Background: The South African national school curriculum for the foundation phase (6- to 9-year-olds) does not have a unique subject called 'science', but 'hidden' away in the subject 'life skills', one detects a great deal of science, but not all of it overtly presented. This presents a challenge to teachers who might be limited in their science…

A great deal of research within science and engineering education revolves around academic success and retention of science and engineering students. It is well known that South Africa is experiencing, for various reasons, an acute shortage of engineers. Therefore, we think it is important to understand the factors that contribute to attrition…

The Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), one of the highly researched career theories, suggested that outcomes expectance and self-efficacy are crucial factors in the career selection process. The result of career outcomes expectancy (COE) and career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE) may be pivotal in an individual's shunning or being more…

The paper investigated the challenges faced by female students enrolled in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field of study. The social cognitive theory (SCCT) was employed to examine the role played by the environment, goals, behaviour, and self-efficacy factors of female students studying towards Engineering and…

Current pedagogical approaches to science and technology policy studies in southern African universities may fail to provide students with the necessary capabilities to be effective as innovation policy practitioners. This study investigated whether consideration of epistemic diversity and the situatedness of knowledge could enhance student…

This paper reports on the findings of a study which sought to investigate the impact and efficacy of technology-based counseling offered by the University of South Africa (Unisa), an Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institution. The study focused specifically on student perceptions of the services they had received from professionals based in the…

Students' approaches to learning have a significant impact on the outcomes of any educational programme. In the light of the documented concerns about the quality of students' engagement with academic work, this study sets out to determine and explain preservice teachers' (PSTs) approaches to learning. This was based on the premise that, while…

Anatomical science is a fundamental element of undergraduate medical education; thus, it is imperative that the course serves future medical professionals when entering clinical practice. However, anatomical education has faced challenges in recent years including decreased allocated time, increased class sizes and over-stretched staff.…

The research reported here investigates the efficacy of a module in an Advanced Certificate in Education course in promoting conceptual understanding in Astronomy. The research attempted to find out how teachers' understanding of astronomy concepts and processes change after completing this module as well as the reasons for such changes, if any.…

This study describes the results of a survey and a description of instructional technologies in place in the social sciences in South African Universities. Lecturers in the social sciences reported a well-established practice of information and communication technologies (ICTs) use for general purposes (although frequent use tended to be for email…

These proceedings contain the papers and posters of the International Conferences on Internet Technologies & Society (ITS 2016), Educational Technologies (ICEduTech 2016) and Sustainability, Technology and Education (STE 2016), which have been organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society and…

This mixed method study investigated changes in 3rd year Bachelor of Education students' attitudes towards chemistry after learning interventions with virtual chemistry simulations. After participant students identified certain concepts from their 3rd year chemistry module as being abstract and not easily comprehensible, these concepts were…

Software is a vital resource for modern life. For software to be successful, programming skills are of the utmost importance. These skills are used both by programmers and also by systems analysts and designers during the phases of software development. Therefore, both technical and non-technical stakeholders within the software development…

Research suggests that there is a need for better training of prospective teachers on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to encourage their use for teaching and learning in schools. This paper presents findings on the self-perceptions of competence by pre-service teachers to use ICTs for teaching science content. A mixed…

This volume of the 27th International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference includes the following research reports: (1) Improving Decimal Number Conception by Transfer from Fractions to Decimals (Irita Peled and Juhaina Awawdy Shahbari); (2) The Development of Student Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs in Mathematics during…