Erasmos Charamba

• Doctor of Education
• University of the Witwatersrand

Science plays a significant role in the economic, technological, political, and environmental development of any nation because it has permeated all facets of human life. In view of the emphasis on the understanding of science, this research focussed on the trend performance of physical science in Grade twelve in Eswatini. Trend performance is impo...

In Eswatini school-going young mothers who attend school in secondary schools in the Lubombo region face a number of challenges which result in emotional stresses. A qualitative study was utilised to examine the emotional wellbeing and future aspirations of school-going young mothers. 15 school-going young mothers from five (5) high schools were se...

This study explores the role of the principal as an instructional leader in four primary schools in the township. This is regardless of the poor learner academic performance in township primary schools in Gauteng. Most of the principals serve mostly as a management and less as instructional leaders. Their lack of involvement in classroom instructio...

Resilience is a preferred way to promote student wellbeing in higher education, through its indisputable impact on students’ ability to productively traverse stressful environments. It is thus seen as a crucial integrant to versatile recovery leading to stabilisation following threats to one’s wellbeing. Additionally, the constructive relationship...

This study examined psychological challenges of implementing inclusive education among South African learning support teachers. The study adopted a qualitative approach and a multiple case study of five primary schools in the Metropole East Education District, Western Cape, was conducted. Through semi-structured interviews, data from ten participan...

The present chapter explored prioritising transformation through involving parents in parental involvement in education of children in selected early childhood education centres in Cape Town, Western Cape Province of South Africa. The critical theory, Epstein’s model of parental involvement and African “Ubuntu” Theory guided this chapter. The chapt...

Several factors such as globalisation, political unrest in some countries, and failing economies have resulted in increased intra- and inter-state migration of people. This has led to an increase in the enrolment of university students with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, placing more academic demands on universities. In the year 2020,...

Sub-themes 1. Innovative practices for distance education and teacher training. 2. Preparing teachers to accommodate Indigenous languages, multilingual deaf communities, and intercultural competence 3. Teacher buoyancy in managing learners in diverse classrooms. 4. Enhancing self-directed learning in teacher training. 5. Effectiveness of In-servic...

The state of science education remains a thorny issue especially when coming to gifted learners. In the majority of classes gifted learners are given the same quantity and quality of academic work as their non-gifted classmates. In worse scenarios, gifted learners are left to look after themselves when they are through with the day’s work, or even...

In spite of all language regulations and statutes South Africa has put in place to acknowledge the cultural and linguistic diversity of her citizenry, education in the country still follows the 'one school, one language' monolingual approach. Consequently, this has resulted in the systematic segregation, devaluation, and eventual extinction of some...

This article seeks to evaluate the level and type of changes in Sesotho as a result of language contact in multilingual Gwanda South, Zimbabwe. It will indicate choices that speech communities have and reasons for specific language preferences. It looks at the multilingual situation in Gwanda South and the language choices that the community is fre...

The 2015 TIMSS and 2021 PIRLS results show the underachievement of our learners in reading comprehension, mathematics and science. Analysts of both assessments suggest the low performance is caused, chiefly, by the misalignment between learners’ home languages and the language of instruction. Even though today’s classrooms have become more and more...

The myth of a pure form of language is so deep-rooted in many people that, even though they accept the existence of different languages, they cannot accept the reality that there is no language that is fully independent of other languages. People believe that there is language contamination across languages and most of the time it is their own lang...

Inclusion in education entails affording all learners access and equal opportunities to education and learning. Several countries, South Africa included, have developed policies on inclusive education. At the centre of the policies are teachers who happen to be the primary implementers of the same policies. Successful implementation of the policies...

The call for improving students' academic achievement in science education has increased in urgency in recent years. It has also increased in complexity in the face of the growing cultural and linguistic diversity of present-day classrooms following inter-and intra-state migration. Although translanguaging pedagogy, where languages of input and out...

The quality of passes in South African science classes keeps decreasing by the year and local educational analysts have repeatedly singled out the difference between the students' home language and the schools' language of instruction as the major cause. Although multilingualism is acknowledged and scripted in the South African Language in Educatio...

