Changing regimes: Governmentality and education policy in post-apartheid South Africa

This article applies Foucault's notion of governmentality to educational restructuring in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that the nature of government in a modern state entails engaging with particular practices and domains of knowledge, which themselves constrain the changes that are conceivable and credible. Using Foucault's concepts of ‘conduct of conduct’, regimes of practices and ‘saviors’, the article outlines the approach adopted by the new government in relation to establishing constitutional ground rules and managing the economy. It argues that in its approach to restructuring education, the new government prioritised issues relating to the ‘conduct of conduct’. The article suggests that Foucault's approach of questioning normalisations might yield alternative accounts of the exercise of governmental power in changing education. It ends by proposing that a range of theoretical framings be used in engaging critically with educational change.     

Early-grade reading support in rural South Africa: A language-centred technology approach

International Review of Education - This article describes a short-term longitudinal study conducted in low-performing rural primary schools in South Africa. The authors were involved in developing...     

Analyzing teaching quality in Botswana and South Africa

This study focuses on quantifying the quality of mathematics teaching in 183 randomly selected sixth grade classrooms: 100 from the North West province of South Africa and 83 from South East Botswana. The teaching quality is measured by coding videotaped lessons for three different components: mathematical proficiency, level of cognitive demand, and observed teacher knowledge. Results suggest that the overall teaching quality is about the same in both regions. Some variation was observed at the level of each component. For example, in the South Africa sample the students engage more in tasks that just involve “memorization” and less in tasks that involve “procedures without connections” in comparison with the Botswana students. Teachers in Botswana implement the official curriculum more faithfully than do those in North West. In both countries most of the learners engaged only in low-level tasks (very little activity involved “procedures with connections”) and teachers demonstrated a lack of knowledge about how to integrate mathematical content with effective pedagogical techniques.     

高职英语阅读教学初探及实践

语言阅读教学的目的是使学生能用目标语进行交际,而一些高职英语阅读教学却不能很好地完成这个任务。为了提高阅读教学质量,教师要着重在语篇水平上对课文进行分析,同时注重整篇结构分析。具体的阅读教学过程包括三个阶段:读前阶段,即主要起到热身作用的事先准备阶段,旨在调动学生的注意力和积极性;读中阶段,即学生理解作者的写作意图、语篇结构及内容等,使阅读技能和语言水平得到提高;读后阶段,针对学生在阅读过程中出现的一些问题进行深入分析和总结。     

论教师阅读英文报刊对教学实践的改进

分析阅读英文报刊对词汇量的扩大,论述阅读英文报刊对传授语言知识,改进授课形式,增加教学实践的作用,提出了以下结论:英文报刊是英文学习者了解英语国家的最真实最直接的材料,也是英文学习者学习地道英语的途径.     

On the production of instructional films in teaching economics at a distance

This paper provides an account of an innovative programme of teaching economics at a distance — the paper is the most comprehensive report of the programme available in English.

The paper discusses the didactic principles on which the videofilm is substantially different from other teaching activities, details of the production process itself are outlined. The paper advances some preliminary conclusions about the efficiency of learning from the videofilm.     

Exploring relationships between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension amongst English second language readers in South Africa

Most analyses of oral reading fluency (ORF) are based on L1 reading, and the norms that have been developed in English are based on first language reading data. This is problematic for developing countries where many children are learning in English as a second language. The aim of the present study is to model the relationship between English reading fluency and comprehension among rural English-second-language learners (ESL) in South Africa. We use data collected in 2013 by the National Education and Evaluation Development Unit in South Africa. This survey tested 4697 Grade 5 students from 214 schools across rural areas in South Africa. A sub-sample—1772 students—were selected for an ORF test. For these students there exist data on both reading comprehension and reading fluency. Although a number of studies have analyzed the relationship between fluency and comprehension, none have been conducted on a large-scale for ESL learners in a developing country such as South Africa. The present research contributes to the literature by analysing the size, significance and uniformity of this relationship for ESL learners in South Africa. Preliminary findings indicate a threshold at 70 words-read-correct-per-minute which is lower than the typically used threshold of 90 words-read-correct-per-minute of English first language readers.     

Implementing information technology at the Border Technikon in South Africa

The mission of Border Technikon in South Africa is to provide the best vocational and career education to students of all racial and cultural backgrounds in the East London area. The staff believes that an important component of this mission includes giving students marketable skills for the information age. Therefore, in 1996, the Technikon undertook an extensive program to implement new information technologies that would help fulfill the institution's mission. Implementing information technology at academic institutions in developing countries must address a special set of problems, some of which are technology gaps, educational deficits, and lack of adequate facilities. This paper describes some of the more unique problems the Technikon encountered, and a few solutions. During 1996, she served as a Senior Librarian at Border Technikon, East London, South Africa, under the Educators for Africa Program of the International Foundation of Education and Self-Help.     

