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January 2005 - present
Publications
Publications (104)
This study focuses on how teachers learn to teach a new topic and the role played by their developing content knowledge as they teach. The paper is based on seven high school science teachers' studies on the teaching of semiconductors, at the time a new topic in the curriculum. Analysis of artefacts such as teacher concept maps, video recordings of...
Curriculum statements are crucial documents for guiding teaching and learning as they describe the content and skills to be acquired by learners. Textbooks translate curriculum statements into materials for use in schools. This study examines the educative nature of three physical sciences textbooks about electrostatics using the lens of pedagogica...
Education is always evolving, and most recently has shifted to increased online or remote learning. Digital Learning and Teaching in Chemistry compiles the established and emerging trends in this field, specifically within the context of learning and teaching in chemistry. This book shares insights about five major themes: best practices for teachi...
The intervention programmes have a direct influence on teachers’ knowledge of teaching different topics. This paper focuses on how Grade 8 natural science teachers’ knowledge developed during an intervention programme. Eight schools were selected to participate, and 25 Grade 8 Natural Sciences teachers from Gauteng province participated. Data were...
We investigated what students learnt about biodiversity, a broad and multi-dimensional concept, challenging to understand, following a visit to a nature reserve. Acknowledging the individual nature of informal learning, we explore Personal Meaning Maps (PMMs) coupled with semi-structured interviews to investigate learning among 13 scouts aged 13–15...
Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs) have been in existence in Africa and Southern Africa since the late 1970s. Various needs for programmes exist, but the primary motivator in the current South African context is a transformative one. While many historically white institutions have either scaled down or closed their ECPs, the University of Pretor...
This paper reports on topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) enacted by three pre-service science teachers during their final year school-based internship. An interpretive, qualitative case study was conducted to investigate to what extent the pre-service teachers applied the knowledge taught during a preceding physical science method c...
Refereed papers from the Proceedings of the Colloquium on Extended Curriculum Programmes, August 14-15 2019
Stoichiometry, which deals with the quantitative aspects of Chemistry, is a topic students find challenging and which teachers struggle to teach. South African students’ performance in stoichiometry in the final matriculation examinations has led to calls for the topic to be taught better and highlighted the need for teacher professional developmen...
Rubrics are increasingly used to differentiate the quality of science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), both qualitatively and quantitatively. Well-designed PCK rubrics can guide the judgement of PCK quality for valid assessment. This chapter considers the possibility of a “grand rubric” that allows measurement of different variants of...
This study investigates the development of Topic-Specific Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TSPCK) of 14 novice uncertified graduate science teachers during a Professional Development Intervention (PDI) on teaching particulate nature of matter. TSPCK was defined in terms of five knowledge components: learner prior knowledge, curricular saliency, repre...
Learning Study is an iterative and collaborative process that can served as the vehicle for investigating the development of teachers' topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge. The Learning Study was conducted by the researcher, three experienced Physical Science teachers and their respective supervisors who formed part of a professional learni...
Learning to teach is a life-long endeavour, a learning continuum that starts at pre-service and ends when a teacher permanently leaves the profession. Teacher learning can therefore be viewed on a trajectory over the entire career of a teacher. Mapping these learning trajectories, by identifying the events that played a role, investigating the rout...
This chapter traces the history of two key science education organisations which emerged in the early post-apartheid period in South Africa. One is a research organisation, the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology (SAARMSTE) and the other a practitioner association, the South African Association of Scienc...
Pedagogical content knowledge, PCK, is well established in the education research community. There is general consensus that PCK is knowledge unique to teachers and different from but supported by content knowledge, CK. This study examines the performance of graduate teaching assistants (chemistry subject matter specialists) in relation to teachers...
In this chapter we explore an important dimension of teacher knowledge, called pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK is specialised knowledge about the content to be taught possessed only by teachers.
