Carole Susan Bloch

University of the Western Cape | uwc · Faculty of Education

Significant challenges exist globally regarding literacy teaching and learning. To address these challenges, key features of how the brain works should be taken into account. First, perception is an active process based in detection of errors in hierarchical predictions of sensory data and action outcomes. Reading is a particular case of this non-l...

Significant challenges exist globally regarding literacy teaching and learning, particularly in poor socio-economic settings in countries of the Global South. In this paper we argue that to address these challenges, major features of how the brain works that are currently ignored in the educational literature should be taken into account. First, pe...

Significant challenges exist globally regarding literacy teaching and learning, particularly in poor socio-economic settings in countries of the Global South. In this paper we argue that to address these challenges, major features of how the brain works that are currently ignored in the educational literature should be taken into account. First, pe...

Understanding children's schemas, or ‘patterns of behaviour and thinking’, enables practitioners to support them as they use them to deepen their learning, explain Professor Tina Bruce CBE, Dr Stella Louis and Dr Carole Bloch

Early literacy teaching and learning in the foundation phase of rural schools in South Africa experience persistent challenges. In order to address some of these challenges, a national reading programme to improve literacy among rural learners was initiated by a non-governmental organisation. The article provides an overview of how teachers in sele...

In this paper, I contextualise the work of the Nal’ibali national reading for enjoyment campaign, by raising and discussing some major issues which affect and influence formal literacy education in South Africa. I acknowledge how a wasteful tragedy is unfolding for millions of children who cannot learn to read and write well enough to learn effecti...

Few young African children have much opportunity to discover the joy of becoming absorbed in a book, either before or during school. In fact most children in Africa are expected to develop their languages and literacies from early childhood onward in environments totally inconducive to learning: among other things, the inspiration and power of stor...

The quality of a country's human-resource base can be said to determine its level of success in social and economic development. This study focuses on some of the major human-resource development issues that surround the implementation of South Africa's policy of multilingualism in education. It begins by discussing the relationship between knowled...

This thesis deals with work I have undertaken on the theoretical issues and practical approaches that have contributed to the changes taking place in the early literacy field in South Africa, and, by extension, in some extent, other parts of Africa.

This presentation deals with the process of finding workable models and strategies for early childhood literacy teaching for mother tongue education in line with the conceptual framework adopted in Namibia on learner-centred education. The following areas are addressed: Environments for literacy Languages for learning/ mediums of instruction Teach...

This chapter refers to the crisis in the area of early childhood literacy education in South Africa and other countries on the continent. I acknowledge language medium as one of the main causal factors together with others like the ‘short cut’ approaches to ‘functional’ literacy in ex-colonial languages, how our rich oral heritage of story-telling...

We write this paper against the background of many exciting developments in the domain of cultural politics on the African continent. This is why we try to give a socio-historical frame of reference which, we hope, might provide useful perspectives for the kind of work in which most of the participants at this conference are involved. We raise and...

This paper addresses the fact that large numbers of schoolchildren in South Africa do not learn to read and write in either the mother tongue or any 'other tongue', let alone in two languages. A narrow skills-based approach to teaching reading and writing is identified as one of the main stumbling blocks. The author discusses a number of interrelat...

In the following pages I describe an Early Childhood Development (ECD) development research initiative carried out by the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA) in a mixed language class of young Xhosa, English and Afrikaans mother tongue speaking children. The initiative has involved an attempt to demonstrate strat...

This paper was written to guide the development of textbooks and other reading materials in the African languages ofNamibia for mother - tongue teaching and learning. I discussed some of the more relevant insights relating to the nature of young children’s learning generally and some of those that underpin and influence initial literacy learning. I...

In this article, I provide an overview and analysis in the domain of initial literacy learning of young South African children. I first give a sense of historical background and outline some of the extreme challenges faced in this area. I discuss the importance of understanding the multilingual nature of South African society for education, and des...

This paper Iraises some of the prevalent issues around initial literacy learning and teaching which have been evolving in South Africa. I argue that in multilingual countries like Namibia and South Africa, discussions about literacy make sense only as part of broader language (policy and planning) debates; and serious discussions about developing l...

In this article, I describe and analyse some of the literacy events and practices taking place in a selection of multilingual early childhood (Reception Class and Grade 1) classrooms in Cape Town. The work forms part of a larger multilingual education project being carried out by PRAESA. I use descriptions of my observations of classroom activities...

The issue of ‘literacy’ teaching in early schooling is commonly identified as central successful educational children. The language/s young children from a variety of language backgrounds use in school as they learn to read and write in a country where the hegemony of English is overwhelming, is a key question which has been addressed to some exten...

This paper offers observations and reflection arising out of research done in 1995 and 1996 as part of PRAESA’s multilingual education project. This project aimed to help to facilitate effective multilingual teaching and learning in South African classrooms. Among other things, this involved gathering information about teachers’ approaches towards...

This book documents my daughter, Chloe's early literacy learning and development as she explores writing in the context of her daily life. I discuss practical examples of her emergent writing, drawing on relevant theory and illustrating how her written language learning, like oral language learning, is all about personal meaning making and communic...

This position paper was written as a presentation for the Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG) to use in it's process with government towards and equitable approach to language and literacy teaching and learning. Although accepting the significance of greater access to pre-school ECD, I discuss how without changes to the way literacy is approached in...

The following procedures were used to gather information for this survey: a questionnaire with sections covering both general issues and the early childhood curriculum in South Africa was sent to a wide selection of both individuals and organisations operating in the non-formal educare field in South Africa; interviews were conducted with both grou...