Question 3: What is the value of fostering holistic education in a Science classroom?
2.4 Location of the study
I am a senior/FET phase teacher, teaching Science at Grade 8 - 12 level in a public Durban school. Following the policy as specified in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (as explained in Chapter One), Natural Sciences as, in Grades 7-9 (Further Education and Training, FET phase), as a learning area is split in my current school into Science and Biology with
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separate teachers teaching and facilitating it. I teach, facilitate and co-ordinate the Science aspect of Natural Sciences in my locale.
The school is a well-resourced school that caters for both girls and boys from Grade R to Grade 12. It is a dual-medium school that offers all subjects in either English or Afrikaans. In my experience, the majority of students reside close to the school with families of a stable nature.
We cater for students from different racial groups. The enrolment at the school is at approximately 700 students. At this point, it is important to remember that racial categories of people in South Africa was imposed by Apartheid laws pre-1994. This system of categorisation and identification is one that is still in use in current South Africa as means of identification regarding ethnicity.
The classroom and school facilities are well equipped, with plenty of opportunities for sporting, academics, cultural and religious meetings being made available for students. The school has many facilities. There is a school hall, lecture room, library and media centre, art room, computer rooms, laboratories, crèche and after-school care facilities. The school also possess two sports fields, a netball court and swimming pool. The school offers a range of sports from hockey, netball, rugby, cricket, athletics, chess, and cross-country. There are religious clubs, a feeding scheme, a debating club and dance sport available. The high school subjects include Visual Art, Computer Applications Technology, History, Physical Sciences, Geography, Engineering and Graphic Design, Tourism, to name a few. The school has a structured system of operation, management teams, Grade controllers, subject heads, sports managers, school governing body (SGB) personnel and book-shop/uniform facilitators.
Participants in my study were a class of 29 Grade 9 Science students. I selected this particular group of students because they were at a pinnacle point in their schooling career. These Grade 9 students were at the point of deciding on subjects of interest that were to be completed during the next three years at high school, followed by individual post-school opportunities like university enrolments or working opportunities. The reason I chose the Science class was that I had direct contact with the participants and thus influence in the teaching area. This was also a subject I felt could be adapted to teach the required content and still make room for the aims of my research. I also firmly believed that picking a Science class to base my research on had its advantages, as this was a subject in which I had the most experience, and could therefore adapt accordingly. The Science field was close to my heart, as it was (and still is) a subject I am passionate about since my high school days, as detailed in Chapter Three.
41 2.5 Research participants
As this is self-study research I, myself, served as the main participant. I looked at my past and present context, who I was as a student and who I am as a teacher. Seeing that this was a self- study, I intended to study myself. Through this study, I sought to understand what about myself, my past and present contributed to this need to foster holistic education in a Science classroom.
The other participants were chosen on the basis that they could offer viewpoints and information that could assist me to better understand myself and my practice as a Science teacher. My participants comprised 29 Grade 9 students that were completing Science as a compulsory subject before moving onto the FET (Further Education and Training; Grade 10- 12) phase. Of the 29 selected participants, seven participants are female, while 23 participants are male.
I had made note of the tendency for boys in my school to take Science as an elective subject over girls making the Science choice. My senior Science classes saw more male than female enrolments. Science is a practical, technical subject that often is seen as more appropriate for boys. I am unsure if it is the thrill of working with your hands, or the desire to be innovative, that spoke to boys choosing Science. I have noticed that boys seem to see Science as a male subject because when I teach Science, many theories and phenomena mention male scientists making these discoveries. I am concerned about the non-appearance of women in the prescribed Science curriculum and about the lower number of girls opting for Science. These concerns prompted my ‘Women in Science’ wall, as discussed in Chapter Five. This point in their schooling career was seen as the doorway at which choices were made that would impact these students for the next three years, as well as for the entirety of their careers post-tertiary training. The participants chosen were students I saw and interacted with daily, and with whom had adequate time to conduct my research.
