Head of Department (HOD) Interviews

The questions that were posed to the HOD wanted to find out about her understanding of literacy practices. They also elicited the support she received from the school’s senior management or the Department of Education as the HOD, and the support she provided to the FP teachers and learners. Zodwa viewed literacy practices as continuous reading, exposure of learners to different media that they could read in the classroom, and it also meant a lot of talk by the teacher, “It’s like teaching orally”.

With regard to the contributory factors that impacted on literacy development, Zodwa mentioned the continuous policy changes that teachers experienced. She further mentioned that the new forms of teaching seemed not to serve the purpose of improving learners’ literacy performance and that of numeracy. Her feelings are captured below:

I would assume it’s because of these new forms of teaching, now we have CAPS… but the problem is when we start grasping, now we start grasping, okay, now it’s only now that I understand RNCS, and the following year we hear that no, the RNCS has been changed to NCS, when you start to grasp iNCS they change it to uCAPS. (Interview with Zodwa, 20 March 2013) The second factor that could be linked to low literacy levels, according to Zodwa, was poor and insufficient in-service training of teachers. Zodwa had this to say:

…and also, and also to the lack of teachers…. Because the teachers maybe, they are not well trained’. But what the department does, they train teachers for a “day”.

She also referred to the inconsistencies with regard to the quality of in-service development teachers as enactors of the policy received compared to what the Curriculum Advisers (CA) received. She claimed that:

… Departmental officials will go …to Gauteng to train for three months… but what the department do they train teachers for a day.

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To improve teacher practices, Zodwa said she would invite the CA to coach them in their classes so that they could exchange ideas with the teachers. In this way, teachers would gain much exposure to the strategies they are expected to implement in the classroom. This is captured in the utterance below:

…[ICA] yenza ilesson pha eklasini yam so that ndize kukopa le lesson yakho ndiyenze exactly … because they will make i-examples ze-English, thina ke ngoku most of the time i-examples ze-English ayifithi kwindaba yesiXhosa. (… [The CA] models your lesson in my class so that I can copy your lesson and do it in my class…because they will make English examples and English examples do not fit in our Xhosa context.

Van Driel, Beijaard and Verloop (2001) agree with Zodwa’s observation with regard to teacher professional development. Van Driel et al. (2001)emphasise on the important factor that time plays in bringing authentic changes in the teaching profession because they believe that when sufficient time is spent in bringing about changes in the classroom, teachers will not experience the kinds of superficial development which make the teachers unable to implement the policy changes.

When asked about her understanding of access to literacy, Zodwa said that access to literacy implied exposing learners to different kinds of literacy materials like books. Her strategy of exposing learners to literacy is captured in the following utterance:

…but what I normally do, I take them to the library, the school library. Because they are too young to go to the library that is in town, for, mostly, I take them to the school library or to the lab in our in our computers. At the lab we do have a programme they call Talking Stories.

Zodwa pointed out the advantages of exposing learners to Information and Communication Technology (ICT), especially the learners who struggle with reading and writing.

…so those that cannot read can look at the picture and listen, because there is also an audio for each and every story. So they can look at the story and listen to the story. In light of the above, it could be said that the guided reading support that learners were exposed to was meant to strengthen literacy development as the learners listened to skilful readers and

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were guided by the pictures in constructing meaning. Zodwa went on to say that the best readers were selected to read aloud to the principal. They were expected to know phonics and to read Grade 3 reading books.

Referring to the question of support that she provided to teachers as HOD, Zodwa mentioned that she monitored what the teachers were doing in class. She checked whether teachers differentiated work in the classroom in order to support learners individually. Zodwa went on to say:

…ubamonitarishe into ba bayayenza i-intervention, meaning you have to monitor if the intervene, whereby umntwana xa ubona ukuba umntwana uyasilela umnike, ...when you notice that a learner is struggling you give him/her an extra work to monitor if they do offer intervention when they notice a learner is struggling and give him/her extra activities.

With regard to the support she received from senior management, she said:

Oh-h I don’t receive any support, ... ewe ke, because at times there is i-workshop ye- HODs, (whereby baza kukuxelela ukuba as an HOD this is what you are supposed to do, but I don’t understand ke nge-support... e-e-e, besi- supporta njani, .. as an HOD bayasinika iiduties ekufuneka sizilandele but I’m not sure nge-support

Oh-h I don’t receive any support, of course, because at times there are HOD workshops whereby they tell you that as an HOD this is what you are supposed to do, but I don’t understand about support .. How they support us, as an HOD’s they give us duties that we should do, but I’m not sure about support.

With regard to the implementation of the CAPS policy, she mentioned that the departmental officials, who visited the school or offered workshops, most of the times, were ineffective:

…most of the time, even i-department, loo mntu wase department uzileyo xa um- questiona ngezinto ezininzi, and then he will promise to come back, when when, she doesn’t have the answers she promises to come back. She further said I-come back soze uphinde uyibone.

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When you question the departmental official about a lot of things, then he/she will promise to come back,... when she doesn’t have answers she will promise to come back and you will never see him/her again

She was also disappointed about the lack of support due to language barrier, as shown in the following excerpt:

Asikho esinye i-support because sometimes we will challenge them and say ,okay, go to my classroom, yenza i-lesson pha eklasini yam so that ndize kukopa le lesson yakho ndiyenze exactly, but you will find that most of our su- our advisors they can’t speak isiXhosa.

There is no other support because we will challenge them to say, go to my classroom, model the lesson, so that I could copy and be able to deliver the lesson exactly the same way… but you will find that most of our su- our advisors they can’t speak isiXhosa.

In light of the above responses, Zodwa was not pleased with the strategies that they were advised to implement in their classrooms because they were not working. Hence she suggested that the subject advisors should come to their classes and model the strategy in order for them to be able implement it with their learners. Zodwa was also angered by the language mismatch between the subject advisors’ communicative language and the language used by teachers and learners in the schools they were meant to support. According to Zodwa language played a role in providing meaningful support to teachers.

Zodwa mentioned that they had resources, both hard copies and ICT resources, even though they did not have enough high quality isiXhosa resources. The problem lied in teacher professional development. With regard to the availability and the quality of resources, Zodwa mentioned that isiXhosa resources were few but as teachers, they tried their best to have reading materials. She said,

…i-most yeresources esinazo ezi ,ezi-, ezi-right ezi-adequate, ezi -right zeze-, zeze- maths, but eze- literacy zinqabile iresources, you have to, you have to maneuver, sizenzele ngokwethu, njengokuba ubona nawe,... mhlawumbi siza kufumana incwadi encinci ,we have to ukuba sizenzele ibig book njengala njengala-... njengeza-

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poster,uzenzele ibig book,... uhambe uye ku- blowa ii- amafoto uzenzele iinto esa kuba bu-big book. Zinqabile iiresources zesiXhosa”

…the most resources that we have, those that are, ... that are,.. , that are good, adequate and correct,... and good resources are for maths, but for literacy, resources are scarce. We have to manoeuvre and develop on our own as you see we are,.. going to receive small readers , we have then to develop our own big books, just like the posters that you see. You have to go and blow up pictures and make something like a big book. There are few isiXhosa resources.