- Title
- Mediating learning of electrostatics through stories on cultural beliefs and practices about lightning to Grade 7 township school learners
- Creator
- Funani, Lindiso Desmond
- Subject
- Science Study and teaching (Primary) South Africa
- Subject
- Electrostatics
- Subject
- Lightning South Africa
- Subject
- Traditional ecological knowledge South Africa
- Subject
- Argumentation theory
- Subject
- Social learning South Africa
- Date Issued
- 2024-10-11
- Date
- 2024-10-11
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/463548
- Identifier
- vital:76419
- Description
- The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document mandates that teaching and learning should start with the knowledge and experiences of learners from home or communities when teaching Natural Sciences. The aim is to bridge the gap between the science content learned in the school classroom and the science accessible to learners in their homes and community environments. CAPS claims that it ‘embraces local indigenous knowledge’ but it does not specify how this should be done in schools. As a result, little or no integration of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is enacted in many of our schools in South Africa and learners seem to find science inaccessible and irrelevant to their everyday lives. It is against this backdrop that this interventionist study sought to mediate learning of electrostatics through harnessing stories on cultural beliefs and practices about lightning to Grade 7 township school learners. This study is located within the interpretivist and Indigenous research paradigms, central to which is to develop a greater understanding of how people make sense of the contexts in which they live and work. Within the Indigenous research paradigm, I focused on the Ubuntu perspective. Furthermore, this study was conducted in an under-resourced school located in the Sarah Baartman District, Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The participants were Grade 7 Natural Sciences learners and two Indigenous Knowledge Custodians (IKCs). In addition, one Natural Sciences teacher was my critical friend. Focus group interviews (sharing circles), group activities, observations (participatory and lesson observation), and learners’ journals were used to gather data. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Ogunniyi’s Contiguity Argumentation Theory were used as theoretical frameworks in this study. The findings of the study revealed that both the group activity and the presentations by the Indigenous Knowledge Custodians on stories on cultural beliefs and practices about lightning enabled learners’ argumentation and sense-making of electrostatics. The study thus recommends that science teachers should make efforts to tap into the cultural heritage of IKCs to make science accessible and relevant to learners' everyday life experiences.
- Description
- Thesis (MEd) -- Faculty of Education, Secondary and Post-School Education, 2024
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (163 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Rhodes University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Education, Secondary and Post-School Education
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Funani, Lindiso Desmond
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | FUNANI-MED-TR24-125.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |