4.2 Presentation of findings
4.2.8 To whom are they teaching fractions?
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81 Miss Peace said:
Learners are overcrowded and the workload is restricting me to pay attention to all groups in the class.
Miss Nadia stated that:
The workload and the number of learners are challenging me when teaching fractions. The groups are out of hand.
The teachers’ explanations revealed that they believed that big groups are not ideal for the teaching of fractions because this process requires one-on-one attention from teachers. Big groups created discipline problems in the class. This signified that the overcrowded classes were beyond the abilities of teachers and to manage. They also prevented the teachers from giving individual attention to struggling learners. This is corroborated by Khan and Iqbal (2012), who argue that the majority of teachers face instructional and discipline problems in overcrowded classrooms, which affects their performance in class. Teachers were challenged by the subject workloads that they were carrying. Some of them were teaching many subjects and had to change the lessons and teach another subject even if the learners had not mastered the fraction content.
Data also revealed learners’ attitudes as a barrier against the teaching and learning of fractions. Teachers’ characteristics and attitudes have great influence on learners’
Mathematics learning, achievement and the type of attitudes developed toward Mathematics (Di Martino & Zan, 2010). Yara (2009) points out that learners’ attitudes towards Mathematics are influenced by teachers’ teaching methods and personalities. This showed that the learners’ attitudes towards fractions posed serious problems to teachers during teaching. For example, during teaching, teachers indicated that learners did not concentrate because they believed that fractions were difficult. This led to their success or failure in learning fractions (Mata, Monteiro & Peixoto, 2012).
Mr Bones commented that:
Learners have fractions anxiety.
Mr Beans mentioned that:
Learners fear fractions and as a result they do not concentrate when learning fractions. They develop a negative attitude because of negative previous experiences.
Miss Peace who expressed the same opinion that:
Learners are not motivated when faced with fractions and that negative compounds it as the years go by. Learners’ attitudes towards fractions are different.
82 Miss Nadia stated that:
Learners believe that fractions are difficult. The learners’ facial expressions indicate that they are finding the difficulty in fractions.
The teachers’ responses revealed that learners’ attitudes towards fractions were the result of psychological factors, including anxiety, fear and motivation. Anxiety, particularly towards fractions, refers to a person’s feeling of tension and anxiety with the manipulation of numbers (Khatoon & Mahood, 2010). Teachers believed that the sense of discomfort observed in learners when learning fractions was associated with fear (Ma, 2003). A fear towards fractions in Mathematics classes was found to hinder learners’ positive thinking about learning fractions. The fear caused low self-esteem, disappointment and learning failure in learners when learning fractions (Tobias, 1998).
One of the factors attributable to anxiety about fractions was a lack of confidence that resulted to reduced levels of motivation (Hlalele, 2012). Motivation is regarded as a learning enabler and a key component in learning (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002).According to the teachers, they were fighting a ‘losing battle’ in trying to change learners’ attitudes towards fractions. Based on this belief, teachers motivated the learners to handle fractions with confidence in their classrooms. Teachers believed that fractions are a crucial part of human existence and experiencing failure in the early stages in fractions teaching can limit future development.
Teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching of fractions were also found to have an effect on learners’ performance. This suggests that teachers with a positive attitude towards fractions are motivated to stimulate favourable attitudes in their learners (Yara, 2009). Primary school teachers often held negative attitude towards Mathematics and this negative attitude can result in poor teaching of fractions (Australian DoE, 2007). This is an upsetting discovery, as positive attitudes towards the teaching of fractions have a direct influence on the levels of performance (Sullivan, 1987). This indicates that learners are affected by the way that teachers teach fractions in the classroom.
However, Mr Francis took a different perspective and focused on the contextual factors that affected the learners’ academic performance:
We are a school that admits every learner from any school. The challenge I have is that the furniture is not sufficient and the classroom is not in a good condition.
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In terms of the contextual factors, Miss Peace stated that:
The floor space is limited because of the number of learners we have. The difficulty comes when you don’t explain fractions to them initially because the word “fraction”
intimidates learners especially those who do not have English as their home language.
Miss Nadia echoed that:
The class size of learners leads to the shortage of furniture and disturb the seating plan for the activity of the day. The classroom is in a bad condition.
The findings indicated that teachers’ experiences of teaching fractions were beset by different contextual factors. The school infrastructures such classrooms and desks made it impossible for the teachers to organise learners the way they wanted. The unavailability of furniture also hampered teachers’ mathematical practices they wanted to use. The classrooms conditions were not conducive for effective teaching and learning of fractions. For instance, teachers cited broken windows and desks as some of the challenges that impede teaching and learning of fractions in particular.
The language of instruction was highlighted as a barrier to convey the meaning of fractions (Hurrell, 2013). Learners come to class with different competence in the language of instruction. Therefore, their pace to grasps the fractions was not the same. Mathematics is a language on its own that has concepts and therefore makes it difficult for learners who have isiZulu as their first language to understand. Learners are not taught in their mother tongue in the Mathematics classroom, the language of teaching is English (Landsberg, 2005).
Therefore, teachers indicated that the language of teaching and learning is a barrier for learners’ understanding of fractions. It is believed that teaching and learning in the home language increases the self-esteem and academic performance (Altinyelken, 2010).
Assessments and instructions are written in English in Grade 6, thus it is not easy for learners to cope. This shows that language has become an impediment to academic achievement in mathematics in South Africa particularly in Grade 6 (Hugo, 2008). ANA conducted in intermediate phases in Mathematics demonstrated that learners could not understand the language used in assessments tasks (DBE, 2012).
Cohen (2010) argues that access to education emanates from a variety of social citizenship rights that are intended to afford members of a society an opportunity to share in a basic level of social, economic and cultural well-being and to mitigate inequalities. This is substantiated
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by Berkvens et al. (2014), who argue that children should have access to education irrespective of their ethnicity, socio-economic status or gender. All schools in South Africa are offering the CAPS Mathematics curriculum, and as most public schools are no fee- schools, class sizes are big. This is further corroborated by Borkum (2012) who argues that the no-fee programme led to an increase in enrolment in South African schools.
Deducing from these findings, teachers were faced with numerous barriers presented by a lack of resources, insufficient furniture, poor conditions of classrooms and a high workload in teaching fractions. Hence, they taught in ways that responded to what deemed fit in order to teach.