Some Developments in Research in Science and Mathematics in Sub-Saharan Africa

Lorna Holtman, David Mtetwa And Meshach Ogunniyi, Øyvind Mikalsen, Cyril Julie

Description

Much attention in late-developing countries is given to providing access to studies which allow school leavers to enter science and technology-related careers. These programmes are driven by the belief that graduates will then substantially contribute to the developmental needs of their countries.But is providing access to institutions enough? Students in developing countries often come from school environments lacking in resources – human, physical and financial. This book, in a number of chapters, reviews research related to the crucial dimension of epistemological access to the disciplines of import, which students need as much as institutional access in order to improve their chances of success.A significant feature of this collection’s research studies is that their empirical bases are highly localised, covering areas such as: research methods; access; curriculum, instruction and assessment; and the relevance of science and mathematics education in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Swaziland, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Ghana and Lesotho.This volume provides invaluable insights and will be of relevance to researchers, policy makers and lecturers interested in these research outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is the outcome of a doctoral research capacity development project, the Graduate Studies in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education (GRASSMATE).

Sujets

• Desierto del Sahara
• Sahara

Informations

• Publié par: African Minds
• Date de parution: 28 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781920299293
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Some Developments in Research in Science and Mathematics in SubSaharan Africa: Access, Relevance, Learning, Curriculum Research

Edited by Lorna Holtman, Cyril Julie, Øyvind Mikalsen, David Mtetwa and Meshach Ogunniyi

AFRICAN MINDS

First published in 2008 by African Minds 4 Eccleston Place, Somerset West, South Africa www.africanminds.co.za

© 2008 Lorna Holtman, Cyril Julie, Øyvind Mikalsen, David Mtetwa and Meshach Ogunniyi (eds)

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781920299293

Produced by Compress.dsl www.compressdsl.com <http://www.compressdsl.com> Cover design by PaulErik Lillholm Rosenbaum

Foreword Øyvind Mikalsen and Cyril Julie

Introduction Cyril Julie and Lorna Holtman

Contents

THEME: RESEARCH 1. Developing a Research Instrument for LearnerCentred Classroom Observations: A Namibian Experience Hileni M. Kapenda, Ole E. Torkildsen, David Mtetwa and Cyril Julie 2. Introducing New Content into a School Mathematics Curriculum: The Case of Cryptology Kalvin Whittles, OleEinar Torkildsen, Cyril Julie and Trygve Breiteig 3. Analysing Learners’ Written Work for Open Mathematical Tasks Cyril Julie and OleEinar Torkildsen

THEME: ACCESS 4. Epistemological Obstacles in Understanding the Limit of a Sequence: A Case of Undergraduate Students at the National University of Lesotho Eunice K. Moru, Jan Persens, Trygve Breiteig and Joyce Ndalichako 5. Foundational Provisions in the UWC Science Faculty: Widening Access and Promoting Success Lorna B. Holtman and Delia Marshall 6. Prospective ALevel Mathematics Teachers’ Perspectives of the Concept of a Function Maroni Runesu Nyikahadzoyi, Cyril Julie, David K.J. Mtetwa and Ole Einar Torkildsen 7. Promoting the Learning of Mathematics: On the Use of Learning Styles in a Distance Education Calculus Course Chipo Tsvigu, Trygve Breiteig, Jan Persens and Joyce Ndalichako

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THEME: CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENT 8. Performance Assessment in Science: Some Experiences of Teachers and Students in Swaziland 161 Victoria Kelly, Dirk Meerkotter, Lorna Holtman and Øyvind Mikalsen 9. Localising the Junior Secondary Science Curriculum in Lesotho: An Attempt at Integrating Technology and Science 189 Lits’abako Ntoi, Lorna Holtman, Meshach Ogunniyi and Svein Sjøberg 10. PracticeRelated Underachievement in Science Education: The Case of Malawi 207 Emmanuel Dzama, Lorna Holtman, Stein Dankert Kolstø and Øyvind Mikalsen 11. The Rationale for Science Education, Curriculum Change and Reform in subSaharan Africa: The Case of Zimbabwe 225  Elaosi Vhurumuku, Lorna Holtman, Øyvind Mikalsen and Stein Dankert Kolstø 12. Copresentations of Science and Indigenous Cosmologies: A Challenge for Lesotho Science Educators 247 Neo Paul Liphoto, Stein Dankert Kolstø, Silas Oluka and Meshach B. Ogunniyi 13. Knowledge and Process Skills Used by South African and Norwegian Students to Perform Cognitive Tasks on Gases 275 Øyvind Mikalsen and Meshach Ogunniyi 14. Mathematics Teacher Practices in Ugandan Secondary Schools 295 Charles OpolotOkurut, Cyril Julie, Øyvind Mikalsen and Silas Oluka 15. The Participation and Contribution of Teachers in Zimbabwe Towards Their Own Professional Development 315 Peter Kwaira, Stein Dankert Kolstø, Dirk Meerkotter and Meshach Ogunniyi

