused on the impact of the compromise of the LoLT by practising code-switching into the MT. Code-switching has far-reaching consequences to the realisation of LoLT literacy, as needed by the learners. The focus on the tool was to determine whether teachers employed experiential learning/co-operative learning, or rote learning in their Geography classrooms. The application of participative or rote-learning practice would inform the researcher of the learners’
performance in the subject of Geography. The experiential learning approach gives opportunities for discovering facts on their own, and articulating their discovery in reports and verbal presentations on their academic understanding in Geography.
Conversely, the rote-learning approach does not grow learner’s knowledge, insight and meaning in the subject.
3.6.2 On-Site Participant Observation
The researcher followed the ethical protocol of qualitative study by seeking permission of the sampled secondary schools and participants involved at the schools. The researcher ensured anonymity and confidentiality of the participants to protect the identity of the schools, teachers and learners. A relationship of trust was established between the teachers and the researcher by virtue of maintaining a cordial interaction. The researcher was allowed to audiotape the
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interactions, which complemented the researcher’s hand-written notes in the classroom without the researcher interfering in their activities. The researcher was able to spend a minimum of fifty- five minutes on average in a classroom. The researcher focused on the live interaction of the teacher and learners with a particular focus on the constraints of LoLT used in the interactions and learner involvement in the learning environment (McMillan Schumacher, 2001:437).
The researcher’s particular focus was on the teacher’s constant observation of his/her learners in action manifested by taking notes of the world around them (Magare, Kitching & Roos, 2010:52- 63). The researcher did not participate in any way; while the teacher was conducting the lesson.
He merely gathered the data on what he saw and heard, without being critical – lest he unduly influence the data collection. The teacher’s proficiency in the subject of Geography served to inform the researcher of his/her essential Geography curriculum experiences; inter alia, the researcher observed how the geography teacher made Geography teaching easy for the second- language learners (English) learning.
The emphasis was on what the teacher did to simplify and supplement the difficult geographical concepts embedded in English. Secondly, the researcher observed how the learners’ prior knowledge was recognized and turned into learning opportunities. This was realized by allowing them (the learners) to construct information at their own linguistic level to attain meaningful learning (Naidoo, 2006:9).
According to Jacobsen of the Mlambo Foundation (2011:18), the teacher’s proficiency in English is a focal point. One of their major objectives is that they are eager to develop teachers in English proficiency, to enable them to express themselves and explain respective subjects’
concepts in the LoLT (English). The Mlambo Foundation focus attests to the researcher’s question as a national concern. Thirdly, the researcher observed the teachers’ compliance with the marking of the subject of Geography – to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the teaching and assessment criteria employed. The aim was to determine the learner’s performance in Geography. The researcher wrote notes on how the marks were allocated, by reconciling the actual teacher’s allocation with the memoranda’s allocation. This was done to ensure the validity
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and reliability of the teacher’s assessment/test; because the criteria for testing learners’
knowledge through a test were to actualise educative teaching and meaningful learning.
3.6.3 In-Depth Interviews
The researcher employed interviews as an instrument to gather deeper data on the understanding of Geography teachers’ experiences, thus complementing the participants’ observation technique. The respondents were interviewed on practical Geography teaching and learning experiences concerning problems around the use of difficult textbooks, coupled with grappling with English as the medium of instruction for second-language learners. The researcher wanted to know more about other peculiar barriers experienced in each context – by conversing at great length with the practitioner interviewees. As the interview progressed, the researcher taped the proceedings to transcribe for analysis at a later stage.
The researcher employed the instrument, as advocated by Creswell (2005:231), and attested to by Van Putten, Howie and Stols (2010:25) for its “bottom-up approach.” This is an approach whereby the researcher drew/gathered the data from those practitioners who provided the first- hand experiences needed to confirm the prevalence of barriers to Geography learning and teaching for answering and resolving the research questions (McMillian & Schumacher, 2001:42, 433).
3.6.4 Documentary Analysis
On-site participant observations and in-depth interviews, interlaced with documentary analysis, which complemented one another, to gather comprehensive data on the participants’ attitudes, feelings and experiences on learning Geography in an English context. Documentary analysis was a tool for gathering the data from records on past events that were written in the form of notes during teachers’ constant observation in the classroom. In addition, there were letters based on learners’ experiences in context, learner diaries extracted by the subject teacher, and other critical related documents on classroom/learning environment activities (McMillian &
Schumacher, 2001:42,451-452).
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Official documents on learners’ assessment, including internal and external question papers, were accessed and perused, in order to determine whether the assessment criteria of learners in Geography, as prescribed by the Limpopo Department of Education (LDE), were adhered to by the teachers to determine whether the teachers’ compliance was in agreement with the learners’
achievement and learning in Geography. Learners and subject teachers’ files were read, in conjunction with the prescribed programmes, which also provided information on the barriers to Geography teaching and learning in Geography classrooms in Limpopo.
In relation to the records, the researcher did not get hold of graphs of monthly and quarterly or continuous learners’ performance. Finally, for annual examinations’ statistics in Geography, such were not found in some institutions. Reports to parents on learners’ performance were significant documents kept in the teachers’ files, in general. Other critical documents the researcher went through and wrote notes on were teacher and learner journals on the subject of Geography. The teachers kept data journals on classroom activities and policy directions on the teaching and learning of the subject. For learner journals, information on homework, learners’
daily thoughts/experiences on Geography in the classroom were provided. Furthermore, teacher journals contained the professional reflections on practice, regarding teachers’ feelings on practice and their observations on learners’ experiences with Geography concepts.
Classroom journals provided information on learners’ experiences, which bore learners’
thoughts, ideas and perceptions of Geography learning (Mertler, 2009:107-113).