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classroom observations during phase 1, four video recorded lessons in phase 2 and 3, four semi-structured interviews, document analysis, field notes and/or informal conversations (per teacher) were collected. The extensive data were reviewed, transcribed and a cross-case analysis conducted before proceeding to the next data collection phase.
Participants’ meaning: In the entire qualitative research process, my position was to focus on understanding the meaning that the three teachers held about teacher learning and their classroom practices. The meanings or views from the literature was cautiously applied and did not influence the teachers’ views or my own, in this study.
In summary, the design of this study is a case study grounded in the qualitative approach, with an element of longitudinal research seeking to understand teacher learning of the three FP teachers in a real life situation and to provide rich and holistic descriptions of the phenomena within an interpretivist framework.
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English and Afrikaans. Remnants of British colonialism and a mix of Zulu, Indian and Afrikaans traditions give the province a rich cultural diversity.
The time frame for data collection and analysis of this study was from 2014 to 2016. The province was identified as a convenient location that provided an easy access in terms of time and resource factors. In addition, the ACT programme, which is the broad case in study, was launched in 2013 as a new initiative and according to the new teacher education policy framework at the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
4.4.2 Selection of the participants and their schools
Verbeek (2013), the author of Learning Guide (ACT 1), describes FP teachers as ‘generalists’
since they teach three core learning areas at this phase - literacy, mathematics and life skills, either Grade R, 1, 2 or 3, using integrated approaches. Nevertheless, each of these core areas needs a specialised knowledge base to enable effective teaching and learning. For this study, it was necessary to choose only one area of learning to focus on, in an in-depth manner. English as FAL was selected as the focus of this study.
Three FP teachers from a larger group (173) who enrolled for the ACT programme in 2014 were purposively selected as participants for the study. This type of sampling depends on the availability and willingness of the participants who are similar to the population (Blanche et al., 2014). The main goal was to understand the teacher learning process of each of three teachers from the ACT programme and how this learning impacted on their beliefs and pedagogical practice in their different contexts. The investigation only engaged with pedagogical practices relating to EFAL. This was in line with the purposive and criterion sampling principles where the teachers selected met the specific criteria (Bertram &
Christiansen, 2014; Cohen et al., 2011). The participants of this study were FP teachers teaching Grade 2 and were enrolled for the ACT programme in 2014 for the two-year, part- time course. Table 4.1 offers details of the participants selected (teachers and their schools) for this study.
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Table 4.1: The participants and the school samples of this study
Participants (Pseudonyms)
Sample schools
LOLT School environment School
Quintiles (SQ) Teacher Anne School 1 English Fairly good infrastructure with a reasonable
size compound at the peripheral of the city
Quintile 4 Teacher Lisa School 2 IsiZulu Adequate infrastructure and school
compound in a township
Quintile 3 Teacher Jane School 3 IsiZulu Poor infrastructure and small compound in a
rural area
Quintile 2
SQ 5: highest level resources & fee-paying schools. SQ 1: poorest level of resources & non-fee paying schools
Historically, South African township schools were for black people and often underdeveloped and situated mainly on the peripheral of the major cities and towns, while rural schools were mainly the poorest, with no basic services and all reserved for the Black people. In the post- apartheid era, schools have been ranked in categories known as quintiles. The school quintiles are determined by the National Department of Basic Education (DBE), largely for purposes of allocation of financial resources annually (see chapter 6.2.2. for details). Thus, school 1 (quintile 4) had adequate resources and learners pay fees, unlike schools 2 and 3 in quintile 3, which depend solely on the Department of Education for funding.
The Co-ordinator of the ACT programme was approached at the beginning of the course (February 2014) for the enrolment forms which provided details of all the teachers and names of their schools. The idea was to gather information about the targeted participant schools for my convenience, in terms of time and geographical location. It was important to consider the diversity and multilingual school contexts of South Africa, so one rural, one township and one urban school formed the sample of this study. The descriptions of the three school environments are offered in Chapter Six, which presents the teachers’ stories, sections 6.2.2.1 (school 1), 6.4.1.1 (school 2) and 6.7.1.2 (school 3). The intention was to capture a fair representation of three different literacy pedagogical contexts at the FP in the province.
Another criterion for sampling the schools was informed by the school choice of LoLT used in the province. The majority of the learners in KwaZulu-Natal Province are IsiZulu speakers so two schools with IsiZulu as the LoLT were selected and one school using English as LoLT.
None of the students enrolled for the ACT programme was attached to a school using Afrikaans as LoLT.
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