HOW THE FINDINGS ARGUE THE STRENGTH OF THE

All the educators interviewed during the research expressed similar perceptions. Educators feel that the environment which learners come from is in vast contrast to the formal settlements, which surround them, and that encourages the technical and academic persuasion awareness they try to create. The educators’ perceptions are confirmed by the learners’ performance, since they rely on educators to supply everything that they lack because they were not exposed to pre-school or early childhood education. The parents of learners are illiterate. Poverty and unemployment deprive these learners of their early learning education and this leads to illiteracy in the Bekkersdal informal settlements. Learners from the informal settlement at Ipeleng Primary School, as my claim indicates, are inactive in knowledge-making. The GDE and NGOs are harnessing their expertise to present workshops for educators with a view to improving the quality of teaching and learning in this and other schools.

Learners interviewed during the research revealed that knowledge discovered by their own effort lasts longer. Learners acknowledged that they are disadvantaged as far as their learning is concerned. They expressed a concern

that no single public library, nor even a library in the school, exists in an area that accommodates an estimated population of more than seven hundred thousand people. Learners’ inactivity is worsened by poverty and the pandemic that is decimating the population of Bekkersdal, leaving many learners orphans. These factors jeopardise their learning.

The findings reveal that the learners from the Bekkersdal informal settlement are able to be a party to the synergistic effect on insight and solutions that come about through the use of group work. Educators interviewed during this study expressed the fear that learners from the school are easily susceptible to indoctrination, for they accept every bit of information presented by their educators as authentic. Such learners lack analytical and critical thinking skills. According to the claim, there is a need for cognitive teaching style, and with the input form the GDE, the teaching of Literacy can be improved. Hopefully, through the cognitive teaching strategies, learners will be afforded the opportunity to demonstrate analytical and critical thinking skills.

As soon as learners are encouraged to construct meaning for themselves, educators need to provide more room for the learners’ actions. Through successful implementation of group work, a learner can experience the synergy that leads to new insights and solutions. It is therefore necessary, with the help of the GDE, for teachers to adopt a constructivist style of teaching; they need to make the necessary paradigm shift from the “chalk-and-talk” approach to an authentic problem-solving practice that benefits the learners in its demands that they construct new understanding.

The findings of the inquiry confirm that the environment plays a vital role in the education of learners. With a new approach, teachers will provide a learning environment that makes it possible for learners to search for meaning.

4.3 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE STUDY

environment that makes it possible for learners to search for meaning. The standard of education dropped in the eighties and the early nineties in black communities. The majority of educators were either learners at secondary schools or students at various colleges or universities. The then continuous disruption in the education process resulted in gaps in the education of teachers. The situation that has arisen because of this calls for a new emphasis on staff development and training. It is therefore a perceived strength of this study that it can empower educators to improve the teaching of Literacy in the Foundation Phase.

This study describes the participation of learners in different learning activities. Experience has proved that learning is effective in a situation where learners are actively involved in the learning process. Through group work, which is part of learner involvement, learners experience a synergistic rise in both insight into the task at hand and the solutions to problems posed. The shift to a continuous assessment strategy is one part of the current educational change that contributes to the betterment of Literacy teaching practice, for the frequent assessment keeps the learners alert and active most of the time.

The fact that this study was confined to only one school, Ipeleng Primary School in Bekkersdal informal settlement, may be considered a weakness of the study, but there are few schools that teach Literacy in the Foundation Phase. The findings, as a result, may not be generalised to as large a population as one would have liked. Although the study is empirically limited, the findings have great meaning for education.

In addition, only four out of ten Foundation Phase educators contributed to the research; and only the learners of grade 1B participated from four grade 1 classes. This also impacts on the generalising of the findings, but it can still be claimed to be representative of the theoretical population from which the sample of participants was drawn.

for time constraints prohibited the collection of the views of other educational structures or data from the stakeholders in the broader community. The findings of this study cannot be generalised to a countrywide scenario, for this setting has its own unique character. Interviews with the Literacy facilitators from District Z, who are Learning Area specialists and could have contributed their opinions regarding Literacy teaching, would undoubtedly have enhanced the findings of this research.