The history of South Africa presents a story of a divided education system with policies deliberately designed for disparity in the quality of provision. Prior to 1994, education policy in the country was used to constrain political, social, and economic development of people of colour, who are in the majority. Twenty years on, the widespread after...
In science education, learner-centred classroom practices are widely accepted as desirable and are associated with responsive and reformed kinds of teacher beliefs. They are further associated with high-quality Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). Topic-Specific Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TSPCK), a version of PCK defined at topic level, is know...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the transfer of the competence to transform content knowledge learned in electric circuits to a new topic in either chemistry or physics. The study was located in a physics methodology class with 10 pre-service teachers, who were in their final year of study. They had a 6-week-long intervention that was...
This chapter interrogates debates about Subject Matter knowledge (SMK) in teacher education. It begins by providing a brief description of the search methods used before examining the origins of SMK in teacher education. The nature and format of SMK in teacher education is then interrogated followed by an account of SMK preparation internationally....
This study investigates the transferability of the principles of topic-specific PCK (TSPCK) across science topics. The principles are embodied in a model based on five components – Learners’ Prior Knowledge, Curriculum Saliency, What makes a topic easy or difficult to understand, Representations and Conceptual Teaching Strategies. 16 pre-service te...
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Since the independence era in the 1950s and 1960s, many African countries have recognised the important role that science plays in the socio-economic development of any country. As a result, various African governments have enacted policies and allocated a large proportion of their gross national product to the science and science education sector...
The construct of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, PCK, is now well established in the education
research community. Since the phrase was first coined, multiple understandings of the construct have
emerged, but there is general consensus that PCK is knowledge unique to teachers and different from,
but supported by content knowledge, CK. In this stu...
This paper investigates the process of teacher change in a group of 8 primary school teachers during
their exposure to a science, technology and society (STS) approach to teaching Science in
Swaziland. The research aimed to establish the effect of support given to teachers in using the
approach through a series of workshops, followed by a 5-week su...
Electrochemistry is an important topic in chemistry due to its wide application in everyday life. Al-
though it is found in most high school curricula throughout the world, it is commonly regarded as an
abstract and difficult topic to teach. This paper explores the teacher knowledge possessed by a diverse
group of South African grade 12 teachers...
Globally, mathematics and science education faces three crucial challenges: an increasing need for mathematics and science graduates; a declining enrolment of school graduates into university studies in these disciplines; and the varying quality of school teaching in these areas. Alongside these challenges, internationally more and more non-special...
This paper is a concept paper reflecting on the conceptualization of the concept of a 'mole' in the literature. The focus of this paper is to problematize the conceptualization of the mole concept in the literature and argues for a refined conception. The mole concept and reaction stoichiometry are two domains within chemistry, taught at secondary...
In this study, pre-service science teachers' ability to transfer pedagogical content knowledge, acquired from the context of electricity, to a new physical science topic was explored. The participants were exposed to a nine-week intervention involving the five components which compose the Topic-Specific PCK framework. They completed three CoRes, be...
SynonymsAcademic support or development programs; Access; Augmented; Bridging; Epistemological access; Extended curriculum; Foundation; Higher education access; Language; Remedial; “Slow stream”Access programmesIn most countries access to tertiary STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) study is restricted to those who attend schoo...
Electrochemistry is an important topic in chemistry due to its wide application in everyday life. Although it is found in most high school curricula throughout the world, it is commonly regarded as an abstract and difficult topic to teach. This paper explores the teacher knowledge possessed by a diverse group of South African grade 12 teachers for...
The challenge of teaching new subject matter is a familiar one for most teachers. This paper investigates the content knowledge gains made by seven teachers as they learn to teach the topic of semiconductors through a process of self-study. ‘Semiconductors’ is a new topic in the curriculum which looks at the sub-microscopic properties of materials...
Recently Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) were introduced in South Africa in response to confusion precipitated by previous curriculum documents. The purpose of this paper is to explore that confusion in the subject ‘Physical Sciences’ and consider the nature of the transformation from the previous curriculum by looking at curricu...
