CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS, CONCLUSION
3.7 SUMMARY OF CHAPTER
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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).
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DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION 4.1. INTRODUCTION
The focus of this chapter is on, firstly, examining in detail how the Barriers to geography learning and teaching in grade 12 in the Limpopo Province were investigated. Secondly, it analyses the data, whereby the existence, prevalence and consequences of the barriers regarding the performance of the grade 12 learners driven by the subject teachers’ teaching are revealed.
The findings were obtained by scoring the responses of the respective respondents to the specific questions, focusing on the respective barriers/objectives under investigation. Thirdly, the scores of the participants need to be interpreted in terms of their correlations to equivalent questions – as well as the contrasts to corresponding questions across the spectrum of the set diagnostic questionnaires addressing the questions of the study. The purpose of the scoring of the responses is to verify the significance level of the link between the objectives of the study and the barriers under investigation (Henning, Van Rensburg & Smit, 2004:103).
The four barriers investigated were:
Teacher’s proficiency in English as a language of instruction,
Teacher’s proficiency in the content/geography,
Level of difficulty of English in textbooks for second-language learners, and
The use of code-switching from the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) into the vernacular languages.
The four barriers were underpinned by four objectives. learners responded to Objectives 2, 3 and 4, which had a particular bearing on their learning of Geography in terms of the difficulty of the language of Geography, as well as the second language, as the medium of instruction. The teachers responded to Objectives 1, 3 and 4. These objectives were Geography-specific; because they probed their professional proficiency in teaching Geography. Each objective was underpinned by its respective statements; and the responses were reflected in respective figures for analysis and interpretation.
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The researcher analysed and interpreted the data, on the basis of the responses yielded by the respective respondents. In the analysis of the data, the researcher investigated the specific responses to specific statements, which were related to the pertinent surveyed literature. The purpose for surveying the literature on the study question was to verify the respective statement(s) underpinning the relevant barrier/objectives. Each objective was addressed by a varied number of statements – specifically probing a particular barrier.
The four barriers focused on were addressed as follows:
For the first barrier, in-depth inquiring questions were directed to the participants, probing their experiences and feelings about the impact that the difficult textbooks had on the second-language (English) learners. This was in terms of the suitability of the textbooks to the learners and the readability of the textbooks by the learners. For the second barrier, the focus of the pertinent questions was specifically on the language of learning and teaching (LoLT). The LoLT manifested in the reading of the textbooks, the reading of resource sheets, the reading of library books, the reading of the work sheets, and the use of LoLT in written work with comprehension and insight of learners of geography.
The subject teacher always used the LoLT to describe, explain, instruct, and ask questions, to which learners responded verbally in English. Therefore, the objective of LoLT also featured in learners reasoning in the language of geography in this context. The learners needed to develop in their use and understanding of geographical terms, in order to positively influence their learning. Furthermore, the Geography teachers used English to encourage and motivate the learners to learn maximally; and they also used English to discipline the learners, so that they could perform well in the subject – to attain the vision and mission of learning and teaching. That is, the skills of listening, talking, reading, and writing were vital for classroom activities. As such, the attainment thereof was critical to the learners.
For the third barrier, the researcher enquired into the question of their professional proficiency in terms of Geography and English, as the subject and the LoLT. In pursuit of professional proficiency, the researcher earmarked the perusal of pertinent handy documents expected for use by the subject teacher to complement the tool already administered in collecting the data. The
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perusal of work-books and portfolios was to ensure that all the relevant documents, programmes, the curriculum of Geography, the governing principles, the directives driving departmental policies and the procedures pertaining to content dispensations were observed and applied accurately by the subject teachers.
For the fourth barrier, the practice of code-switching from English into the local African languages in the Geography learning and teaching environments was examined. The examination was through the employment of the semi-structured interviews with exclusive subject-teacher interviewees, together with the curriculum advisors (CAs). The researcher sought to interview these subject specialists particularly for their expertise. The purpose was to determine and verify the prevalence of code-switching, as already outlined in the preceding chapters.
The researcher applied those multiple methods to interact with the teachers; because they were the significant role-players in the teaching of the learners. The researcher also wanted to tap the reader’s memory in tracking the researcher’s framework of this study, which was mapped in Chapters 1 and 3 of the study. The adoption of the constructivist approach was specifically for its focus on the learner as the central figure in learning and teaching. This focus manifested in the fact that Geography, being one of the geo-sciences, involves many practical lessons in which learners were to be engaged. That needed skills of expert teachers to teach and supervise as learners were engaged in practical activities.
The purpose of the practical lessons was to demystify the impact of theoretical teaching and learning in Geography that compounded the fear of abstract concepts to learners. The practical application of reality should solidify the learner’s experience of concrete reality (Watkins, 2012:24-25; Van Schie, 2012:12).
The researcher’s justification for choosing the constructivist approach in probing the problem was based on the principle of learners taking the centre-stage in the learning situation. Therefore, in administering the tools for gathering the data on the problem, the researcher encompassed broad core expectations. The probe was whether the learner respondents were made to understand geographical processes through undertaking scientific investigations into facts and phenomena in their learning environments through the use of the LoLT; whether they were actively engaged in doing the learning of Geographical facts/reality; whether they had acquired
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the conceptual skills to grow their personal experiences and mental connections, additional to their previously acquired mental connections to broaden their geographical knowledge; whether they had grown first-hand conceptualized knowledge to apply in their assessments; and whether they were exposed to their immediate world to learn concrete reality (Van Schie, 2012:12;
Sawyer, 2006:38-39; Watkins, 2012:25-25).
Prior to analysing and interpreting the responses of the respondents to diagnose and verify the threats to learning and teaching Geography, the researcher thought it worthwhile to reconcile learner and teacher participants’ respective responses to the same barriers, together with the interviewees’ responses. The researcher interviewed (n=10) subject teachers and (n=2) curriculum advisors (CAs) from two (2) districts of the five (5) districts in the province. The interviews took place with the selected teachers after the researcher had observed in situ the teaching and learning activities of the respective prepared lessons on their specific topics. The researcher summarized the focus of the investigation, as ranging from the practice of non-subject team teaching, non-exposure of the learners to practical opportunities (landforms and landscapes), a culture of using one or a few textbooks, a culture of neglect or compromise of the prescribed sections of the Geography curriculum, as a manifestation of professional incompetence, and finally the practice of code-switching from the LoLT into the local African languages because of the teachers’ lack of linguistic competence in the LoLT.
Having profiled the type of data the researcher anticipated to be underpinning the objective of the study, and underpinning the existence of the barriers, the researcher arranged pertinent tables and respective charts on each item of the respective questionnaires on the study problem, which addressed the specific objectives, according to the four objectives of the study.
4.2 THE RESEARCH FINDINGS