Sarah J. Howie

South Africa's readiness to integrate ICT into mathematics and science pedagogy in secondary schools

One of South Africa’s identified priorities is the implementation of ICT in education. To this end a phased implementation plan was initiated in 2004 for ICT to be implemented into schools across the country over eight years. During this time South Africa also participated in three international studies undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) focusing on ICT in Education. Each of these permitted the country to benchmark its progress in terms of other countries and their implementation of ICT in education. The latest study, SITES 2006 provides a useful set of indicators against which South Africa can evaluate its progress with regard to its implementation of ICT. This paper seeks to evaluate South Africa’s readiness to integrate ICT into mathematics and science classrooms. This was done using a number of indicators of “sustainable change” derived from SITES 2006 and then comparing these to countries such as Chile, Thailand and Norway, the former two with similar context and conditions and the latter with contrasting conditions. The findings reveal that whilst South Africa has made some progress since 1998 in terms of the implementation of ICT in education, that the majority of schools are still in their infancy regarding the acquisition of ICT and most of those who have access are still in the process of trying to integrate the ICT into their teaching and learning. It would appear that more fundamental needs in South Africa’s education system have dominated its priorities.

ICT-supported pedagogical policies and practices in South Africa and Chile: emerging economies and realities

South Africa participated in all three of the Second International Technology in Education Study (SITES). In the first international study, South Africa was the only developing country, and therefore, stark contrasts were found in the international study between South Africa and the other participating countries. Chile participated in the SITES 2006 as one of a few developing countries making the comparison with South Africa possible. Despite similarities in their contexts and economies, their approach to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education appears to differ. This difference raised questions about differences in policies and their implementation at school level. This research conducted in South Africa found that the Chilean strategy for developing and implementing their ICT in education appear to be very different with regard to its design, the organization, the strategies adopted, the resources used and, most importantly, their approach to teacher development for implementing ICT. A number of lessons are revealed for the South African policymakers and others from similar developing contexts.

International Comparative Studies of Education and Large-Scale Change

The development of international comparative studies of educational achievements dates back to the early 1960s and was made possible by developments in sample survey methodology, group testing techniques, test development, and data analysis (Husen & Tuijnman, 1994, p. 6). The studies involve extensive collaboration, funding and negotiation between participants, organizers and funders resulting in a long-term commitment of all those involved in a study. However, does this financial and physical effort result in large-scale change for the participating education systems? Can treating “the world as a laboratory” impact policymaking in a constructive and fruitful way and culminate in enhanced education systems across divergent contexts?

Chemical concepts inventory of grade 12 learners and UP foundation year students

Abstract Incoming chemistry students at tertiary institutions have a variety of academic backgrounds that influence their prospects of success at first-year level. The proficiencies of incoming students are currently changing due to the introduction of outcomes-based education and new syllabi for physical science in secondary schools. In order to ensure a smooth transition from secondary to tertiary education, university lecturers should be well informed about the content knowledge, conceptual understanding and skills development of prospective first-year students. This study evaluates the proficiencies of Grade 12 learners in physical science in terms of a number of clearly identified problem areas: conceptual understanding, logical scientific reasoning, basic mathematical ability, knowledge of subject content and scientific process skills. A test instrument was developed that consisted mainly of conceptual questions rather than recall or algorithmic items. Paired questions (two-tier methodology) and pictorial representations were used extensively. A follow-up question about certainty of response was included for all fixed-response items in order to evaluate the influence of guessing on response distributions. The test instrument was administered at the end of the third term to Grade 12 learners taking Physical science at three schools in privileged environments (1 English and 2 Afrikaans medium) and four township schools, and to all University of Pretoria Foundation Year (UPFY) students. Analysis of results highlighted the generally poor performance of students from township schools and the significant improvement in performance after one year of intensive instruction of UPFY students, who generally came from similar or more impoverished backgrounds. The poor performance for all cohorts on basic concepts, such as the mole concept, stoichiometry and the limiting reagent, as well as on several special topics, indicates that students lack a sound basis for tertiary chemistry. Of real concern is the evidence of over-confidence obtained from the certainty of response analyses. This result indicates that respondents failed to judge the complexity and level of difficulty of questions accurately. Learners/students from all groups displayed weak understanding of events at molecular level. In order to address this situation, lecturers at tertiary level will have to actively promote conceptual understanding of all basic concepts in chemistry and resist the temptation to teach and assess mainly procedural fluency. Analysis of certainty of response data showed that the guess factor was less serious a complication than anticipated.

International Studies of Educational Achievement

International studies of educational achievements have been conducted since the early 1960s. According to Husen and Tuijnman (1994, p. 6), such an empirical approach in comparative education was made possible by developments in sample survey methodology, group testing techniques, test development, and data analysis. A group of American and European scholars conducted a pilot study from 1959 to 1961 to examine the feasibility of using achievement tests administered to comparable samples of students in cross-national studies to measure the “yield” of educational systems. Key questions were whether it would be possible to develop an appropriate methodology for testing and for processing and analysing data in such a way that meaningful cross-national comparisons could be made. Answers from the feasibility study were sufficiently encouraging to lead to the establishment of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) which conducted the first large-scale international study of educational (mathematics) achievement (Husen, 1967).

