Faith K. Kimathi Carol Bertram
University of KwaZulu-Natal University of KwaZulu-Natal [email protected] [email protected]
Research on the teachers’ knowledge base required to support children literacy development and teaching of reading and writing at the foundation phase (FP) in South Africa and other developing countries is scarce. One way of describing what this knowledge is, is to analyse the content that is taught in teachers’ education programmes in South Africa. This paper explores what the Advanced Certificate in Teaching (ACT) programme believes is the knowledge base for FP teachers in South Africa context. Using Reed’s (2009) domains of teacher knowledge (TK), the paper describes the content analysis of Module 4 to establish the assumptions about the literacy theories and knowledge that FP teachers should know to teach literacy. The findings shows an amalgamation of the seven domains of TK with a strong emphasis on the subject knowledge, pedagogic knowledge and the self-knowledge domains. In addition, teachers are required to view literacy as a multidimensional process and engage with research based reading theories. However, there seems to be an assumption that teachers already have content knowledge and thus the literacy theories are not explicitly taught in the module.
Key words: Literacy Knowledge Base, Teacher knowledge, Foundation Phase, South Africa Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to examine the kinds of literacy knowledge and concepts a teacher should acquire from a professional development (PD) programme to enable effective teaching of reading and writing at FP. The data comes from the document analysis of one of the Learning Guide of ACT programme at the University of Kwa Zulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. This intended curriculum assumes that, the enrolled practising teachers will acquire literacy knowledge and skills, contextualize and enact the knowledge into effective classroom teaching.
The Learning Guide (Module 4) claims that the key elements of a quality teacher is measured by the kind of specialised literacy knowledge that focuses on the subject knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge (Module 4, pg. ix). These domains of TK are crucial for a competent, adaptive and dynamic teacher, who is determined to teach the young children how to read and write.
At this critical phase of learning, teachers’ knowledge for teaching literacy should be grounded on research- evidenced principles of emergent literacy and the five components of reading (Piasta, Connor, Fishman, & Morrison, 2009). From this perspective, the authors’ design of this Module links these principles of emergent literacy to the domains of TK. For instance, the Module comprises of: literacy content knowledge, skills, learning and reflection tasks about reading and reading at the FP level, altogether addressing the knowledge base and literacy knowledge a teacher should know to enable effective teaching at FP level.
So, this paper presents findings and claims about the domains of TK and theories of teaching reading and writing that the FP teachers are expected to acquire from the
programme. The findings from this content analysis of the intended curriculum informs the next phase of my PhD study, which is an exploration of teachers’ learning from the ACT programme.
Background to the Study Teaching at the FP in South Africa
Accumulative studies agree that although the education system has shifted positively after the establishment of the democratic government in 1994 in South Africa, most of the learners continue to struggle with literacy and mathematics at the FP which signals the need for urgent and substantial improvement. (Fleisch, 2008). For instance, in 2007 the Department of
Education conducted a second cycle of systemic evaluations at the FP level which involved the assessment of a random sample of 53 972 Grade 3 learners from 2 327 primary schools across the country (Department of Education, 2008b). The results were a duplication of the first evaluation conducted in 2001 and 2002 where large numbers of children were reported to be unable read or write (DoE, 2008b).
However, the results showed a positive increase in performance in literacy from an average score of 30% in 2001 to 36% in 2007 and in numeracy from an average score of 30% in 2001 to 36% in 2007(Department of Education, 2008a). These statistics closely mirror those of the Annual National Assessments (ANA) test scores confirmed in 2012 by the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) report. If this report
diagnosis is accurate, building knowledge among the practicing teachers should be one of the key factors in improving these trends. Indeed, research evidence also indicates that the
majority of teachers at the FP especially in the rural schools where resources are limited know little more about the subjects they teach than the curriculum expects of learners (Taylor, Draper, Muller, & Sithole, 2013).