Teaching organic chemistry at the undergraduate level has long been regarded as challenging and students are often alienated by the mass of detail which seems to characterise the subject. In this paper we investigate the practice of an accomplished lecturer by trying to capture and portray his pedagogical content knowledge, PCK, in order to reveal...
This study uses an action research approach to investigate how different modes of pre-laboratory preparation contribute towards a fruitful laboratory experience for first year students on an access programme. We considered the experience to be fruitful if the students successfully acquired procedural understanding, communicative competence and were...
This paper reviews astronomy education research carried out among school students, teachers, and museum visitors over a 35‐year period from 1974 until 2008. One hundred and three peer‐reviewed journal articles were examined, the majority of whose research dealt with conceptions of astronomical phenomena with 40% investigating intervention activitie...
This chapter deals with research on teaching and learning in access courses. Teachers at the higher education level (and therefore on access programmes as well) face many challenges. They generally have had no teacher training, and hence very little preparation for teaching large classes. They also tend to focus on disciplinary content with little...
This chapter provides a survey of programmes around the world and types of educational interventions offered. It begins by outlining the types of responses to the need to provide second chance programmes in science in different countries throughout the world, in particular the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and southern Africa. Referenc...
In this chapter, language issues and students' level of communicative competence are examined. Two predominant theoretical models are examined, relying on cognitivist and situated approaches, respectively. The situated approach, supported by the discourse work of Gee (2005, Establishing scientific classroom discourse communities, pp. 19-45) is foun...
The issue of selection of students into programmes and the identification of potential is a thorny one and the subject of much discussion in access programmes. In this chapter we examine admission and issues of equity in several countries and how disadvantage is taken into account. The chapter outlines a wide variety of measures used in selection i...
Once students are admitted to institutions, they need to adapt and this is the subject of this chapter. The chapter begins with an examination of studies looking into gaps in education, particularly between school and university level. The basic theoretical model to be used here is the notion of a holistic study of gaps, conceived by Rollnick et al...
This chapter deals with naming the students and the programmes, the need for access programmes, various structural models for programmes, the aims and philosophies of programmes and philosophical and logistic issues, factors influencing the quality of the programmes and their relationship to higher education policy. The models for programmes vary w...
This paper reports on the development of an instrument which was used to gather information on the views of science students on the social responsibility of scientists. The methodology is based on a “Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS)” instrument which was developed in Canada. It involves three phases, employing interviews and free respons...
This chapter identifies the main thrust of the book as an account of science access programmes involving university level interventions as a response to changing demography in tertiary level institutions with special attention given to lessons from South Africa. It explores different types of interventions and justifies the emphasis on university l...
This paper analyses discourse produced in a larger study aimed at encouraging students in Lesotho to talk the language of science as a meaningful way of learning. The paper presents a semiotic and activity based analysis of discourses of students learning to talk physics while enrolled in a pre-tertiary access programme. Prior to the access program...
This paper provides a documentary analysis of the nature and role of contextualization in the FET (Grades 10-12) subjects Mathematics, Mathematical Literacy and Physical Sciences. The analysis is framed by Bernstein’s notion of classification and an adaptation of Graven’s orientations to Mathematics. Key arguments within our analysis are that withi...
Two recent policies in the United States illustrate the potential connection. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) reauthorized a number of federal programs aiming to improve the performance of primary and secondary schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states, school districts, and schools as well as providing pare...
In this paper, a review of journal articles containing South African research in mathematics and science education in the 2000 – 2006 period is undertaken, and used to identify significant clusters of research interest on the one hand and areas of under-representation of research on the other. In mathematics education, significant clusters were fou...
This paper describes and characterizes the science and mathematics education communities in South Africa by looking at their refereed outputs from 2000–2006. The publications under study are studies focusing on South Africa in local and international journals from 2000–2006. Our interest lies in looking more closely at the authors to understand how...
