Concept 7: Assessment How is your supervision assessed/
4.2 Findings and discussions
4.2.1 Why are you supervising the implementation of Grade 3 Mathematics CAPS?
Various studies conducted around why educators teach indicate that they teach for various reasons. According to Jansen (2004), policy makers already have the envisaged educator in mind when designing policy. However, educators do not always act in the manner anticipated by the policy makers because their behaviour changes and adapts when they teach in the classroom. What they actually teach (implemented curriculum) is based on how they identify themselves. Jansen (2004) refers to this phenomenon as educator identities. Firstly, educator identities are influenced by personal reasons. In this case, when the educator understands and acts according to their value commitments, they are acting according to personal reasons.
Secondly, educators are influenced by societal reason, which can also be of political benefit (Jansen, 2004). This suggests that educators need to please learners, keep up with demands
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from parents and respond to pressures from the department. Lastly, educators teach for professional/pedagogical reasons. In this case, the educators‘ teaching is based on their profession, subject matter competence, levels of training, preparation, and formal qualifications. Therefore, the educators‘ various identities may explain why educators teach a particular subject in a particular manner.
4.2.1.1Personal reasons
SA3 “… are learners getting something from what the educators are teaching? … I want to see our poor leaners going somewhere with mathematics”
SA2: ―To assist them with the interpretation so that they can have a common understanding of each and every concept they are supposed to teach‖.
SA6: “to provide more comprehensive support to Foundation Phase educators…”
From the data generated in the first phase of reflection, the majority of SAs reflected on their personal reasons for supervising Mathematics in Grade 3. This account is consistent with several literature findings that suggest that the reasons for teaching Mathematics is based on individual goals, beliefs and knowledge (Nachlieli et al., 2009). The findings indicate that the SAs concur with Jita and Vandeyar (2006) who suggest that the educators previous experiences as students shapes their knowledge and beliefs about mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning. (Khoza 2015b) maintained that personal vision is a foundation of societal and professional visions as it helps educators to choose whether they follow societal or professional visions in their teachings. It may therefore be concluded that, in this phase, the SAs still responded from the practical level of reflection. The reason for this assertion being that there is an issue of underperformance at hand and to eradicate it, SAs supervise to help educators improve by strengthening their mathematics knowledge.
4.2.1.2Societal/social reasons
SA1: “…Because CAPS is the policy. All educators in South Africa are expected to implement CAPS” SA3 and SA5 agreed.
SA7: ―I’m supervising them to check and ensure that relevant Mathematics content is taught…”
SA8: “I want to ensure that they adhere to the national, provincial and district policies…”
SA4: “It is part [of] my core duties”
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SAs 1, 3, 5 and 7‘s reflections suggest that they are supervising the implementation of Grade 3 CAPS more for societal reasons than other reasons. Their responses bear testimony as they suggest that SAs cannot deviate from the requirements of policy. They supervise because it is required by the national curriculum policy and educators need to adhere to it. These finding concurs with the literature reviewed that most educators' reasons for teaching were based on the requirements of CAPS (societal reason), and not for personal reason (Khoza, 2015). SA4 also indicated that it is part of her core duties, indicating that there are other duties beside supervision of curriculum implementation that they are involved in.
We should be reminded that CAPS is a performance curriculum and its contents are of high statuses which are clearly separated from each other (Hoadley & Jansen, 2012). Therefore, CAPS is typical of Ralph Tyler‘s (1959) technical or instrumental approach to curriculum.
The objectives, the curriculum content, time allocated to each content area, the methods to be used and how it should be evaluated are clearly outlined in a sequential manner (Thjis & Van den Akker, 2003). Therefore it may be concluded that the SAs‘ technical reflection are consistent with CAPS as it is also employs a technical approach to curriculum implementation.
