Edith R. Dempster

Textual strategies for answering multiple choice questions among South African learners: what can we learn from TIMSS 2003?

Abstract This study investigated whether readability factors and/or misconceptions could account for the patterns of choice evidenced by South African learners in multiple-choice items in TIMSS 2003. The investigation focused on 20 items in which learners showed a strong preference for an incorrect answer. The trend was particularly noticeable among learners who attended schools in which all the learners and teachers speak an African language as their home language. The study arose from a concern about the readability of TIMSS items as a valid instrument for assessing the scientific knowledge of learners who lack proficiency in English. Text-based strategies could explain the pattern of choice in 14 of the 20 items in which over 40% of learners in African schools selected one incorrect answer. The most common strategy (eight items) consisted of favouring the answer that contained the greatest number of familiar words. Learners rejected answers containing unfamiliar words. Other strategies included selecting answers that contained words that were also in the question (three items), choosing an answer that contained all the options (one item), or misunderstanding the question (two items). Five items were consistent with misconceptions, and one item could not be classified. The strategies indicated that learners did not understand the 20 items clearly, and resorted to strategies based on ‘textual tricks’ that, with luck, might lead to the correct answer. Learners attending non-African schools may also have used ‘textual tricks’, although more learners in this group favoured the correct answer than the incorrect answer. The results of this analysis raise further concerns about the level of content knowledge among South African Grade 8 learners, and therefore the content validity of TIMSS in South Africa. The lack of appropriate content knowledge as well as misconceptions is compounded by low levels of proficiency in English, coupled with unclear wording of some TIMSS items.

An analysis of children’s drawings of what they think is inside their bodies: a South African regional study

The purpose of the study is to find out what a group of seven-year-old South African children understand of their internal anatomy. The research is based on the premise that young children obtain most of their science knowledge through personal experience. Drawings are used to determine the level of young children’s knowledge of systems and organs. The study also investigates whether there are significant differences between boys and girls’ understanding as well as between children from a range of schooling contexts. Teachers were instructed to ask children to draw what they think is inside their bodies, using the language that is most familiar to the children (English, isiZulu, or isiXhosa). The findings show that children are able to draw individual organs, but are unable to show relationships between them. There were significant differences between different schools, but these differences were not due to different contexts. At Grade 1 level, boys were better able to represent what they thought was inside their bodies than girls. The findings show that the informal knowledge children hold of what is inside their bodies appears to be acquired by informal means, outside the school.

isiZulu as a language of assessment in science

Abstract Questions about the language of instruction and assessment are still unresolved in many African countries, where it is common practice to use the language of the ex-colonizer as the official language of instruction after the first three to four years of schooling. Lack of proficiency in the language of instruction and assessment undoubtedly contributes to the poor performance of African children in international assessments of Mathematics and Science literacy. This raises the question of whether African children would perform better if tests were conducted in their home language. This study investigated whether it is possible to translate science questions from the TIMSS released items into isiZulu without loss of meaning. The items were back-translated to check for accuracy and multiple possible translations. To test the prediction that learners would perform better in their home language than in English, thirty-six randomly-selected Grade 9 learners from three schools were tested using TIMSS items in English and isiZulu. Their results were slightly better on the isiZulu version of the test, but not significantly so. Interviews with the children revealed a very positive attitude to testing in isiZulu, since they were unable to understand the questions in English without trying to translate them into isiZulu.

A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of the Utterances of Three South African Physical Sciences Teachers

In this study, the sociocultural view of science as a language and some quantitative language features of the complementary theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics are employed to analyse the utterances of three South African Physical Sciences teachers. Using a multi-case study methodology, this study provides a sophisticated description of the utterances of Pietermaritzburg Physical Sciences teachers in language contexts characterised by varying proportions of English Second Language (ESL) students in each class. The results reveal that, as expected, lexical cohesion as measured by the cohesive harmony index and proportion of repeated content words relative to total words, increased with an increasing proportion of ESL students. However, the use of nominalisation by the teachers and the lexical density of their utterances did not decrease with an increasing proportion of ESL students. Furthermore, the results reveal that each individual Physical Sciences teacher had a ‘signature’ talk, unrelated to the language context in which they taught. This study signals the urgent and critical need for South African science teacher training programmes to place a greater emphasis on the functional use of language for different language contexts in order to empower South African Physical Sciences teachers to adequately apprentice their students into the use of the register of scientific English.

