The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the nature of small group discussion tasks and learners' talk during Physical Science lessons. The study was conducted during Physical Science lessons with three self-selected groups of Grade 11 learners from one school. A total of three lessons were followed. During the…

Learners in general struggle when working with word problems. South African learners in particular have an added barrier owing to the many official languages that have been legislated. The South African Department of Basic Education, through its curriculum statements, envisages that problem solving will play a fundamental part in mathematics…

In South Africa, there is a strong recognition of the affordances of information and communications technology (ICT) in science teaching and learning. A key indicator for the effective use of ICT is the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of teachers with TPACK-Practical (TPACK-P) being an important iteration related to teacher…

The issue of missing data raises concerns in all statistical and educational research. In this study, we focus on missing data in school-based assessment data generated by progressed high school learners (those who did not meet the promotional requirements for their current grades but were allowed to move to the next grade because of policy…

Creating awareness of environmental sustainability issues through formal education may be an effective way to help citizens deal with these issues. Teachers, however, have not been sufficiently trained on how to teach with sustainability concerns in mind. For this study, a purposively selected group of six chemistry teachers was exposed to an…

There is growing global concern concerning South African learners' mathematics achievement, with research identifying many factors contributing to poor mathematics achievement, with class size being one of them. When classrooms are overcrowded, this may lead to a stressful environment which can negatively impact the quality of teaching and…

Globally girls' performance in mathematics has improved over the years as measured by TIMSS results. Inconsistency in mathematics performance of boys and girls is still an area of great concern. This study examines the relationship between mathematics achievement and gender of South African Grade 9 learners from TIMSS 2015 data. The data were…

The Old Mutual Mathematics Olympiad (OMMO) in Malawi is a national mathematics competition open to all final year secondary school students. In this paper, we analyse the results of the preliminary round of the competition from 2015 to 2020. We developed seven content areas for the OMMO based on core elements of the Malawi secondary school…

This paper reports on a case study of South African Grade 12 learners' views about scientific inquiry. The study focuses on a non-fee-paying government school that receives curricular support and resources to specifically develop Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teaching in a low socioeconomic setting. Data were collected…

Learning mathematics is as much about developing relationships with mathematics as the development of mathematics concepts and skills. Mathematics clubs usually support learners to develop relationships with mathematics through engaging with challenging mathematics problems, exploring mathematical ideas, and communicating and sharing their ideas.…

This paper reports on a study that explored the subject and pedagogical content knowledge displayed by high school mathematics teachers in the Khomas education region in Namibia. The study was based on a quantitative approach using a survey design. A stratified random sampling method was used to select the participants in all the four school…

This qualitative case study explored how exposure to Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) improves 11th grade physical sciences learners' competency in solving stoichiometry problems. Two township schools of low socioeconomic status in Pretoria, South Africa, were conveniently and purposively sampled. Two classes (N = 48) composed of…

Extant literature has demonstrated the importance of individual and school-related factors in improving mathematics achievement. Despite this, there is still a gap in research to understand the mediating role of educational aspiration in mathematics achievement. The aim of the present study is to test the relationship between self-efficacy, school…

Little is known about longitudinal profiles of mathematics achievement spanning all phases of basic education of the same learners. This would be useful for identifying crucial points for intervention and informing learner subject choices. This research was aimed at establishing such a profile for boys attending a quintile 5 single gender school.…

For efficient and effective pedagogical interventions to address Uganda's alarmingly poor performance in Physics, it is vital to understand students' motivation patterns for Physics learning. Latent profile analysis (LPA)--a person-centred approach--can be used to investigate these motivation patterns. Using a three-step approach to LPA, we sought…