Editorial: Plotting new courses in assessment

The articles in this issue foreground some of the tensions inherent in the use of “global” summative, norm-referenced measures of literacy on the one hand, and “local”, site and classroom specific literacy assessments on the other. At a theoretical level these tensions may seem without basis given that “global” and “local” assessments seem to serve different masters and achieve different purposes. However, in reality the wash-back effect of high stakes systemic assessment on classroom work is widely accepted. Furthermore, these tensions are palpable in countries in which the results from high-stakes, high status “global” assessments can lead to the closure of schools. Several of the articles in this issue describe how teachers in schools and universities are attempting to steer a course around and between the omnipresent impact of high stakes assessments and their influence on curricula

Becoming a teacher in Australia: reflections on ‘the resilience factor’ in teacher professional development and teacher retention in the 1940s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century

Early career teacher retention and attrition rates have implications for the provision of quality education. Recent investigations of why some teachers survive and thrive while others leave the profession, disillusioned and/or burnt out, have identified ‘resilience’ as a key factor in teachers’ personal and professional growth and commitment to a long-term career in education. This paper uses data from a demonstration lessons notebook compiled by a student teacher in 1942, accompanied by lesson commentary from her supervising teachers, a teachers’ college handbook c.1943 and interviews with the compiler of the notebook to tell the story of an entrant into the teaching profession in the Australian state of Victoria in the 1940s. Her story is compared with findings from studies which focus on early career teachers in several Australian states in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The comparisons indicate that while resilience is a key factor in the personal and professional growth of teachers entering the profession sixty years apart, perhaps unsurprisingly, there are more differences than similarities in the nature of the challenges experienced by a novice teacher in the 1940s and several cohorts of early career teachers at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The paper concludes with some suggestions for nurturing teacher resilience and long-term commitment to the profession which could be considered by teacher educators and school leaders globally, with adaptations for addressing the specific challenges of the local

How much of what? An analysis of the espoused and enacted mathematics and English curricula for intermediate phase student teachers at five South African universities

Regulatory bodies such as the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) provide a framework of formal criteria to be addressed by providers of initial teacher education (ITE) but these  criteria can be interpreted in many different ways. The Initial Teacher Education Research Project (ITERP) has investigated the preparation of intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6) teachers of mathematics and English at five South African universities, selected as representative of the major ‘types’ of institutions offering ITE. In this article we draw on our analysis of data from this research to describe and discuss the courses in mathematics and English offered by each of the five universities to student teachers specialising in mathematics or English and to ‘non-specialists’. We suggest that while there are examples of excellent curriculum design and implementation, none of the universities in the study is fully addressing the challenges of teaching and learning in diverse intermediate phase classrooms. While acknowledging that answering the question “how much of what?” is particularly complex in teacher education contexts in which some students enter university with an inadequate knowledge base from which to develop content and pedagogic knowledge in a number of disciplines and inter-disciplinary fields, we offer some curriculum suggestions for teacher educators to consider

Stratification and Subordination: Change and Continuity in Race Relations

One of the measures used to gauge progress made by African-Americans in gaining equal opportunity has been to compare and contrast the status of black Americans to that of white Americans using various social indices. Historically, the status of blacks relative to whites has been one of subordination; race has been a primary factor in determining social stratification and political status. Relations between white and black Americans were established during slavery and the Jim Crow era of segregation. In the infamous Dred Scott (1856) decison, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney articulated the fundamental nature of this system of racial stratification: Blacks have no rights which whites are bound to respect. Scholars in this study have sought to evaluate developments in race relations, particularly since 1940, by examining racial stratification, subordination, and change in various aspects of American life. Our general conclusion is that despite improvements in various aspects of American life, racial stratification has not changed in any fundamental sense. In addition to the structural mechanisms that perpetuate differential status, researchers point to social factors — attitudes, values, ideology, and racial violence — that reinforce racial domination. Legal doctrines and the courts have always provided justification and legality for whatever structural form the system of racial stratification has taken. Historically, the U.S. Constitution has been one of the primary supports for white supremacy

Mediating knowledge and constituting subjectivities in distance education materials for language teachers in South Africa.