核心素养视阈下高职语文阅读教学策略探究

核心素养是社会发展与时代变革下对人才培养提出的新要求。在高职人才培养过程中语文阅读教学至关重要,它是高职生获取专业知识、发展专业技能的重要途径,并在很大程度上促进高职生核心素养的养成。在核心素养背景下,高职语文阅读教学策略的提出为高职语文教育提供了新的教学思路。     

浅析英语阅读课堂教学的现状问题与改进策略

在英语专业的课程教学中,英语阅读课程教学一直没能引起教师和学生的足够重视,与之相关的实践教学策略也没有得到充分的探索与挖掘。本文结合阅读策略的重要性,以及英语专业阅读课堂教学存在的问题,全面分析如何通过革新阅读教学策略改进英语阅读教学效果。     

以提高教学质量为核心的电路原理实验改革

电路原理实验是电类专业的一门专业基础核心实践课程。在实际教学中发现,学生对课前预习没有明确的方向性,不能完全达到预期教学效果。针对此问题,设计并开发了一个电路原理实验网上预习系统,该系统采用B/S结构设计,以MyEclipse为开发工具、Mysql为后台数据库,实现网上预习测试的功能。预习方式的改变及系统的引入,从思想上引导学生重视实验预习并为其指明方向,有益于发挥学生学习的主动性,从而提升实验教学质量。     

Computer-assisted instruction to prevent early reading difficulties in students at risk for dyslexia: Outcomes from two instructional approaches

The relative effectiveness of two computer-assisted instructional programs designed to provide instruction and practice in foundational reading skills was examined. First-grade students at risk for reading disabilities received approximately 80 h of small-group instruction in four 50-min sessions per week from October through May. Approximately half of the instruction was delivered by specially trained teachers to prepare students for their work on the computer, and half was delivered by the computer programs. At the end of first grade, there were no differences in student reading performance between students assigned to the different intervention conditions, but the combined-intervention students performed significantly better than control students who had been exposed to their school’s normal reading program. Significant differences were obtained for phonemic awareness, phonemic decoding, reading accuracy, rapid automatic naming, and reading comprehension. A follow-up test at the end of second grade showed a similar pattern of differences, although only differences in phonemic awareness, phonemic decoding, and rapid naming remained statistically reliable.     

Code-oriented instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties: a replication and comparison of instructional groupings

The purposes of this study were to replicate previous research on phonics-based tutoring in kindergarten and to compare treatment effects for students who received individual instruction compared to instruction in dyads. Thirty classroom teachers from 13 urban elementary schools referred at-risk students for participation. Students who met screening criteria were quasi-randomly assigned, within classroom, to one of three conditions: individual tutoring (n = 22), tutoring in dyads (n = 32), or no tutoring (n = 22, classroom instruction only). Twenty-one paraeducators provided 18 weeks of explicit instruction in phonemic skills and the alphabetic code to students during the latter half of kindergarten. Multilevel model results showed that tutored students outperformed non-tutored controls on posttest measures of phonological awareness, word reading accuracy, oral reading fluency, spelling, and comprehension. However, no significant differences were found between the two tutored groups on any measure, suggesting that code-oriented tutoring for pairs of students is a viable alternative to the gold standard of individual instruction.     

大学英语课堂阅读教学之关键

培养学生具有较强的英语阅读能力是对大学英语教学第一层次的要求。以分析阅读和阅读教学之间的区别为切入点 ,探讨传统的阅读教学中存在的不足之处以及如何把握阅读教学的关键     

South Africa: The need for a radical restructuring of specialized education in the new South Africa

Sigamoney Naicker, a lecturer in Specialized Education in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Western Cape, provides an analysis of specialized education after one year of the first democratic government in South Africa.     

交互性阅读模式在大学英语阅读教学中的应用

本文首先介绍和探讨阅读模式的相关理论研究,对几种交互性阅读模式进行了综述和评价,提出交互性阅读模式对阅读活动更具解释力,对指导英语学习者阅读更加科学有效的观点。英语教师在阅读教学中应科学运用交互性阅读模式,合理安排教学内容和组织教学活动,重视自下而上和自上而下这两个过程在阅读中的交互作用,既要引导学生读懂课文文字意义,又要激活学生的图式知识,最终达到对文本的深度理解和对相关主题知识的主动建构,提高阅读理解能力,同时增长知识,开拓视野。     

Pause for Thought: controversies in the teaching of reading

The publication of Martin Turner's controversial study on reading levels in primary schools has generated considerable public disquiet and debate. This paper considers some of the arguments for and against the ‘apprenticeship’ approach to the teaching of reading which Turner excoriates and shows that the position is considerably more complex than is suggested by his work. We consider the case for an eclectic investigation of this key area of learning, incorporating a variety of methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative.