Education institutions globally, are increasingly driven to integrate innovative technologies in teaching spaces. While many studies have been conducted on e-learning, blended learning and m-learning, only a few studies have concentrated on the STEM preservice teachers' e-readiness for using online multimodal teaching methods in developing…

Research on mathematical equivalence, and to some extent, on number structure in early grade mathematics, has shown that most students at primary and secondary levels understand these concepts instrumentally rather than relationally. The study reported in this paper uses a design research approach to explore both mathematical equivalence and…

This paper focuses on the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education's (SAARMSTE's) role as a platform supporting research dissemination and connecting researchers in early grades mathematics (EGM) in the Southern African region. A review of the Long Papers in SAARMSTE over the last 20 years supports…

Teacher quality in primary schools in South Africa is a serious concern, and how best to prepare teachers in initial teacher education--with regard to mathematics--remains an open and vexing question. There is a confluence of challenges facing the mathematics education community in South Africa: poor conceptual understanding of mathematics amongst…

This paper examines the conceptions of 'number sense' as promoted in pre-service primary mathematics education courses at 11 South African Higher Education Institutions through the texts used by academics or prescribed for students. While all the participating institutions agree that the development of primary school learners' 'number sense' is…

Information and communication technology (ICT) competences are among the most important requirements to effectively teach mathematics and science in today's classrooms. Teacher educators in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region have prioritised ICT competences for pre-service teachers (PSTs) to effectively select suitable…

Over several years, first-year pre-service education students regularly experienced difficulty with engineering graphics activities. Research has already established that these activities require the use of well-developed spatial visualisation which is, for the most part, determined by a persons' spatial experience. The importance of this study…

The emphasis on programming and robotics owing to the unfolding of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the African continent has led the South African National Department of Education to propose a new subject in Grades R to 9. Hence, the training and development of pre-service teachers is crucial so that they can respond to the skills needed in…

Reflective practice is a crucial element of professional growth that is gaining in popularity in teacher education, yet the ability to reflect is a skill that is neither natural nor easy to develop. This paper reports on an investigation that sought to establish if pre-service teachers at a South African university -- in the process of learning to…

Pedagogical content knowledge is considered a valuable knowledge base for all science teachers. Thus, promoting its development in all pre-service teacher programmes including a short 1 year Physical Science postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) course is desirable. This paper focuses on the comparison of topic-specific pedagogical content…

It has recently been suggested that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has a concept-specific nature, beyond the topic-specific level of PCK. This paper reports a case study of three pre-service teachers' reported PCK about three fundamental concepts within the topic of electrostatics, namely electrostatic force, electric field and electric field…

This research focused on first-year university students' visuospatial cognition in terms of producing three-dimensional (3D) representations of objects from two-dimensional (2D) views. The research was important since students often had difficulty with 2D to 3D transition activities. A synthesis from the literature established a 2D to 3D…

The divide between theory and practice is an enduring challenge commonly attributed to disconnection in teacher knowledge between 'knowing what to do' (planning) and 'doing what you know' (enacting in class). We re-visited this divide from the new perspective of pedagogical content knowledge with the purpose of examining the ways in which…

The aim of the study was to determine the effects of a dialogical argumentation instructional model (DAIM) on pre-service teachers' ability to solve conceptual maths-in-physics (MIP) problems. Using a quasi-experimental design the study included two equal groups of pre-service teachers (N = 40) to follow two instructional methods in which 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…