International and local guidelines for designing distance education materials advise designers to use feedback from students in the redesign of their materials. This study is a response to the researcher’s failed attempt to elicit critical feedback from some of her students. It therefore sets out to devise a framework for a critical pedagogic analysis of distance learning materials designed for South African teacher education programmes. It draws on theorisations of pedagogy, principally from the work of the sociologist of education Basil Bernstein and the applied linguist Suresh Canagarajah, theorisations of mediation, originating in the work of Lev Vygotsky, and theorisations of subjectivity. It also draws on international and local conceptualisations of a knowledge base for teacher education. In the analysis of the selection and organisation of knowledge on the page, the study draws on Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics and the field of social semiotics to uncover the positions constructed for readers as students and as teachers in each multimodal design. A pedagogic analysis of distance education materials for pre-service or in-service teachers responds to a series of questions: What elements of a knowledge base for teacher education do designers foreground and background? What is the orientation of the materials to the relationship between knowledge and practice? How is knowledge mediated through in-text activities, pedagogic episodes and scaffolded readings? What roles do linguistic and visual design choices play in the mediation of knowledge? A critical pedagogic analysis interrogates the subject positions that the multimodal designs constitute for ideal readers as students and as teachers. In the study, all of these questions frame a detailed analysis of three sets of materials designed for South African teacher education programmes and, finally, a critical reflection on materials for which the researcher was the principal designer. The study concludes that a critical pedagogic analysis affords designers and evaluators the critical distance needed for evaluating the mediation of knowledge(s) and the constitution of readers’ subjectivities in teacher education materials. As an alternative (or in some circumstances, as an addition) to reader feedback it has the potential to inform redesigning for the original local context(s) of use or reversioning for use in broader regional or global contexts

Countering linguistic imperialism with stories in the languages of Africa: The African Storybook initiative as a model for enabling in and out of school literacies

Background: In South Africa, and in many other African countries, official language-in-education policy supports the use of learners’ primary language(s) in early schooling. In reality, texts in the language(s) of the former colonial power are dominant, with high-interest texts in languages familiar to young learners in short supply or non-existent. Where government education departments have begun to address this shortage, it is mainly by producing graded readers in the ‘standard’ variety of a language. Aim: The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate how quality texts can be provided in a wide range of African languages to stimulate children’s interest in reading, across the African continent and beyond. Setting: The African Storybook (ASb) initiative of the South African Institute of Distance Education (Saide) aims to provide illustrated texts in local languages and language varieties that enable children to read for pleasure and for learning. This is done through a publishing model that makes these texts available, cost-effectively, as needed, by teachers, librarians and caregivers. Methods: Internal reports, external evaluations, two interviews with the initiative’s co-ordinator and a review of selected texts on the ASb website provided data for analysis. Results: The analysis enabled reflection on the challenges faced and the successes achieved, identification of factors that have enabled many of the challenges to be addressed and finally consideration of what the initiative offers as a model for supporting literacy development in local languages. Conclusion: While the paper tells a story that includes elements of a cautionary tale, it is primarily a story that offers inspiration and guidance to other organisations already involved in, or wishing to embark on, the important project of providing texts for young readers in a wide range of languages

Predictors of Condom Use Among Middle-Income, African American Women

Abstract The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) continue to be a major public health threat, not only within the United States but also on a global scale. Within the U.S. heterosexual population, African Americans (AAs) continue to bear the greatest burden of new HIV infections. Additionally, HIV/AIDS interventions have focused on low-income AA women, virtually ignoring their middle-class counterparts who may be subject to the same sexual risks. The purpose of this quantitative, cross-sectional study was to determine whether if there was an association between the 5 constructs of the Health Belief Model (HBM) and self-efficacy in condom use among middle-income AA women. One hundred and fifty two middleincome AA women were recruited through personal social media accounts and Survey Monkey to participate in this study. Multiple linear regression analyses indicated that 4 of the 5 constructs (i.e. perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, relationship self-efficacy) were predictors of self-efficacy in condom use, after controlling for age, income, education attainment, and marital status. There was no association between perceived threat and self-efficacy in consistent condom use. The results can inform HIV prevention counseling at the primary care level to reduce the spread of HIV among all AA women. Implications for positive social change include evidence for the need to expand the paradigm for HIV prevention interventions to include middle-income AA women and restructure HIV prevention strategies to address all women of color in the United States