THEME: RELEVANCE OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION 16. What Kinds of Science and Technology Do Pupils in Ghanaian Junior Secondary Schools Want to Learn About? Ishmael K. Anderson, Sven Sjøberg and Øyvind Mikalsen 17. What are the interests of Zimbabwean secondary school children in school science? Francis Z. Mavhunga, Svein Sjøberg, Øyvind Mikalsen and Cyril Julie 18. The Relevance of School Mathematics Education (ROSME) Cyril Julie and Lorna Holtman

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Foreword

This book comprises a collection of articles of some research directions in subSaharan Africa. The contributors were, at the time of writing, primarily doctoral students involved in a research capacity development project, the GRAduate Studies in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education (GRASSMATE) project. GRASSMATE was launched in 2002 and funded for a fiveyear period by the Norwegian development agency, NUFU. The precursor of GRASSMATE project was the Postgraduate Programme in Mathematics Education. This project is reflected upon by Julie, Mikalsen and Persens (2005). It was towards the completion of the lastmentioned project that a survey was conducted in universities in subSaharan countries to ascertain the needs and interests for a doctoral education in Science and Mathematics Education. Responses came from most of the invited institutions and interests in pursuing doctoral studies were expressed by more than 50 nondoctoralholding lecturers at the solicited universities in the subSaharan region.

Following consultation with the host institutions, 27 prospective students from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Swaziland, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi and Lesotho were invited to a seminar at the University of the Western Cape. This seminar was followed by further sessions of discussions on the readiness of the invited students to engage in doctoral studies. The outcome of these deliberations led to the selection of 21 students to pursue doctoral studies in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. A further student, involved in Nursing Education, was selected to enter for a Master’s degree with the intention to continue immediately with doctoral studies after the successful completion of the Master’s degree. There was an equal split of female and male students.

Supervisors from universities in Norway, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe guided the students and formed the backbone of the academic staff of the project. The project, being North–South and South–South collaboration, was anchored in Norway at the University of Bergen. Four professors and two associate professors from four higher education institutions in Norway (University of Bergen, University of Oslo, University of Agder and the University College of Volda) participated as supervisors. The anchoring institution in the South was the University of the Western Cape. Five professors and three senior lecturers from higher education institutions (University of

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the Western Cape, University of Zimbabwe, University of DaresSalaam and Makerere University) comprised the supervisory team members from subSaharan Africa.

As already mentioned, the project was primarily funded by the Norwegian development agency, NUFU. Additional funding was also received from the University of Bergen, and the University of the Western Cape provided infrastructural and other operational support.

The majority of the chapters in this book were primarily written by students. The supervisors supported them through commenting on drafts and sharpening their writing. The chapters were written when the project was about midway through the funding period of GRASSMATE and they deal with the research projects the students were pursuing.

Reference Julie, C., Mikalsen, O. and Persens, J. (2005). The ‘complex reality’ of research capacity development in mathematics education in southern African development community countries.International Journal of Educational Research25, 591–s601.

Øyvind Mikalsen and Cyril Julie

Introduction

The different chapters in this collection should be read around the notions of access, adoption, adaptation and localisation.

Currently much attention in late developing countries is accorded to the provision of access to studies which will allow the pool of young people graduating from schools to enter science and technologyrelated careers. This is driven by the belief that more school graduates entering these fields would substantially contribute towards the developmental needs of these countries. But access into institutions of higher learning only provides institutional access. A concern is that such students normally come from schooling environments suffering from a lack of resources – human, physical and financial. There is thus a need to provide such students with epistemological access to the disciplines of import to improve their chances of success. Some of the chapters deal with research related to epistemological access.