From the data generated through SAs‘ reflective activities and interviews, it may be asserted that the SAs are supervising the implementation of Grade 3 Mathematics CAPS to ensure that through the teaching of Mathematics in schools, educators conform as it is an obligation (Fowler & Poetter, 2004). These findings are consistent with literature whereby Nachlieli et al. (2009) noted that educators of mathematics work under certain instructional obligations that tie them to the subject. SAs, therefore, have a responsibility to ensure that educators cover the prescribed content, each term, as required by the policy. Therefore, this suggests that these SAs‘ reflections are shaped by technical reflection strategies. According to Van Manen (1977), educators who reflect from a technical perspective are concerned with the technical application of the educational knowledge which will enable them to maintain order and achieve the predetermined outcomes and skills specified by CAPS. However, in the second phase, the SAs were transformed. Their reflections changed in tone during the last reflective activity which occurred in the second phase of the reflection cycle; their reason for supervising was based on professional or content reason, which was more critical in nature.
95 4.2.1.3 Professional/ content reasons
SA6: “to support educators to improve the teaching of Mathematics in the Foundation Phase”.
SA8: ―To strengthen and improve the knowledge and performance of the educators because most of the educators are not studying, so their knowledge is limited… I implement the strategies I learnt from the presentation and also from JICA to all schools around my district”.
SA5: “My ACE qualification in Mathematics is assisting me because I learnt so much about teaching mathematics… your [researcher] presentation was also an eye opener. The types of mathematical understanding helped me to reposition my own view of supervising mathematics educators‖.
In the last reflective activity, the participants were aware of the curricular spider web concepts and various ideological ware resources they can use, i.e. theories of teaching and learning mathematics Piaget‘s types of mathematical Knowledge and Skemp‘s types of mathematical understanding (Hobden, Dowlath, Naidoo & Rosenburg, 2011). The SAs were equipped with pedagogical knowledge to enable them to transform and represent mathematical knowledge they will need when conducting supervision in schools.
SA5 also indicated that, because of her qualification in Mathematics, she is one of the SAs who specialises in Mathematics in her district and has the expert knowledge needed to help in improving educators‘ mathematical knowledge. Besides her, none of the SAs has a qualification in Mathematics, but their experience as Foundation Phase educators seem to be used as a yard stick for their Mathematics content knowledge. Some of them also reflected on the professional part of supervision by indicating that during supervision gaps relating to content coverage and educators‘ Mathematical knowledge are identified, and based on these gaps the support is scaled towards improving their pedagogical practice.
The SAs acknowledge that the educators‘ Mathematical content knowledge needs to be improved, thereby reflecting on providing educators with comprehensive support to improve their knowledge and performance of learners. Taking the stance of improving and soldiering on to capacitate educators indicates that the SAs have reflected on their practice and identified the need to improve. In this instance they (SAs) are not only improving their own knowledge, but the knowledge and practice of educators. Based on the findings, they are emancipating themselves because most of them have been part of curriculum development.
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Therefore, they transfer their knowledge to these educators. This is consistent with Dewey‘s (1933) assertion that, through critical reflection, an educator can transform a situation in which there are challenges (in this instance, the issue of underperformance in Mathematics Grade 3) into an improved performance of learners.
From the data generated during the first and second phase, it may be concluded that the SAs reformed in that they moved from the comfort zone of supervising for compliance and trying to assist educators based on their own belief; to a more emancipatory form of understanding that underpins mathematical teaching. The SAs‘ level of mathematical understanding moved from an instrumental understanding to a relational understanding of mathematics.
Instrumental understanding of mathematics is when the educator knows what to teach without necessarily any knowledge why, and relational understanding is when the educator knows what content to teach and why they are teaching (Hobden et al., 2011). The latter indicates a nature of reflection where the educator teaches and at the same time analyse their teaching.
The type of reflection is consistent with Kreber and Cranton (2000), Walker et al. (1992 and Killen (2007) who state that a reflective educator, through their reflections, would devote their time and effort through critical analysis of their practice and testing their assumptions of why, what and how they teach. In the case of this SAs is on why, what and how they supervise.
4.2.2 Towards which goals are you supervising the implementation of Grade 3