Validating academic assessment: a hermeneutical perspective

This article addresses the nature of validation in assessment, that is, the question of what we know, and the processes by which we come to know, in assessing student work. Interest in this question started with a panel discussion at the Kenton Education Conference between the three authors of this article. This article is a continuation of that discussion. It begins by drawing on the basic distinction between the hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion, first set out by Paul Ricoeur. These are two ontological moments in social science theory, in everyday life, in teaching and in assessment. They cannot be separated. Nevertheless, and quite problematically, much of the assessment literature, and much assessment activity, ignores the first and emphasizes these cond. In addition, there is significant assessment activity in teaching which incorporates implicitly and silently, non-cognitive and situational factors, based on the hermeneutics of faith. Our question is: How is one, then, to validate judgements made in this post-positivist mode? How is one to assess the assessor? We conclude the paper with tentative suggestions of how criteria drawn from qualitative research and from psychotherapy can be helpful in this regard

(Un)reliable assessment : A case study.

The drive towards quality assurance at South African universities, with 'consistency' of approach being one of its key features, has profound implications for assessment policies and practices in relation to equity. In this article we present a case study discussion of an investigation we undertook, as a department, into certain anomalies which arose in the assessment of a particular group of post-graduate students' research reports. We were puzzled by the variability in the marks awarded by three different markers of the same reports and set out to investigate what factors were producing this 'inter-marker [un]reliability'. Through a content and discourse analysis of the different assessors' written reports, we uncovered the implicit assessment categories and criteria which assessors were working with in their assessments. We discovered shared categories and criteria, as well as differences in how these were weighted. In the interests of equity and increased inter-marker reliability, we have developed a set of banded criteria on generic features of the research report which we intend to develop a set of banded criteria on generic features of the research report which we intend to trial. We also surfaced two unresolved issues: the use of language and the role of the writer's 'voice' in the research report. As a result of this investigation, we argue that the 'consistency' of assessment within and across universities aspired to by quality assurers (such as the HEQC in the South African context) is difficult to achieve and much still depends on professional judgement, intellectual position and personal taste

Pitfalls and possibilities in literacy research: A review of South African literacy studies, 2004-2018

Background: Given the comprehensively documented literacy crisis in South Africa and the gaps in what is known about the effective teaching of reading and writing in schools, high-quality literacy research is a priority. Objectives: This article evaluates South African research from two annotated bibliographies on reading in African languages at home language level (2004-2017) and South African research on teaching reading in English as a first additional language (2007-2018). It also aims to provide guidelines for addressing these weaknesses. Methods: Examples of 70 quantitative and qualitative research studies from the annotated bibliographies were critically analysed, identifying key weaknesses in the research as a whole and examples of excellent quality. Results: Weaknesses evident in the research reviewed, suggested greater consideration is needed to lay sound methodological foundations for quality literacy research. Three methodological issues underlying local literacy research that require greater attention are research design, selection and use of literature and research rigour. High-quality research examples are referenced but, for ethical reasons, examples of what we consider to be flawed research are described generally. Guidelines are offered for addressing these pitfalls that, in our view, contribute to research of limited quality. Since many universities require submission of a journal article as a requirement for postgraduate students, preparation for such an article is considered. Conclusion: While this article is not intended to be a comprehensive guide, we hope it is useful to supervisors, postgraduate students and early career researchers currently undertaking, or planning to undertake, literacy research and to writing for publication