Article History Language diversity is generally a norm in multilingual South African classroom. Orellana and García (2014) describe how multilingual speakers need to learn tools to allow them to be flexible with their language skills. Language brokering and code-switching form part of the everyday teaching and learning tools needed in South African...

Language diversity is generally a norm in multilingual South African classroom. Orellana and García (2014) describe how multilingual speakers need to learn tools to allow them to be flexible with their language skills. Language brokering and code-switching form part of the everyday teaching and learning tools needed in South African multilingual cl...

Debate on whether the use of translanguaging is disruptive of monolingual ideologies and practices that predominate global tertiary education seem to be still in its infancy. Contemporary research in the area focuses on what appears conflicting though lucid discourses on eliminating boundaries between codes or languages, resulting in no ‘named’ lan...

The extent of student underachievement in sub- Saharan Africa is confirmed by international student assessments such as The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). TIMSS measures trends in mathematics and science achievement at fourth and eighth grades while PIRLS i...

The aim of the study was to explore the perceptions of parents on the use of translanguaging in teaching and learning in the context of Eswatini. The study adopted an interpretive paradigm, and a case study approach was used to understand the perceptions and insights of the parents on translanguaging. Five parents were purposively sampled using con...

This chapter seeks to explore how colonial education was used as a double-edged sword to promote interests of colonialists while hindering the development of African cultural and multilingual ideologies. It looks at how post-colonial Zimbabwe has done no better in handling issues of-isms in the education sector. It considers problems that Zimbabwe...

Assessments have become integral to today's teaching and learning. Within the world of assessments, there are two paramount ideologies at work: assessments for learning and assessments of learning. The latter are typically administered at the end of a unit or grading period and evaluate a student's understanding by comparing their achievement again...

Technology use can introduce fundamental pedagogical changes that are integral to achieving significant academic improvements in higher education. When used to support learning, technology permeates higher education with digital learning mechanisms; enlarges course offerings and instructional alternatives; facilitates learning 24 hours a day; devel...

The object of research: Contemporary research suggests the use of an instructional language different from students’ home language as a major contributing factor to academic underachievement. This has also been the case in Gwanda South, Zimbabwe, where Sesotho speaking secondary school learners are taught through English only and have been underper...

The emergence of COVID-19 resulted in the immediate indefinite suspension of traditional contact classes across the world in a bid to contain the spread of the virus. This disrupted the normal instructional routine leaving institutions with only one option: e-learning. E-learning is a technological pedagogy that supports teaching and learning using...

There is very little debate on whether the use of translanguaging is disruptive of monolingual ideologies and practices that predominate schooling systems globally. Recent studies in the field focus on what seems contradictory yet clear discourses on removing boundaries between languages so that there are no named-languages while at the same time t...

Throughout the history of mankind, language has been used as a tool of ascendance and colonisation to consolidate power and create governable subjects. During the colonial era, white minority governments have wielded language policy in education as an instrument of political manoeuvring, which is key to the transformation agenda of Africa, in gener...

Many classrooms in South Africa are very diverse in terms of culture, gender, language, and intellectual ability. Thus, educators need to be inclusive in the way they plan for teaching and learning. This chapter attempts to show how teacher educators at one institution of higher education in South Africa implemented inclusive formative assessments...

The fame of the WhatsApp Group in the academic circle has raised the interest of researchers in investigating its potential benefit in the teaching and learning of English First Additional Language (EFAL) in a multilingual setting. This study seeks to investigate the opinions of the EFAL learners on the use of the WhatsApp platform as a learning to...

A recent body of research in sociolinguistics suggests that the achievement gap between monolingual and multilingual speakers of minority languages can be narrowed through the exploitation of the latter’s linguistic repertories as resources for teaching and learning. This has manifested in several programmes being developed worldwide. However, the...

The end of 2019 was punctuated by the emergence of an infectious disease spread through human-to-human transmission. This resulted in the suspension of contact classes as countries tried to contain the widespread virus. institutions were thus left with only one option: e-learning. E-learning entails the electronic delivery of learning experiences t...

