Maropeng Modiba

Female Students' Perceptions of Gender and Academic Achievement: A Case of Sixth Form Girls in Zimbabwean School

Abstract In this paper we report findings from a study that sought to explore girl students’ perceptions of gender and academic achievement in the Zimbabwean schools. The study adopted a qualitative approach in which focus interviews with female high school learners were conducted. Data was analysed through content analysis as emerging key issues led to themes that were best analysed by this means. The study found that female students believe that they were not on par with boys in terms of treatment. Their treatment in schools, at home and in society led to under-achievement. The study concluded that female high school students held certain perceptions which they believed negatively affected their academic achievement. The study recommends that gender sensitivity should be taken seriously in schools and in homes as well as in society at large to ensure that female students have positive self-concepts which, invariably, lead to better performance and improved academic attainment.

Factors Affecting Female Students' Career Choices and Aspirations: A Zimbabwean Example

Abstract The study sought to investigate the factors affecting female students’ career choices and aspirations in selected Zimbabwean schools. The study adopted a qualitative approach and used focus group interviews with a convenient and purposive sample size of 20 high school girls. Data were analysed through content analysis as emerging key issues led to themes that guided the analysis and discussion. The study revealed that career choices and aspirations for girls are influenced by a whole range of factors most notable of which are gender role socialization, parental expectations, teacher attitudes, the gender-typing of school subjects studied as well as the gendered occupational landscape in which they exist. The study concluded that there is a strong need for significant others, especially parents and teachers, to help girls and females by deconstructing the gender-role stereotypes or perceptions of roles society considers appropriate for girls or boys. The researchers thus recommend that female students be empowered to aspire for a stake in occupations or careers traditionally regarded as male-domains. The school curriculum, teachers, parents and older siblings need to be supportive of the need to minimize gender stereotypes in school subjects and career choices.

‘I just do as expected’. Teachers’ implementation of continuous assessment and challenges to curriculum literacy

This paper reports on a study that clarifies the nature and scope of the challenges experienced by primary school teachers in Swaziland when using Continuous Assessment (CA) as a tool to improve teaching and learning. Through the use of classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews, we sought to understand the significance of the choices they made to meet the requirements of the prescribed lesson objectives. Their accounts of the assessment exercises they used reflect their understanding of the content they had to teach, the discipline from which it was drawn and intentions of the CA programme. In conclusion, we provide cues that may be useful to further these teachers’ curriculum literacy.

An Evaluation of the Gender Sensitive Nature of Selected Textbooks in the Zimbabwean Secondary School Curriculum

Abstract The aim of the study was to evaluate the gender sensitivity and balance of selected textbooks in the Zimbabwean school curriculum. An evaluation instrument was designed to evaluate the books and focus group interviews were carried out with a purposive and gender stratified sample of students. The data management and analysis procedures adopted covered both the content and discourse analyses of selected history text books in addition to the interpretations of participants’ verbatim statements from the focus group discussions. The study revealed that a great deal of patriarchal values and ideologies are embodied in the textbooks. The textbooks analysed were found to contain gender biases, imbalances and stereotypes. The interviews’ carried out revealed that students were overtly and covertly affected by the gender representations in textbooks. In depicting traditional gender stereotypes, textbooks shaped students in particular ways and affect their academic achievement and career choices. The study recommends that textbooks in schools should be carefully selected to avoid those that are full of gender biases or stereotypes. Where possible textbooks could be rewritten to ensure gender sensitivity in order to avoid producing and peddling gender role ideologies and stereotypes that differentially reinforce boys and girls for not only different but highly gender polarized social roles.

Cultural diversity in the classroom: implications for curriculum literacy in South African classrooms

Cultural literacy is considered as crucial in the process of redress, and of equal recognition, affirmation and nurturing of different cultural symbols and other forms of expression within South Africa. In this paper we reflect conceptually on what the new curriculum policy in Arts and Culture education proposes with regard to acknowledging and promoting an understanding of multiculturalism and cultural diversity, and their development at classroom level. We argue that for the policy ideals to be realised, teaching and learning have to be informed by a conception of culture that underscores cultural critique. In conclusion, the paper highlights the practical implications of such critique for teaching Arts and Culture.

Theory and practice in in-service teacher learning: teachers’ reconceptualisation of curriculum in history lessons

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative interpretive study that was undertaken to determine how in-service teachers at Great Zimbabwe University were able (or not) to translate a theory that they were exposed to into practice during history lessons. Drawing on a range of data, the study explored how the teachers, who were purposively sampled, reconceptualised curriculum through their pedagogical practices during lessons. Teacher’s utterances in the interviews helped clarify their notions of history teaching in terms of the theory they were exposed to. The study found that while the teachers could articulate the theory, they faltered and hesitated to draw on it when reframing their pedagogical practices. The paper argues that this is not because of exposure to bad theory. Rather, it reflects the need for teachers to be assisted to weave together curriculum theory and curriculum practice into one coherent interdependent landscape that reflects praxis and its dialectics and thus make the theory-practice gap difficult to perpetuate.

