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Research Articles (Education Studies)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/7178

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Browsing Research Articles (Education Studies) by Author "Gopal, Nirmala Devi."

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    Exploring alternative assessment strategies in science classrooms.
    (ESASA, 2010) Stears, Michele.; Gopal, Nirmala Devi.
    The knowledge children bring to the classroom or construct in the classroom may find expression in a variety of activities and is often not measurable with the traditional assessment instruments used in science classrooms. Different approaches to assessment are required to accommodate the various ways in which learners construct knowledge in social settings. In our research we attempted to determine the types of outcomes achieved in a Grade 6 classroom where alternative strategies such as interactive assessments were implemented. Analyses of these outcomes show that the learners learned much more than the tests indicate, although what they learnt was not necessarily science. The implications for assessment are clear: strategies that assess knowledge of science concepts, as well as assessment of outcomes other than science outcomes, are required if we wish to gain a holistic understanding of the learning that occurs in science classrooms.
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    Interrogating inclusionary and exclusionary practices : learners of war and flight.
    (Perspectives in Education, 2005) Sookrajh, Reshma.; Gopal, Nirmala Devi.; Maharaj, Bridgemohan.
    There has been a significant increase in the number of undocumented people entering South Africa. A number of them include refugees. Many refugees are destitute and often denied basic needs such as health and education. Besides intentional exclusion by citizens and authorities, some immigrant children are precluded from education because they cannot gain access to schooling. This article captures the possibilities and constraints that are experienced by a selected group of refugee learners, in a school in which these children find themselves.The methodology derives from powerful narratives which are used as tools to analyse exclusionary and inclusionary practices, the relationship between which is presented as bi-directional. It is argued that the notion of exclusion and inclusion is multilayered. Different constructs of inclusion are developed around the thought, practices and experiences of refugee learners within the hosting school community. It is argued that what is offered by the school is a strikingly conservative discourse of perceived inclusion in the ways in which refugee learner practices get constructed. A theory of enforced humanitarianism emerges on the part of the school. It is only when we change this perspective on vulnerability that we are able to accept a more creative and effective way of including refugee learners who constantly believe that they are present in one place, but belong somewhere else.
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    What mathematics learners say about the new South African curriculum reform.
    (2005) Vithal, Renuka.; Gopal, Nirmala Devi.
    In this article we report on what Grade 8 learners say about the new curriculum reforms in South Africa – Outcomes-based Education (OBE) and Curriculum 2005 (C2005) – that were introduced into their mathematics classrooms. The article begins by addressing what is argued to be a gap in reform research in mathematics education. It draws primarily on focus group interviews conducted with learners after having observed a series of consecutive lessons in three different previously racially segregated schools in the Durban region from the international study on mathematics learners' perspectives. The analysis is organised in five broad themes that emerged from the data, some of which resonate with the design features of the curriculum reforms: a strong focus on group work; the attempt to forge relations between mathematics and context; changes in the use of learning-teaching materials such as worksheets; issues of assessment; and learners' take-up of the discourse of the new curriculum approach. Learners' views seem to be linked to their teachers' explicit (non)engagement with the new curriculum, and they appear to be aware of the tensions and trade-offs for themselves in the enactment of the new curriculum.