This study explored science teachers" perspectives of the use of translanguaging and their practice in a science classroom. This was prompted by the National Education and Training Sector Policy of Swaziland which stipulates the official language of instruction from Grade 4 as English. This is regardless of the evidence that learners who use second...

While HIV and AIDS remain a global health challenge, this article sought to explore how the framing of perceptions of its origins has been constructed in South Africa. Based on two major historical discourses, deconstructing of the collusion of the colonial and missionary discourses will illuminate how that collusion dominates the reductionist and...

This study sought to investigate factors affecting the academic performance of female students in science at a public secondary school in South Africa. This study provides empirical evidence for improvement of enrollment, participation and academic performance of female secondary school science students. The study adopted an ethnographic design in...

Given the power that assessments have in today's education systems, the research provided a series of three assessments to explore the role language plays in the learning of bilingual students. As research on science and technology learning has increasingly highlighted the sociocultural nature of how learning occurs, a new wave of frameworks and st...

The year 2019 saw the emergence of COVID-19, an infectious disease spread through human-to-human transmission. This resulted in the immediate worldwide suspension of contact classes as countries tried to contain the wide spread of the pandemic. Consequently, educational institutions were thus left with only one option: e-learning. E-learning is the...

Higher Education universally is fraught with communication philosophy controversies. Whereas the monolingual-biased oral philosophy has dominated higher education in Zimbabwe for decades, debate on use of alternative pedagogies of communication opened up recently. With statisticians estimating that about two-thirds of the world's population is mult...

Throughout the history of mankind, language has been used as a tool of ascendance and colonisation to consolidate power and create governable subjects. In this way, the coloniser's language became the colonised country's official language. Upon attaining political independence, several of these nation-states embarked on educational reforms by revis...

Research suggests that linguistically diverse students draw on their collective linguistic repertoires to meet their communicative goals in the educational space. This indicates that their language use is not strictly compartmentalized but fluid. Therefore, educators should recognize and acknowledge their students as multilingual speakers who have...

In spite of today's science classrooms being linguistically diverse, languages are still kept separate during academic instruction with education policymakers and stakeholders emphasising language purism and a strict separation of languages in the classroom. The overarching aim of this article is to investigate science teachers' perceptions regardi...

This study describes multilingual students' authentic use of their multiple languages in a science classroom in Viljoensdrift, South Africa. There has been a broad scope of research conducted by several researchers with regards to translanguaging and all have proven it to be an effective pedagogical tool that can be used in the process of teaching...

In spite of the fact that increased transnational flows of people have altered the social, cultural, and linguistic landscape, education in Zimbabwe still follows a monolingual trajectory. The use of a language of instruction different from the students’ home language has been identified as the major factor in students’ academic underachievement. T...

Education for multilingual Physics students in South Africa still has a monolingual bias despite such pedagogy being repeatedly identified as the key factor in students’ academic underachievement in the subject. The paper reports on the pivotal role language plays in the comprehension and subsequent academic performance of students in science educa...

Language and learning are intertwined. As such when students enter the classroom they bring with them a linguistic bank that can be used for effective instruction. There should be creation of fluid linguistic boundaries by doing away with named languages. Translingual practices have proved to be effective in science education

Language is a crucial means of gaining comprehension of Physics content as well as providing correct answers to Physics questions and explanations of Physics phenomena. Therefore language determines the academic achievement of Physics learners. Consequently, language diversity plays a pivotal role in the outcomes of education in a multicultural soc...

The study sought to investigate the role played by language in the academic performance of science students at a high school in the Free State province, South Africa who are taught through a language different from their mother tongue. The paper reports on the decisive mantle language plays in the comprehension and subsequent scholastic performance...

Achievement in the learning area of science in Zimbabwe shows significant gaps in comparison to other countries in the global south. Science achievement of bilingual learners has been discussed at different levels, including cultural responsiveness in science teaching, but the emphasis has been placed primarily on the development of science literac...

Worldwide, education for the deaf is punctuated with communication philosophy controversies. Whereas the monolingual- biased oral philosophy has dominated the education of the deaf in Zimbabwe for decades, debate on use of alternative pedagogies of communication opened up recently. This article provides an overview of the research into deaf lear...