One of the major strategies to amend this phenomenon is to provide all the South Africa schools with highly qualified teachers (Department of Basic Education and Department of Higher Education and Training, 2011; DoE, 2008b; Taylor et al., 2013; Taylor & Taylor, 2013).This approach assumes a qualified teacher does not only have an academic certification from education institutions but rather is a highly qualified, professional person who has acquired and possesses a specialised knowledge in the discipline they teach.
The Advanced Certificate in Teaching (ACT) Program at the UKZN
In 2013 the UKZN launched ACT course as an initiative designed to replace Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) programme according to the new teacher education policy framework and targeted the practising teachers in KZN province especially those in the historically disadvantaged communities (Department of Basic Education and Department of Higher Education and Training, 2011). The new programme is understood by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to be an important tool for improving teachers’ competence in teaching literacy, mathematics and life skills (DBE, 2012). Meaning, the DBE supports the programme as an explicit measure to improving the subject matter knowledge for the FP teachers in the three content areas in the school curriculum as defined by the new Curriculum and Assessment statements (CAPS).
The programme aims to accredit the PD of teachers with a prior qualification in FP teaching at a lower level or to reskill qualified teachers in a new teaching focus, that is, teaching in the FP. This gives practising FP teachers, especially those from historically disadvantaged contexts an opportunity to obtain a higher qualification and deepen their knowledge. The intended curriculum of ACT programme consists of eight modules (Learning Guides) which are delivered to the teachers through mixed mode ‘distance’ education, which includes face-to-face teaching sessions, and interactive materials, within two years.
The Learning Guide selected for the analysis is one of the three literacy modules is entitled: ACT Module 4:Teaching reading and writing in Home language in Foundation Phase (EDEC 104): Learning Guide. The main goal of the module is to provide practicing FP teachers with opportunities to: deepen their subject matter knowledge and improve the general methodology in relation to teaching Grade R to 3; to develop appropriate knowledge, skills,
values, attitudes and dispositions of teachers within the fields of FP curriculum, policy and pedagogy; and to enable student teachers to develop disciplinary, pedagogical, practical and situational learning and reflexive competences in teaching and learning in the FP (Department of Basic Education and Department of Higher Education and Training, 2011; Hill & Khuboni, 2013).
Literature Review of this Study What is the Teachers’ Knowledge Base for Teaching Literacy?
Reed (2009) developed a conceptual frame work on the domains of TK in which subject or disciplinary knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, and school knowledge (which includes learners’ and curriculum knowledge) domains are actively interrelated with the teacher’s personal knowledge( which includes teachers’ academic skills). Initially the author used this framework to conceptually understand the domains of TK privileged in three sets of literacy distance education materials in the South African context.
This frame draws from classroom studies in the UK conducted by Banks, Leach, and Moon (1999), and the works of other theorists such as; Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999); Morrow (2007); Adler, Slonimsky, and Reed (2002) for the South African context and Darling-Hammond (2006) for the USA context. Altogether these theorists argue that teachers acquire these domains of knowledge from formal teacher education programs and their working contexts. Reed’s conceptual framework is appropriate for this particular content analysis because it focuses specifically on the literacy TK base.
With reference to the knowledge base for teachers in South Africa, Adler and Reed (2002) describes the field as complex where many researchers find it difficult to relate TL to the kinds of knowledge a teacher is expected to have in order to execute their main duties. Other researchers like Bertram (2011) view teacher learning (TL) as a complex and a continuous process which is supposed to equip teachers with adequate knowledge to enable them execute their duties effectively and thus cannot be acquired with a single event or activity. She explicitly states that, practicing teachers have a knowledge base in place and PD activities are expected to boost this knowledge base by offering appropriate decontextualized formal and informal contextualized learning opportunities for teachers. This view, supported by empirical evidence also suggests that, classroom practices are determined by the teachers’ personal beliefs, experiences and identity. For instance, a study conducted among FP teachers in a South African context and practicing in working-class or rural areas tended to emphasise teaching as care-giving rather than highlighting the instructional aspects of the work (Hoadley & Ensor, 2009).