This paper presents two South African case studies designed to explore the influence of subject matter knowledge on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In the first case study on teaching the mole in two township schools, the findings illustrate that the participant teachers favoured procedural approaches at the expense of conceptual understanding...
African students enter the classroom with a rich heritage of traditional beliefs that, if handled sensitively and with understanding, can play an important role in enabling learning of science. Recent developments in the understanding of how students acquire this knowledge may assist in promoting this process. This paper investigates studies situat...
What is the connection between student success and their approaches to learning? Do learning approaches develop with university experience? We explored these questions by constructing profiles using a specially developed fixed response instrument and administering this to students at two similar South African universities. Groups consisted of acces...
This paper surveys students' ideas on how to design a valid physics experiment. It documents their decisions in setting up an experiment establishing how the current produced by a solar cell changes with the sun's radiation. The data include responses from 42 students to five written probes, each describing an experimental situation. The students m...
This paper describes the process of determining cognitive levels of testing in first and second year university chemistry examination and emanates from a larger study in which explanations were sought for problems experienced by second year students in chemistry at the University of the Witwatersrand. A user friendly scheme for establishing cogniti...
This article arose from interesting observations during a larger study where the focus was on the interface between two years of university chemistry. Locating the interface was not as straightforward as anticipated owing to differences in innate characteristics of the knowledge structure of various chemistry disciplines. This necessitated conceptu...
Throughput of students is a concern for academic departments especially since it will be the basis of a new funding formula for tertiary institutions. In order to reduce content for increased mastery, and ensure student engagement with chemical concepts, tutorials were introduced for two of the second year chemistry sub-disciplines at UCT in the pl...
The purpose of this study was to develop and apply a scheme for the analysis of flow diagrams. The flow diagrams in question are a schematic representation of written instructions that require students to process the text of their practical manual. It was hoped that an analysis of the flow diagrams would provide insight into students' understanding...
The College of Science (COS) at Wits University in South Africa has been running a successful access course to the faculty of Science for over ten years. In this time, more than 370 BSc graduates have emerged from this programme. However, this programme offers access to only 200 students per year. The COS decided to broaden access to its programmes...
This chapter will examine the tensions that exist between those who advocate simplification of science texts to ensure accessibility to young or second-language English readers and the situated cognitionists, such as Gee (1996, 1997, 2001), who emphasize the importance of participating in the discourse of science if one is to access science texts....
This article uses an action research approach to investigate how a researcher as teacher reflected on his practice to make changes to his teaching. The purpose was to explore how the research contributed to his understanding of science teaching and learning, particularly in the area of acids and bases. The study was conducted over a two-year period...
This paper presents a theoretical model of students' thought processes when preparing for, and executing, laboratory tasks and reporting on these. The model draws from three theoretical constructs: situated cognition, communicative competences and procedural knowledge in science. The model is constructed from empirical data and is used as a way to...
In practical sessions students lack sufficient time or opportunity for deep processing of information. If the signal to noise ratio is too low, it can obscure the 'chemical message' which the lecturer is trying to convey. This study reports on an action research driven attempt to improve on a Hess's Law experiment, well known in most first year cur...
This paper explores the Competency Tripod model and flow diagrams as two resources for enabling students'' metacognition in the chemistry laboratory. It focuses on four selected students'' statements in interviews, questionnaires and their performance in practical reports, examinations and tests. These students were from diverse backgrounds and all...
This article discusses sociocultural and other theoretical aspects of the language-in-education debate in the light of their practical implications for language policy and teacher education in linguistically diverse school settings. We draw on studies carried out in African classrooms where subjects such as science were being taught via English, an...
This study investigates changes in students' understanding of various aspects of measurement before and after participating in two different introductory laboratory courses at two universities in South Africa. Students' ideas were sought using a probe into their understanding of data collection, data processing and data comparison. The responses we...