Showing papers by "Saloshna Vandeyar published in 2003"

Has curriculum reform in South Africa really changed assessment practices, and what promise does the revised National Curriculum Statement hold?

Abstract: This article examines the extent to which outcomes-based education, Curriculum 2005 and the Revised National Curriculum Statement provide guidelines for assessment that are consistent with principles of high-quality assessment. It illustrates that important principles such as reliability, validity and fairness are embodied in these curriculum frameworks, but that the principles are not always made explicit. It is claimed that this shortcoming is one of the reasons that concerns about why, how and when to assess learners have been evident in much of the debate surrounding recent South African curriculum reform. The paper argues that if teachers understand the fundamental principles of high-quality assessment, then they will have little difficulty in adapting their assessment practices to the broad guidelines provided by OBE or to the specific guidelines provided by Curriculum 2005, the revised National Curriculum Statement or any future curriculum framework. The paper uses examples from case studies to suggest that when teachers ignore sound assessment practices, assessment becomes a meaningless activity divorced from learning.

The jagged paths to multicultural education : international experiences and South Africa's response in the new dispensation

Abstract: An ideal form of multicultural education is one that not only recognizes and acknowledges diversity, practices tolerance and respect of human rights, but works to liberate cultures that have been subjugated. Such an education would go beyond being "nice to those less fortunate" to working to promote equality of cultural trade. For what it is worth, pre-1994 multicultural education in South Africa did recognize diversity, but it was diversity as a strategy for containment. It was of a variety that was exclusionary in nature and constituted a cruel inscription of those colonized "Others" into the mainstream. From here, international experiences of multicultural education do not offer much inspiration. Multicultural education in the US, Canada, UK , and Australia is driven and fuelled in large part by an assimilationist agenda that denies authenticity to the marginalized cultures. In the South African situation, the Constitution, which is hinged on ten powerful principles, seeks to promote tolerance and respect for all cultures and to promote common values across the rainbow nation of South Africa. However, there is no attempt at this point to valorize the content of the culture of the different groups. This paper argues that silence is also policy. South Africa should therefore work towards a deeper and proactive diagnosis of the content of the culture of its diverse peoples and find spaces for dialogue based on equity within the education system. In order to do this, deeper analysis of the forms of cultural violence, their alibis, etc. that characterized the apartheid system, but which is now couched as mainstream, needs to be undertaken. In this regard, emerging pers pectives from the South African History Project and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems movement, (especially its message of transcendence and cultural he aling) need to be considered . South African Journal of Education Vol.23(3) 2003: 193-198

Teacher Professionalism - An Innovative Programme for Teaching Mathematics to Foundation Level Learners with Limited Language Proficiency

Abstract: This article reports on results derived from a quantitative research into the language proficiency of disadvantaged preschoolers within a Griqua community near Christiana in the Free State province (South Africa) with a population of approximately one hundred and fifty families The learners' main language is a dialect of Afrikaans, but (to a lesser extent) they also speak Xhosa and Xhoi-San (two of the indigenous African languages), as well as non-standard English at home Preschoolers from this settlement attend a preschool where standard Afrikaans and English are spoken (double medium preschool) The aim of this project was to determine the ways that limited language proficiency impact on learners' readiness for mathematics instruction, and to define the link between limited language proficiency and non-readiness for mathematics instruction at foundation phase The results proved a link between limited language proficiency and non-readiness for foundation level mathematics instruction due to limited th