Therefore there is a need to recognise the domains of TK which are essential for the teaching of literacy and other subjects at FP level. This is an area of concern in the field of teacher education in most of the developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings and claims made on the kinds of TK privileged in Module 4 used in ACT
programme about teaching literacy at the FP level. The next section provides literature on the kind of literacy knowledge a teacher should hold to enable effective teaching at the FP level. What Kind of Literacy Theories and Principles That a Teacher Should Know in Order to Teach at FP Level?
In 1997, the National Reading Panel (NRP) organised by United States (US) government assessed the status of research-based knowledge and the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read. According to this panel, research findings support the inclusion of five components in the teaching of reading at the elementary level, namely: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). Similarly, the International Reading Association (2003) states that:
Teachers should be well prepared to implement research-based programs and practices, and they must have the knowledge and skills to use professional judgment when those programs and practices are not working for particular children. (pp.1-2)
The new curriculum CAPS (Department of Basic Education, 2011) explicitly adopts this notion of teaching the five components of reading. According to accumulating literature and other education researchers, to teach reading and writing effectively one requires to enact a specialised body of knowledge. This body of knowledge is complex and made of actively relating blends of TK in emergent literacy and English language structure; explicit knowledge on the literacy concepts, systematic and explicit knowledge on reading components and approaches; effective teaching strategies to enable children literacy development (Kuccer & Silva, 2013; Moats, 1999, 2009, 2014; Piasta et al., 2009).The person who can enact this specialised knowledge is a highly qualified professional teacher who acquires the TK from a formal programme and informally from their working contexts.
The desire to understand this specialised body of knowledge in literacy is created by the fact that a gap continues to prevail between classroom practices and the research-based TK on how to teach reading and writing at the FP level in SA context (van der Merwe & Nel, 2012). Informed by research, the table below details the assumption of what the teachers need to know to teach reading effectively at the FP.
Table 1: The Relationship between the Components of Reading and Teacher Knowledge Reading
Components (To be Taught
at FP)
Kinds of TK Needed to Teach the Components of Reading (A Blend of Subject Knowledge and Practice-Focused Knowledge)
Phonemic awareness
TK on how to recognise relationships in phonological processes, reading, spelling and vocabulary is vital. These skills enable the FP teachers to equip the young readers phonemically and support their ability to blend and divide phonemes (sounds) that are associated with graphemes. Teachers are able to precisely identify and make decisions about confusable sounds and words. Phonics A teacher should be able to recognise prefixes, suffixes, roots and
morphological structure of words to help learners to recognise words, draw the meaning and recall the spelling more easily. Phonological awareness is also
tied other decoding skills or approaches.
Fluency, Teachers need to have the language structure knowledge at the sub-lexical level, at the level of semantic organisation and discourse structure to enable them assign learners appreciate reading texts and techniques to enable learners
achieve fluency in reading and subsequently writing at this phase of learning. Vocabulary Teachers’ knowledge of English language structure such as phonology,
semantics, morphology, orthography, syntax, pragmatics and grammatical rules and meaning is vital to enable teaching of vocabulary.
Comprehension. This requires the teacher to apply the linguistic concepts such as the text organisation, genre, pragmatic and syntax (sentence/text structure) knowledge.
This implies that, the literacy TK base has both theoretical and practical aspects, where the formal gives an understanding of the subject –literacy theories and concepts and, the latter gives the teacher the strategies of teaching. The next section is on methodology which
explicitly describe how the Reed’s conceptual framework was used to identify the various domains of TK privileged in Module 4.
Methodology-Content Analysis of Module 4 - the Learning Guide
In accordance to the qualitative content analysis procedures and scope of the study, the seven domains of TK from Reed’s (2009) conceptual framework became the criteria used to engage with the TK privileged in Module 4. Below I have provided a table to illustrate the schematic arrangement of the seven domains of TK as established in module 4 in relation to Reed’s categories.