42 2.6 Demographics of study group: ‘Player stats’
Participants Pseudonyms Gender Race Age Language
Me (TG/#1) TG Female Indian 27 English
#2 Anamika ANNA Female Indian 13-14 English
#3 Hannah HAZEL Female Indian 13-14 English
#4 Yulisha YALE Female Indian 13-14 English
#5 Roheed ROD Male Indian 13-14 English
#6 Vianth VAN Male Indian 13-14 English
#7 Michelle MIKE Female Coloured 13-14 English
#8 Simon SAM Male Indian 13-14 English
#9 Divan DON Male White 13-14 English
#10 Jose JÁN Male Indian 13-14 English
#11 Nathan NED Male Indian 13-14 English
#12 Jharrid JAKE Male Coloured 13-14 English
#13 Ethan EVAN Male White 13-14 English
#14 Mattheus MATT Male Indian 13-14 English
#15 Ashish ASH Male Indian 13-14 English
#16 Caleb CAILOU Male Indian 13-14 English
#17 Logan LUKE Male White 13-14 English
#18 Dillon DAN Male Indian 13-14 English
#19 Prenovan PETER Male Indian 13-14 English
#20 Quad QUINTON Male Coloured 13-14 English
#21 Daniel DAVE Male Indian 13-14 English
#22 Hayley HOLLY Female White 13-14 English
#23 Tristin TRENT Male White 13-14 English
#24 Lesego LEE Male Black 13-14 English
#25 Timothy TODD Male White 13-14 English
#26 Claire CATHY Female Indian 13-14 English
#27 Tyrai TOM Male Coloured 13-14 English
#28 Steven SHILO Male Coloured 13-14 English
#29 Kyle KEN Male Indian 13-14 English
#30 Jaeden JACE Male White 13-14 English
Table 2.1: The biographical information of participants
43 2.7 Critical friends
According to Samaras and Roberts (2011), a critical friend encourages and engages in thought- provoking questions. A critical friend aids in offering sound variations or different ideas in the hopes of adding substance to the study. My critical friend was my fellow work colleague, Mrs Netisha Ramjatan, who has completed her Masters studies and is teaching at the same school as myself. Mrs Ramjatan has given me permission to use her full name and surname in my dissertation. She is a senior teacher with 11 years of teaching experience, specialising in languages and teaches FET (Grade 8-12) English home language. English home language, as opposed to a first additional language, is a language subject that is fundamental and is considered the student’s mother tongue (the language that he or she grew up learning, speaking and reading within their family, social, cultural circles). Mrs Ramjatan graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, in 2010 with a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, and in 2013 with her Honours in Education. She started at my current institution in February of 2017 and completed her Master’s programme in 2015 via the University of South Africa (UNISA), entitled ‘The Effects of Sibling Parenting on Orphaned and Vulnerable Children in the Role of Parents’. We met at the start of 2017 when she came into the school as a replacement teacher and have since become close friends and work colleagues, seeking to help each other better ourselves in our fields.
Since mid-2017, I have asked Mrs Ramjatan to read and correct any language errors, as well as offer her input and opinion of certain facets of my self-study research. I explained the nature of my study to her in depth and sought her permission with the aid of a consent letter. She even helped in reading some of the articles I read to offer another perspective on the matter. When I showed her my adapted lesson plans, she (being the senior language teacher) suggested I look into metaphors as a creative take in Science language. She helped in the construction of that particular lesson, detailing what a metaphor constitutes and what examples to use to better explain to my Grade 9 participants, detailed in Chapter Four.
Apart from my critical friend, my supervisor, Professor Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan has been a pivotal key in my research. I met Professor Pithouse-Morgan during my Honours year when I did an elective subject of teacher development studies. Since completing my Honours, I have remained with her as a student for the duration of my Masters. We met every two weeks during the duration of the program to discuss, evaluate and reflect on the week’s work. Professor Pithouse-Morgan regularly sent articles, links and extra work that made my mind think and
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work in a more multi-dimensional frame to achieve the best outlook on my research. She helped me when she suggested I use a programme called Grammarly to check my work, format, sentence construction, etc. This proved fruitful as I felt that my work in my chapters suddenly had more of a cohesive flow.
The use of critical friends allowed me to gain support and information from external viewpoints (Samaras & Roberts, 2011). As Samaras and Roberts (2011) mention, the use of critical friends in teacher self-study methodology aids in adding validity and assurance to claims made. The use of critical friends has helped me look at my research from different views to best understand my work and goals. They have helped in shaping my thought pattern, as well as steering me in the most appropriate journey through this research without being too one-sided or forceful.
Their opinions and thoughts on the matter shed light on many research conundrums during this research period.
45 2.8 Data generation/Expanding the map
Research Question
Data generation activities Data Sources
1) How have my past experiences contributed to my interest in Holistic Education?
I wrote about important points in my school career that influenced the need to promote holistic education in Science teaching and Learning currently.
I collected documents, pictures, cards, letters from school events in my past to help trigger my memory of my school history of learning.
Letter to my little sister.
I used art as a way to better visualise and understand my history and memories.
Sessions with my supervisor to discuss the meaning of all this autobiographical work.
Autobiographical- writing and Journal entries
Report cards, school photographs, letters and cards from my students
Paintings, self- portrait
Audio recordings
2) How can I foster Holistic Education in my Science classroom?
Students were asked to write a story, using facts about the chemistry that they learned in the previous lesson, entitle: “The Night the Lab Exploded”.
Students were asked to create a metaphor for what Science means to them. This formed part of creative language.
Students were asked to anonymously write a letter to their Science teacher detailing a memory (good or bad) that stuck out for them and why.
As a reflection technique, I audio recorded lessons that helped me gather data for analysis.
Students stories
Students metaphors
Students letters
Audio recordings of lessons
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Table 2.2: Depicting the data generation techniques used
Research practices were utilised in the process of generating meaningful data. These were Artefact Retrieval, Journal Writing, Arts-based approaches, Autobiographical Writing, Audio Recording and Developmental Portfolio. Both journal writing and artefact retrieval, a solely personal/self-reflective instrument, where I generated data about my own lived experiences to build meaning and significance for this study.
Upon discovering new land, a cartographer would add to the plateau of an already established map. This process of editing, adding, re-envisioning allowed people to read the map with a deeper accuracy. This type of metaphor meant that my data generation (like expanding a map) provided guidelines, tips, ways that I must steer clear off and paths to take to reach my destination.