Accommodating those Most at Risk. Responding to a Mismatch in Programme Selection Criteria and Foundation Biology Performance

In South Africa, foundation programmes are a well-established alternative access route to tertiary science study for educationally disadvantaged students. Student access to, and performance in, one such foundation programme has been researched by the authors seeking opportunities to improve student retention. The biology module in particular has been recognised to place students at risk of failing the foundation programme, thereby reducing throughput into mainstream science programmes. This study uses decision tree analysis to provide a detailed description of foundation biology student performance so that points of weakness and opportunities for remedial action may be pinpointed. While students’ alternative-entry selection scores have previously been found to most effectively account for performance in the programme as a whole, no similar positive relationship was identified for any subgroup of students in the foundation biology module. Conversely, academic language proficiency in the medium of instruction (English), formerly found to play no role in overall student performance, was revealed as primary in explaining achievement in foundation biology, most adversely affecting students rendered particularly vulnerable by an additional academic and/or socio-economic disadvantage. A pass in the stand-alone foundation academic literacy module did not necessarily correspond to a pass in biology. Compromised by educational disadvantage, compounded by a mismatch in programme selection criteria and inadequate academic literacy support, discipline-specific, fundamental literacy development in the biology curriculum is proposed to enable students towards epistemic access in the module. Pending this intervention, formal access to mainstream study is unlikely for the foundation students most at risk of failure.

Alternative Access to Tertiary Science Study in South Africa: Dealing with ‘Disadvantage’, Student Diversity, and Discrepancies in Graduate Success

The legacy of the inequities of South Africa’s apartheid past and the shortcomings of the post-apartheid schooling systems have resulted in a particular underrepresentation of Black African graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Extended curriculum programs have been an important mechanism for redress and massification in South African higher education, offering students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds an alternative route to tertiary study. Although equity of access has improved considerably, severe challenges to realizing equity of output remain. Amid increasing student diversity within higher education, a national call has been made to interrogate the performance of extended curriculum programs at a local level in search of clues as to how the country’s educational goals of effective transformation, inclusion and improved science graduate output can be achieved. One such program is reviewed to give context to an examination of alternative access student performance in a mainstream module. The evident success of foundation students in particular relative to the majority of direct entrants suggests that students who exceeded the stipulated mainstream admission criteria by a narrow margin and who experienced further challenges related to their proficiency in the medium of instruction (English) were disadvantaged by not having completed an access year. These findings are considered in light of the growing sentiment in South Africa that the full value of curriculum extension will only be realized when it is taken to scale, becomes an integral element of mainstream provision, and is thus available to the full range of students who will benefit from it.

Ultrasonic Vocalizations in 10 Taxa of Southern African Gerbilline Rodents

Abstract This chapter provides an account of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in all southern African gerbil species, excluding Gerbilliscus inclusa . Vocalizations can be described as sweeps, clicks, stutters, whistles, peeps, and a postejaculatory series of calls. They occurred more frequently during contact behavior than during solitary activities. Comparisons of characteristics of USVs among species generally agree with phylogenies based on molecular and chromosomal data. Closely related allopatric species have very similar repertoires of USVs. Less closely related sympatric species differed in their USVs. The findings support divergence in USVs in sympatry rather than allopatry. There is a general relationship between body size and frequency of vocalizations, with some exceptions. The frequencies of USVs also accord with habitat and social structure in general. Considering all the evidence, it appears that USVs play an important role in close-contact communication and conspecific recognition in southern African gerbil species.

Considering Grand Challenges in Biology Education: Rationales and Proposals for Future Investigations to Guide Instruction and Enhance Student Understanding in the Life Sciences

Abstract An international group of biology education researchers offer their views on areas of scholarship that might positively impact our understanding of teaching and learning in biology and potentially inform practices in biology and life science instruction. This article contains a series of essays on topics that include a framework for biology education research, considerations in the preparation of biology teachers, increasing accessibility to biology for all learners, the role and challenges of language in biology teaching, sociocultural issues in biology instruction, and assisting students in coping with scientific innovations. These contributions are framed by a discussion of the value of defining several potential “grand challenges” in biology education.

Changes in Children’s Knowledge about their Internal Anatomy Between First and Ninth Grades

Effective teaching in science requires insight into students’ personal understanding of natural phenomena (Bennett, 2003). Students come to school with numerous personal experiences and beliefs as well as personal knowledge about how the world works. Such personal knowledge may be regarded as their own scientific ideas (Colburn, 2000). Children’s own ideas tend to persist after formal instruction because they are based on their everyday experience of these natural phenomena.

Ideas about the Human Body among Secondary Students in South Africa

In this paper we focus on how South African students’ ideas about the human body are constituted in their descriptions of three different scenarios involving the pathway of a sandwich, a painkiller ...