Conditions of schooling in South Africa and the effects on mathematics achievement

Presented at the European conference on educational research, Edinburgh, Scotland, September

Approaches to Effective Data Use: Does One Size Fit All?

This chapter describes the experiences from the most recent phase of a 7-year research project in South Africa on school-based monitoring of pupil performance in some 22 primary schools. The project aimed to generate knowledge as well as to design and develop a well-functioning feedback system to provide data to schools on learner performance. The feedback system that was developed is known as the South African Monitoring system for Primary schools (SAMP). A key objective of this phase of the project was to evaluate the use of the performance data at school and classroom level and to design an intervention for effective use of the data within the primary school environment. It is hoped that a deeper understanding of how data travel in schools (data paths) and how schools can appropriately use data may assist policymakers in developing monitoring policies and provide guidance to school leaders and teachers. This chapter focuses on the data generated through observations, journals, and interviews in the evaluation of one of these design cycles. The sample consists of three schools participating in SAMP that were purposefully selected. The evaluation data collected during this cycle of development focused particularly on how data were used by schools and how data moved within the schools. Three distinct approaches to data use that appeared to be appropriate for their specific contexts (schools) were identified: Team, Cascade, and Top-down. The data suggest that the most appropriate and effective approach of use may depend on the culture of the school, school leadership approach, level of teacher development, and context and level of functioning of the school. There are, however, certain commonalities in the approaches to effective data use. An effective feedback system should thus try to establish or encourage these conditions for data use. The data in this chapter seem to suggest that policy on data use should be flexible and provide exemplars of various possible approaches, which are appropriate for different contexts. It is important that there are layers of sophistication (different levels of detail, complexity of presentation, and disaggregation) within the data, which the school can access as needed for its particular milieu.

High-stakes testing in South Africa : friend or foe?

The Jomtien conference in 1990 on Education for All is seen by many as a turning point for the introduction of increased monitoring and evaluation of the quality of education systems around the world. Internationally, debates have arisen about the nature and frequency of assessment and its impact on education systems with its intended and unintended consequences. The phenomenon of large-scale testing is a relative latecomer to South African education. Since 1994, large-scale assessments have been implemented in core subjects such as mathematics, science and language in national and international assessments. In this paper, various forms of the large-scale assessments in South Africa are discussed in relation to high-stakes testing and their effect on the education system as a whole in the light of international experience.

Time to go back to the drawing board: organisation of primary school reading development in South Africa

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 findings highlighted concerns about reading literacy teaching quality in South African primary schools (Howie et al., 2007). In response, the national Department of Education (DoE, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d) has emphasised instructional practice improvement. However, little emphasis has been placed on the role of school organisation in learners’ reading success or failure. This article presents school organisation findings from a mixed methods study that explored South African Grade 4 teachers’ instruction practices and schooling conditions for reading literacy development. The analysis considered is based on the reclassification of the PIRLS 2006 sample according to class achievement levels on the PIRLS benchmarks and instructional language profiles. Findings from the PIRLS 2006 school questionnaire data are reported together with findings from case studies to illustrate differences and similarities in school organisation for reading literacy across a range of low- and high-performing schools.

Rasch measurement in educational contexts Special issue 2: Applications of Rasch measurement in large-scale assessments

This is the second of two special journal issues on Rasch measurement in educational contexts. Most of the articles compiled in these two issues originate from a symposium of the same title held in 2009 at the European Conference on Educational Research at the University of Vienna, Austria. The symposium, organized by Wilfried Bos, Tjeerd Plomp, and Pekka Kupari, and the publication of these two special issues were initiated to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Georg Rasch publishing his seminal work on Probabilistic Models for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests (Rasch, 1960) and to highlight the application and contribution of this work to educational research. As these two issues show, the contribution of Rasch’s work to educational research is in many ways related to the development of large-scale assessments as well as to the organizations conducting these assessments, on the international field most prominently the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA; Postlethwaite, 1995; Wagemaker, 2010). In view of the widespread use of the Rasch model and its extensions in recent studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), one might argue that Rasch models helped to promote large-scale assessments and vice versa, if taking into account that in international comparative large-scale assessments Rasch measurement is primarily applied from the perspective of item response theory (Wendt, Bos, & Goy, this issue). The first of the two issues includes seven articles concerned with the theory, methodology, and applications of Rasch modeling in educational testing (see Educational Research and Evaluation, 17(5)). This second issue comprises six articles focused on applications of the Rasch measurement approach in large-scale assessments of educational achievement. The target audience for both issues we regard as rather broad: Both issues are meant to provide a reference for researchers from the field of educational testing and measurement. In addition, we trust that the issues may be of interest to those researchers already familiar with psychometrics, as well as to practitioners in the field of education.