A study of the Shamong Township School District\u27s Middle School Program at the Indian Mills Memorial School

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the present middle school program at the Indian Mills Memorial School, and create a new program. The program was based on research that enumerated the best practices in exemplary middle schools and the needs and characteristics of young adolescents. The sample was the 51 teachers of the IMMS, five administrators, parents, and one class each from fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. The survey used was Middle Grades Assessment Program from the Center for Early Adolescence, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There were different surveys for students, parents, teachers, and administrators. The participants were to mark their level of agreement with statements concerning our present program. The statements correlated to the best practices for middle school students. The data was then converted into percentages that revealed how satisfied different groups were with the present program. Results based on the survey revealed areas of weakness and areas of strengths existing in the present middle school program when compared to the new proposal. Recommendations based on the results included more site based management, greater participation of teachers in decision-making, an increase in higher-level thinking skills, and a stronger focus on improving curriculum

English: Language of hope or broken dream?

In this chapter, the ESL approaches adopted by seven different literacy organisations in South Africa are described and analysed. The approaches are identified in relation to developments in the field of applied linguistics and language teaching. The methods include formalist, functional/communicative approach, competency-based approach, natural growth approach, task-based process approach, popular education and ESL approach. The chapter concludes with principles for adult, popular second language learning curriculum and training

Learning about action research

The book gives detailed and theoretically-grounded practical advice on how to proceed collaboratively through the various stages of the action research cycle, including building a repertoire of literacy practices and activities for teachers and learners to draw upon in the research process.USWE funders, including International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association, the DG Murray Trust, Anglo American and De Beers Chairman's Fund Educational Trust and NEDCOR Community Development Fund

Changing conceptions of literacies, language and development: Implications for the provision of adult basic education in South Africa

Printed copies of this publication are available from the Centre for Research on Bilingualism, http://www.biling.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=13478&a=69198This study aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the circumstances under which adult education, in particular adult basic education, can support and occasionally initiate participatory development, social action and the realisation of citizenship rights. It traces developments in adult basic education in South Africa, and more specifically literacy and language learning, over the years 1981 to 2001, with reference to specific multilingual contexts in the Northern and Western Cape. The thesis is based on four individual studies, documenting an arc from grassroots work to national policy development and back. Study I, written in the early 1990s, critically examines approaches to teaching English to adults in South Africa at the time and proposes a participatory curriculum model for the additional language component of a future adult education policy. Study II is an account of attempts to implement this model and explores the implications of going to scale with such an approach. Studies III and IV draw on a qualitative study of an educator development programme after the transition to democracy. Study III uses Bourdieu's theory of practice and the concept of reflexivity to illuminate some of the connections between local discursive practices, self-formation, and broader relations of power. Study IV uses Iedema's (1999) concept of resemiotisation to trace the ways in which individuals re-shaped available representational resources to mobilise collective agency in community-based workshops. The summary provides a framework for these studies by locating and critiquing each within shifts in the political economy of South Africa. It reflects on a history of research and practice, raising questions to do with voice, justice, power, agency, and desire. Overall, this thesis argues for a reconceptualisation of ABET that is more strongly aligned with development goals and promotes engagement with new forms of state/society/economy relations

ABET and development in the Northern Cape province: Assessing impacts of CACE courses, 1996-1999

This study presents the results of an investigation into the impact of CACE courses for adult educators, trainers and development practitioners. The report describes how the courses affected the training practices and lives of past students. Case studies document and analyse the problems and successes of implementing capacity-building ABET training in the Northern Cape.UK Department for International Development (DFID

Testing the waters: Exploring the teaching of genres in a Cape flats primary school in South Africa

Twenty years after democracy, the legacy of apartheid and hitherto unmet challenges of resourcing and teacher development are reflected in a severely inequitable and underperforming education system. This paper focuses on second language writing in the middle years of schooling when 80% of learners face a double challenge: to move from ‘common sense’ discourses to the more abstract, specialised discourses of school subjects and, simultaneously, to a new language of learning, in this case English. It describes an intervention using a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) genre-based pedagogy involving 72 learners and two teachers in a low socio-economic neighbourhood of Cape Town. Using an SFL analytical framework, we analyse learners’ development in the information report genre. All learners in the intervention group made substantial gains in control of staging, lexis, and key linguistic features. We argue that the scaffolding provided by SFL genre-based pedagogies together with their explicit focus on textual and linguistic features offer a means of significantly enhancing epistemic access to the specialised language of school subjects, particularly for additional language learners. Findings have implications for language-in-education policy, teacher education, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in multilingual classrooms

Speaking of, for, and with others : Some methodological considerations

This is a brief reflection on two decades of work in NGOs and with trade unions from 1982 to 2001. For most of the time covered by this research note, I worked for a non-governmental organisation (NGO), one of several small, politically committed literacy organisations that sprang up in the aftermath of Soweto 1976 as part of a broader response to increasingly repressive state policies

Interim guidelines for the national ABET curriculum framework

In anticipation of the reconstruction and development of the education and training system, the CEPD established a number of curriculum task teams to develop subject-specific curriculum frameworks in line with the vision and principles as outlined in the draft discussion document released by the African National Congress in January 1994 - "A Policy Framework for Education and Training". This chapter presents the interim report of the Adult Basic Education and Training task team

Making absences present : Language policy from below

A commentary on the Special Issue ‘Grassroots participation and agency in bilingual education processes in Mozambique’. This Special Issue continues the decolonial task of making absences present: of bringing into the frame the linguistic and other knowledges traditionally excluded from educational policy and curricula, and pointing the way to more ethical and equitable forms of knowledge exchange among community members, learners, teachers, researchers, and state actors