Texting literacies as social practices among older women

While many studies on mobile messaging have tended to focus on the communicative practices of the urban young, this paper considers the role of mobile messaging (also called texting) both as a social practice as well as a form of literacy enhancement among a group of older working class women between the ages of 50 and 80 in a Cape Town township. The paper examines how these women, with little or no formal education, acquire this form of literacy, as well as the purposes for which they use texting. It also explores how this form of late-modern communication is adding to four of their existing or developing literacies - text, numeracy, visual and personal. The paper therefore adopts a multiliteracies approach within the context of portable literacies.DHE

Early childhood literacy practices in a multilingual township in Gauteng province of South Africa

Abstract : This study draws on sociolinguistic theories with the aim to investigate the nature of young children’s early encounters with literacy in their homes and the implications of these encounters for their later development as readers and writers in schools. This is depicted by five Grade 3 learners in a multilingual township1 in the west of Johannesburg, South Africa. In order to realise this aim, the study has four objectives. The first is to map out the literacy practices in which young children engage at home, in their township and at school. The second is to examine the implications of children’s encounters with literacy for their careers as readers and writers, in-school and out-of-school. The third is to examine how the children’s literacy practices manifest in their educators’ teaching practice. The last objective is to examine how children’s out-of-school literacy practices can contribute to developing schooled literacy. The investigation employs a case study design framed by New Literacy Studies (Gee, 1996; Street, 1993), characterised by an understanding of literacies as multiple and situated within social and cultural practices and discourses (Hull & Schultz, 2002). The study, conducted over two years, focuses on children’s in-school and out-of-school literacy practices using, as participants, five learners in the Foundation Phase, together with their parents, educators and Gauteng Department of Education officials. Data for this study were collected through interviews and personal observations of classroom practices and out-of-school literacy practices of the children. Findings suggest that the research approach employed in this study has the potential to examine classroom instruction that allows learners to successfully acquire literacy that meets the international, national and local testing standards...Ph.D. (Educational Linguistics

ICT and gamified learning in tourism education: a case of South African secondary schools

Tourism is often introduced as a subject in formal education curricula because of the increasing and significant economic contribution of the tourism industry to the private and public sector. This is especially the case in emerging economies in Asia and Africa (Hsu, 2015; Mayaka & Akama, 2015; Cuffy et al., 2012). Tourism in South Africa – which is the geographical setting of this research – is recognised as a key economic sector. At secondary level, tourism has been widely introduced at schools throughout South Africa since 2000 and has experienced significant growth (Umalusi, 2014). Furthermore, information and communication technology (ICT) has rapidly penetrated public and private sectors of the country. ICT affords novel opportunities for social and economic development, and this has especially been observed in the fields of both tourism and education (Anwar et al., 2014; Vandeyar, 2015). Yet, the many uses and implications of ICT for tourism education in South Africa are unclear and under-theorised as a research area (Adukaite, Van Zyl, & Cantoni, 2016). Moreover, engagement has been identified as a significant indicator of student success in South Africa (Council for Higher Education, 2010). Lack of engagement contributes to poor graduation rates at secondary and tertiary institutions in South Africa (Strydom et al., 2010; Titus & Ng’ambi, 2014). A common strategy to address lack of student engagement is introducing game elements into the learning process: the so-called gamification of learning (Kapp, 2012). The majority of research in this field has been conducted in more economically advanced and developed regions, and there is a paucity of research in emerging country contexts. It is argued that gamification can be effectively utilised also in these contexts to address learner engagement and motivation. This study aims to contribute in this respect: firstly, by investigating the extent to which ICT supports tourism education in South African high schools through the lenses of Technology Domestication Theory (Habib, 2005; Haddon, 2006) and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977). Secondly, the study aims to examine gamified learning acceptance within tourism education in a developing country context. The research assimilates three separate studies. Study 1. The Role of Digital Technology in Tourism Education: A Case Study of South African Secondary Schools The study was designed as an exploratory analysis, based on 24 in-depth interviews (n=24) with high school tourism teachers and government officials. An analysis reveals that teachers recognize ICT as essential in exposing students to the tourism industry. This is especially the case in under-resourced schools, where learners do not have the financial means to participate in tourism activities. However, ICT is still limited in its integration as a pedagogical support tool. The major obstacles toward integration include: technology anxiety, lack of training, availability of resources, and learner resistance to use their personal mobile devices. Study 2. Raising Awareness and Promoting Informal Learning on World Heritage in Southern Africa. The Case of WHACY, a Gamified ICT-enhanced Tool The goal of the study was to present the World Heritage Awareness Campaign for Youth (WHACY) in Southern Africa. A campaign was dedicated to raise awareness and foster informal learning among Southern African youth about the heritage and sustainable tourism. The campaign employed an online and offline gamified learning platform, which was supported by a dedicated website, Facebook page, wiki and offline materials. In one year of operation the campaign reached more than 100K audience. For the evaluation of the campaign, a mixed methods approach was used: focus groups with students (n=9), interviews (n=19) and a survey with teachers (n=209). The study attempted to assess user experience in terms of engagement and conduciveness to learning and explored the possibility of a gamified application to be integrated into the existing high school tourism curriculum. The perspectives of South African tourism students and teachers were here considered. Study 3. Teacher perceptions on the use of digital gamified learning in tourism education: The case of South African secondary schools. The study is quantitative in nature and investigated the behavioural intention of South African tourism teachers to integrate a gamified application within secondary tourism education. Data collected from 209 teachers were tested against the research model using a structural equation modelling approach. The study investigated the extent to which six determined predictors (perceptions about playfulness, curriculum relatedness, learning opportunities, challenge, self-efficacy and computer anxiety) influence the acceptance of a gamified application by South African tourism teachers. The study may prove useful to educators and practitioners in understanding which determinants may influence gamification introduction into formal secondary education