Understanding a Text from the 1980s Unrest in South Africa: A Teacher-Led Reading of a Novel at a Rural School

In South Africa, the new curriculum policy proposes that, amongst other outcomes, when learners are taught English First Additional Language (EFAL) or L2 fiction or non-fiction texts at grades seven to nine, they should be able to identify purpose, audience and context; infer meaning; identify the register/style (formal or informal); demonstrate understanding of the way in which texts position readers and distinguish main points from supporting details. Specifically, they should be able to demonstrate an understanding of character, plot, setting and narrator; compare different kind of texts and match them with their purpose (Department of Education, 2002). With this in mind, we participated in a study that looked at grade nine EFAL lessons to capture the teachers’ understanding of these outcomes. This is the final grade of the junior secondary school in which students are prepared for the transition to the senior secondary school. For many EFAL students, English serves as a gateway subject, but if poorly taught, it severely limits their academic success. We thus needed to know: “How do teachers teaching EFAL in grade nine understand their teaching in relation to the policy requirements?” We viewed the schools in which the teachers worked as one of the sources of their classroom practices and sites of their institutionalization and reproduction. They provided the rules for classroom interaction. Rather than viewing the language classroom as a ‘closed box’ isolated from society (Pennycook, 2000: 89–90), it was important to understand the social, political and cultural factors teachers associated with the policy and wished the students to adopt. If these factors are not seen as being connected to teaching, Gee (1994: 190) warns there would be a danger that teachers will view how they teach as separate from who learners are and what is taught (policy). Meanwhile, for Freeman and Johnson (2005: 74), the classroom links what teachers ‘know and do’ to how they view their students and what they need to ‘know and do’ to learn. Hacking’s (2007) views on the significance of ‘making up people’ and ‘the ways in which a new scientific classification may bring into being a new kind of people’ (p. 285) seemed a good example of how classifying people often aims at making decisions on how to interact with them.

Critical Friendship, Collaboration and Trust as a Basis for Self-Determined Professional Development: A case of science teaching

This paper describes the development of curriculum design expertise from the perspective of a teacher reflecting on a science lesson. His involvement in the research process resulted in a self-determined professional development strategy. The description comes from data collected through lesson observations and an in-depth stimulated recall discussion to probe and uncover the teachers understanding of the importance of the curriculum design principles related to his lesson. These data are supplemented with lessons plans studied over several months. Views expressed indicate that the professional development of the teacher was grounded in trust and trust-building that took time. The views also, suggest, amongst other issues, how empowerment evaluation can be used in enabling development in curriculum design.

Government and educational reform: policy networks in policy-making in Zimbabwe, 1980–2008

This paper reflects on the key actors in education policy making in Zimbabwe. It looks at the contextual complexities that characterized policy-making in this country to make sense of the contestations that the state had to confront and accommodate. The policy network approach is employed as an analytical framework to clarify how, in particular non-state actors, have had an impact (or not) on educational governance through influences on policy. Policy documents, research reports and the reactions of non-state actors to these aspects are examined to explore the impact of the latter on policy making. The significant roles of the various policy networks are also given attention to establish how they have affected the reconfiguration of the state. The argument developed is that in spite of the ostensibly strong state, education policy formulation has been a product of compromise between policy networks and the predilections of those in office. As a political and contested enterprise it had to accommodate both local and international concerns.

Perceptions of Zimbabwean School Girls and their Teachers on the Extent to Which the School Curriculum for Girls Correlates with their Career Choices

Abstract The study explored teachers’ perceptions of the degree of association between the curriculum followed by Zimbabwean secondary school girls and their career aspirations or choices. A sample size of 40 participants comprising 20 secondary school teachers and an equal number of Sixth Form girls participated in the study. The sample was conveniently and purposively selected from eight schools in the Central Masvingo District of Zimbabwe. The study adopted a quantitative research design and utilized a questionnaire as the instrument for collecting data from the participants. The study found that the girls’ curriculum as determined by the school subjects studied at school have a great impact on their resultant career preferences. Other aspects of the hidden culture curriculum that were found to impinge upon the girls’ career aspirations include their teachers’ attitudes and expectations towards them, their socio-economic backgrounds and parental or siblings’ influences. The study concluded that the girls’ self concepts and academic achievement are influenced to a very large extent by a whole range of factors embodied in the school curriculum in both its explicit and implicit or hidden forms.