6.4 Teacher Anne’s story about the pedagogies practices
6.4.1 Teacher Anne’s background and experiences
Anne is an African female teacher in her late forties who grew up in a rural area of KwaZulu- Natal, during the apartheid regime - areas with limited resources mainly reserved for the Blacks. Schools were generally not well resourced. She remembers the teachers taught at a very slow pace and little content was offered, while most learners did not understand what was
Tea che r Anne
• Section 6.4
•School 1
•Background information
•School context
•Classroom environment
•Analysis of Anne's lesson 3
•Anne's pedagogical knowledge change
Tea che r Li sa
• Section 6.5•School 2
•Background information
•School context
•Classroom environment
•Analysis of Lisa's lesson 5
•Lisa's pedagogical knowledge change
Tea che r Jane
• Section 6.6
•School 3
•Background information
•School context
•Classroom environment
•Analysis of Jane's lesson 4
•Jane's pedagogical knowledge change
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taking place in class. This made it difficult to clearly remember her experience at that level.
However, she could remember that, learning during her school days, was purely rote learning (memorisation of facts) and taught in isiZulu. The teacher did most of the talking, while the learners were expected to listen and obey instructions. Learners did not use text books or participatory learning activities, instead, the teacher gave the isiZulu and English words and sounds which they memorised and ‘chanted’ without understanding. However, her teacher was pleasant to the learners most of the time and ensured every learner did the work as expected.
Corporal punishment was a common phenomenon, especially for those who did not understand what was being taught. Thus, the slow and or weak learners received most of the caning, most of the times.
Anne remembers really struggling with her academic work and didn’t get any assistance from her siblings or parents. She began writing letters before proceeding to reading in Grade 1 with most of her written letters reversed. The teacher would pinch her thighs and she cried most of the times as she recalled laughing,
most of the time, ja the teacher used to pinch me under the thigh there, I cried.
Oh, I cried a lot on that…its letter d, ja that letter, it was very hard for me. I would not differentiate between d and p, so that’s where I had a problem in writing
Maybe Teacher Anne had learning difficulties which the teacher was not able diagnose, or the teacher’s knowledge base on how to teach phonics was inadequate. Anne had no idea how she passed Grade 1 amidst the difficulties in reading and writing, but by Grade 2, she managed not only to write her letters well, but also started to read. She recalls being overwhelmed with joy when she first learnt how to read and write clearly in English.
She had been a FP teacher in school 1 for 16 years, where she taught Grade R for 13 years and currently teaches Grade 2. During data collection, Anne had 44 learners in her class in 2014 and 36 in 2015. In February 2014, during the course of the first interview, Anne described her working context as an urban school. Challenging as it is for me to describe an urban school in the post-apartheid era in South Africa, Anne viewed her school as better than many other schools located in the rural area in terms of teaching EFAL and resource availability. Schools in any town or city are of different status in relation to the socio-economic status of the people.
A ‘one-size fits all approach’ is not an accurate approach to describe an urban school in South Africa. Urban schools range between expensive boarding or day schools to various public
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schools. (See the quantiles categories in section 6.2.2). So in this case, Anne’s working context could be described as an urban school in a working class residential zone.
Previously, urban schools were generally located in towns and cities which were declared domains of white people, who also owned 87% of the land during the apartheid regime (Gardiner, 2008). However, in the present democratic state, urban areas are characterised by a dense population of all races, and relying on secondary (industrial) and tertiary sectors for economic growth, unlike the rural areas which rely on primary industries such as agriculture and forestry.
Anne acknowledges the difference between her teaching methods and those of her own FP teachers in the olden days in the rural areas. For instance, she discusses the content with her class, asks for their opinion to establish their prior knowledge and then identifies where to start a lesson unlike the rote learning mentioned earlier. This means Anne’s learners participate in the learning process and she uses their prior knowledge to enable effective teaching, unlike during her school years when the teacher did all the talking. Anne offers extra lessons to the slower learners and group work under the mentorship of brighter learners to provide a conducive environment where the weak ones can learn from their peers. She motivates them by giving them stars and encourages them verbally.
Anne claimed to have a Matric (Grade 12 or end of high school) certificate and seemed uncomfortable to talk about her prior academic qualifications. In addition, she had enrolled with an on-going professional development programme on a part-time basis and completed National Professional Diploma in Education (NPDE) qualification in 2011. According to (Department of Higher Education and Training, 2011b), the ACT programme is accredited by the South African National Qualification Framework (NQF) at level NQF6. The programme is therefore eligible for any teacher who wants to strengthen their teaching knowledge base in their areas of specialisation or phase and/or have a three - year diploma from a former college of education; or a NPDE qualification accredited at NQF 5 level. So, on completion of the NPDE, Anne was upgraded to NQF 6 level and was assigned a new position as a Grade 2 teacher. Besides attending the ACT programme, Anne once attended DBE workshops on how to implement the current literacy CAPS in 2013.
Anne loves sports. She coaches netball and soccer and she also enjoys reading magazines and newspapers at least once a week for leisure. She reads drama and story books that are written
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either in English or isiZulu whenever she gets spare time to borrow the books from the Pietermaritzburg Educational Library. She considers her reading skills and English literacy knowledge at FP phase as good. This was well demonstrated during the observed classroom lessons. Anne is a passionate person and in her own words, describes teaching as a ‘calling’
…And I like reading and I like to be a teacher. I think that’s a calling for me, she concluded during the first interview when she enrolled with the programme.
This explains her search and desire for more knowledge from the formal programme. Besides attending the ACT programme, Anne collaborates with other teachers in the school and visits their classes to learn new strategies through observation of their teaching. Because she also discusses new ideas with them and analyses her practices and performance with them, she can be described as a self-motivated teacher. The discussions and analysis helps her to identify problems in her teaching methods and to make corrections.
The next section describes the findings on Anne’s working context so as to have insights into how the school context influences the teachers’ practices.