Research in any discipline does not occur in a vacuum. For any research endeavour there are antecedent studies on the topic of interest. A feature of studies of research in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education is that it is highly localised in terms of its empirical bases. This implies that although results have the potential to be generalised to a larger population of interest, it is problematic to universalise such generalisations. In environments where research productivity is low, it is not uncommon to find that there is either adoption, adaptation or localisation or some combination of these constructs of the problems being investigated, of the methods employed to address research problems, and the theoretical frameworks used in the research process. The value of such replication or quasireplication studies is that they contribute towards knowledge production in the sense that they might provide more cases towards the universalisation of research results or provide a case which refutes assumed universality. As is evident, the three constructs are difficult to separate, but in reading the chapters it is possible to find the pivoting one which guides the chapter.

This introduction purposefully doesn’t characterise the specific chapters under the four guiding constructs of the book. This is done so as to allow readers to use their own insight to decide the goodnessoffit to the offered constructs. The book is divided into four sections or themes namely: Research; Access; Curriculum, Instruction and

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Assessment and Relevance. The ideas of access, adoption, adaptation and localisation come through in these themes.

Cyril Julie and Lorna Holtman

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Theme: Research

Any research study requires that appropriate methods be sought to address the research object being pursued. Inspiration for such methods is found in the existing literature and includes data collection instruments, analysis methods and general approaches to the research endeavour. Notwithstanding their ready availability, these instruments, analysis methods and approaches are not like items on a shelf in, say a supermarket, to be collected and used as per the instructions. Researchers normally find that unchanged adoption brings its own set of problems requiring the need to adapt and localise instruments, analysis techniques and approaches. The chapters in this section deal with this issue.

Kapendaet al. describe the process of constructing a viable observation instrument to ascertain the extent to which learnercentred approaches manifest themselves in Namibian classrooms. The limitations and various versions of the instrument are presented to demonstrate how adaptations were made to an existing instrument to arrive at one that had the potential for utilisation in the proposed study.

The introduction of new content in school mathematics normally follows the process where the need for such content is motivated by experts – mathematicians, mathematics educators and mathematics curriculum developers. Once such motivations are found convincing, the content is elementarised and inserted into the curriculum with the necessary elementarised learning resource material. Inspired by the phenomenological approaches developed by the Dutch Realistic Mathematics Education School, Whittles et al. challenge this way of introducing new content. It is shown that new content has historical antecedents that need to be taken into account for new content to be inserted into the school mathematics curriculum. It is thus demonstrated how a particular existing research approach can be adopted to consider the introduction of new content.

A current concern in mathematics education as a research domain is that not much attention is being accorded to mathematics. Julie and Torkildsen’s chapter proposes and exhibits a method to analyse students’ work in order to identify the mathematics involved in such work. Different from the other two chapters in this section, they demonstrate how a method of analysis can be constructed if one is not readily available.

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1. Developing a Research Instrument for LearnerCentred Classroom Observations: A Namibian Experience

Hileni M. Kapenda, Ole E. Torkildsen, David Mtetwa and Cyril Julie

Abstract Although most researchers prefer to adapt or modify existing instruments that relate to their field of interest, the exercise still remains overwhelming and cumbersome. But, occasionally, a need arises for creating a new instrument for a specific purpose. This chapter shows that the process of designing and constructing a research instrument can be challenging and frustrating. The chapter also focuses on some of the significant personal experiences of the lead author’s struggle and long journey in the construction of a research instrument for her thesis on learnercentred education in Namibian schools. The main objective for the chapter is to provide some advice to the reader, and especially to an emerging researcher, about the challenges of designing a new research instrument. Considerations about how and why certain decisions have to be made at certain stages become important matters for discussion.

Introduction In general, the term learnercentred education (LCE) embraces terms such as active learning, exploration, selfresponsibility, consideration of learners’ prior knowledge and skills, and construction of knowledge rather than passive participation of students (APA, 1997; MEC, 1993; Walczyk

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