Table 2: The Seven Domains of Teacher Knowledge Coded in Module 4. Acronyms used Indicators of the Domains of Teacher Knowledge as Provided by
Reed
Subject knowledge Content material that relates to literacy and reading theories at the FP Pedagogic knowledge Materials on methods or strategies of teaching reading
Learners’ Knowledge Knowledge of how learners learn Curriculum
knowledge
Knowledge of the current school curriculum
Contextual knowledge
Materials that locates reading and the teaching in a sociocultural context
Self-Knowledge Knowledge that reflects teachers’ identity as a learner (past) and teacher (present)
Academic skills Materials that aims to extend teachers’ academic reading and writing competencies
These domains were used as deductive categories and systematically assigned to the module’s text with the assumption that, there was a relationship between frequency of content and meaning (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011; Kohlbacher, 2006). This means, the seven domains of the TK formed the deductive codes for the document analysis, facilitating a clear understanding of the kind of TK privileged in the ACT literacy intended curriculum which the FP teachers were expected to learn.
The first step of this document analysis consisted of counting the precise occurrence of the paragraphs of text and activities, key points and academic skills icons as per the designers’ plan. Essentially this quantitative approach was used preceding the qualitative content
(discourse) to acquire an overview of the ‘units’ under analysis. In addition, summarizing of categories in this manner is a statistical technique which allows trends, frequencies, priorities and relationships to be calculated (Cohen et al., 2011).
The second step involved reading, identifying and coding the denoted domains of TK on each page of the module, using different colours to represent the seven domains of TK by Reed (2009) in each of paragraph of texts and activity; key points and academic skills icons.
This was done either on a bulleted, numbered or short sentence or small paragraphs in the four units (chapters) depending on how the domains of TK are presented by the designers of module 4. The purpose was to establish what and how the seven domains of TK were presented and integrated to each other in the selected material.
Lastly, the coded textswere explicitly examined to sort out those that had more than one coding and determine exact under circumstance that the codes were awarded with the
category. This was necessary because the seven domains of TK are not presented in a distinctive manner but rather some of the units of analysis had to be coded in more than one domain. For instance, it was not easy to separate subject knowledge and pedagogic knowledge domains or self-knowledge from the learners’ knowledge domain which often overlapped in the whole Learning Guide.
Findings of the Content Analysis
The findings on Figure 1 below, indicates, high privilege of subject knowledge and pedagogic knowledge domains and moderate representation of self-knowledge and learners’ knowledge domains. The knowledge of curriculum and academic skills knowledge domains have the least representation and variation from this dimension of graphic demonstration.
Figure 1: The Domains of Teacher Knowledge Privileged in Module 4 Although the table indicates that much of the text focuses on subject knowledge, the categories of pedagogic knowledge, learner knowledge, context knowledge, self-knowledge and academic literacy have a strong practice focus. Thus overall there is a strong focus in the module on ‘how’ knowledge, rather than theoretical knowledge. For example, here is an activity where the FP teacher must do a task on reflecting on her own knowledge about
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Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit3 Unit4
phonemic awareness in English. However the module does not explicitly define and explain the concept.
Do this exercise to check your own phonemic awareness in English. Which of the following words does not rhyme with the others: book, ball, look? How many phonemes are there in the word ‘laugh’..? Say classroom without ‘room’. Say road without /d/ (Module 4, p. 45)
The above drawn conclusion about the findings of this content analysis echoes some of the research works in the South Africa context. For instance according to the works of Adler et al. (2002), teachers do not only need a deep knowledge of the subject they teach but rather a blend of propositional. Practical and personal knowledge for the purpose of effective teaching and learning. Since it is clear from the above analysis that the main focus of the module is on subject knowledge and practice knowledge, the next section aims to engage in more depth with the substance of the literacy knowledge privileged in the module. It answers the