Out-of-school literacy practices - the case of Sesotho-speaking learners in Cape Town

This study investigates the out-of-school multilingual literacy practices of four Grade Seven learners aged between 13 and 14 years at Lehlohonolo Primary School (henceforth LPS) in Gugulethu, Cape Town. They come from lower-income Sesotho speaking households and live in residential areas where isiXhosa is the predominant language of interaction. LPS is one of only two primary schools in the area that cater for these Sesotho speaking learners. The Language of Learning and Teaching is Sesotho from Grade R to Three, and then changes to English from Grade Four onwards for all subjects besides Sesotho. Located within the broader New Literacy Studies framework, this study approaches literacy as a historically and socially situated practice. It examines the learners‟ exposure and engagements with formal and informal texts by identifying the diverse communicative resources they have access to, and employ in, especially, out-of-school contexts. One central aim is to specify the roles of the various languages with a particular focus on Sesotho. Using an ethnographic approach, data was gathered primarily through observations and conversations. This was complemented by the photographic documentation of literacy artefacts and semi-structured interviews with the learners, their teachers, caregivers and other household members. To gain a better understanding of their multilingual repertoires and communication networks, the learners were asked to participate in language portrait and social network communication exercises. The core research question that informs the study is: What communicative resources do participants use in different out-of-school literacy events? The study‟s main findings are as follows: (a) the learners have unique language and literacy histories with varying degrees of digital access and competence in Sesotho, English and isiXhosa; (b) standard varieties of Sesotho and English are used for academic purposes; (c) the scarcity of Sesotho literacy is highlighted by the dominant English and isiXhosa literacy practices in out-of-school contexts, including online spaces and (d) Sesotho is used in spoken interactions at home and does not feature in leisure reading and writing

Gamers in Ganglands : the ecology of gaming and participation amongst a select group of children in Ocean View, Cape Town

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation explores the contextual meanings of digital gaming for a group of children from the resource-constrained township of Ocean View, situated 45km outside of Cape Town. I document the domestication (Silverstone & Haddon, 1996) of mobile phones and PlayStations as technologies for gaming in this context, showing how the children appropriated the games technologies much as other household media are domesticated, in a process of double articulation

Exploring digital literacy practices of 12- to 15-year-old children from Philippi and Khayelitsha townships in Cape Town

Magister Artium - MA (Linguistics, Language and Communication)Despite the spread of digital communication technologies and the integration of mobile phones into everyday life, young children's literacy practices are changing rapidly, and schools are struggling to address the potential of these digital communication technologies for learning. Mobile phones are currently a key consumer item, an image of social capital, and they initiate their users into a portable web of numerous applications including those literacy related. Much research has been done on children's relationship with digital technologies and the implications of this for their literacy learning and education in general, but there is almost no research on this in the global south, and almost none in South Africa. Filling this gap is crucial given the crisis in South Africa in basic education. The main aim for this research is to establish the kinds of digital technology and information systems affordances (internet facilities, tablets, books, magazines, newspapers, radios, TVs, video and computer games, etc.) in the homes of the selected children to explore how these digital technologies and information system affordances could be used to enhance the academic literacy development of 12- to 15-year-old children in informal settlements or townships in Cape Town

Shifting language Attitudes in a linguistically diverse learning environment in South Africa

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development on 22 December 2008, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.2167/jmmd495.0.This paper draws on post-structuralist theories on language and identity to explore the shifting language attitudes of 15 'black' students over the course of their undergraduate studies at a historically 'white' South African university. All the students speak an indigenous language as their first language. Those students who have been educated in racially mixed schools are relatively at ease in the environment and are able to straddle racial and linguistic boundaries. Those who have been educated in working-class, ethnically homogenous schools enter the institution with a strong desire to preserve their home languages and home identities. For them, English is equated with 'whiteness'. The paper describes the process through which this equation is questioned as English and institutional discourses become more dominant in students' lives, and as relationships with their home communities become strained. By the time the students enter their senior undergraduate years, a shared speech code emerges. The authors argue that this code signals students' dual affiliation to English (and the cultural capital it represents) and to their home identities. In mixing languages across boundaries of school background and across traditional ethnic barriers, the code also signals students' shared group identity as first-generation university students in post-Apartheid South Africa