Focus Area 1 addresses the need for more effective mathematics and science learning and teaching and participation, particularly amongst previously disadvantaged black, African learners within rural and urban areas, by targeting learners, teachers, school managers, parents, higher education institutions, teacher training and development, and public awareness of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Funds allocated to this focus area amount to R85m, nearly 56.7% of the total project funds. Seven of the ten consortium members have projects in this focus area. Funds are distributed in the following proportions and amounts:
Focus Area 1: Maths and Science
R (m's)
R (m's) to Dec 2010
% of Total
R’s to date/R’s available (%)
MSEP
18.5
8.94
21.8
48.3
IMSTUS
25
10.89
29.4
43.6
AEGI-UWC
16
7.71
18.8
48.2
ELRU
13
6.03
15.3
46.4
SAILI
6.5
4.05
7.6
62.3
SCIFEST
6
1.69
7.1
28.2
TOTAL
85
39.31
100.0
46.2
Table: SEEDS Consortium Focus Area 1: Maths and Science8
The review of activities and performance of the seven SEEDS organisations and institutions in the focus area of mathematics and science follows a two-fold method as outlined in Outsourced Insight’s MTR proposal document.
In the first section of the review, we present the results of our Management Survey; section 2 presents the results of the Survey of Beneficiaries.
SECTION ONE: FOCUS AREA 1
Section 1, Management Survey, presents a narrative review of the seven participating organisations, compiled from interview extracts/direct speech garnered from eight semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with fifteen directors/project managers. Where necessary, and for further clarification on key themes raised in the interviews, and with respect to outcomes, interviews were complemented with extracts and data from SEEDS annual and quarterly reports, published documents, and on-line resources etc. to enrich the text and further highlight/probe project and programme issues and challenges.
Given the wide spectrum of organisations engaged in focus 1, and their quite often distinct activities in various phases of formal schooling as well as across the education sector, we provide a full narrative for each organisation beginning with the ECD/Foundation phase (ELRU) and then proceeding to organisations with projects in the Intermediate and Senior Phase, and the Further Education and Training Sectors.
ECD/Foundation phase
In the ECD/Foundation phase, the SEEDS programme has one project to the amount of R13m (15.3% of activities in Focus Area 1), run by ELRU.
EARLY LEARNING PROJECT FOR RURAL AND POOR SCHOOLS IN THE WESTERN CAPE – EARLY LEARNING RESOURCE UNIT
Under the project title EARLY LEARNING PROJECT FOR RURAL AND POOR SCHOOLS IN THE WESTERN CAPE, ELRU aims to “Develop appropriate to context and culturally appropriate strategy for ECD teacher development and support in rural poor schools”. The project seeks to identify replicable elements (materials; enrichment programme; teacher training and on-site support) for future integration into institutions responsible for teacher development. The strategy will enable the fundamentals of thinking, language acquisition and counting in the foundation for maths and science to be built within the Early Childhood Development (ECD)/Grade R phases. It is part of the programme to contextualise products for use in rural and poor schools in the Western Cape appropriate for a range of cultural and natural environments.
The ELRU project vision under the SEEDS initiative is to “inspire confident, equipped and innovative teachers and parents, promoting young children’s curiosity and sense of wonder as a foundation for acquiring the fundamental building blocks of thinking, numeracy and language acquisition.”
Project activities are threefold: develop and distribute innovative materials; an inspiration and awareness programme for teachers, learners and caregivers; and training for teachers (workshops), incorporating exposure to new places and ideas as well as on-site support with implementation.
The project works with 60 ECD/Grade R teachers in predominantly Afrikaans-language schools and community centres in West Coast and Overberg districts. In addition to participating teachers, ELRU estimates (2010) that its programme has reached 1222 families (880 in Overberg and 342 in West Coast) and benefitted 1440 children (Overberg 836; West Coast 604). A follow-up evaluation is underway to complement the project’s 2009 baseline study.
New approaches and innovations have emerged in the teaching of numeracy, literacy, and life skills at ECD level. The project has addressed the availability of mother-tongue instructional material in these learning areas. It has also innovated with the use of audio-visuals in teacher development and multimedia platforms, and developed the concept of a supportive cluster centred on an experienced lead or peer teacher.
The project has faced numerous challenges including:
Increased complexity and costs in liaising with stakeholders particularly local, provincial and national public institutions, companies and non-profits :“We didn’t budget for stakeholder engagement [but] this is being done by us now in the course of the work but it’s not funded – but it’s vital to develop an enabling environment, and a more integrated way of working”
Changed WCED policies on NGOs in schools consequent on the change in provincial government:
“It was one of the biggest changes. The government imposed a moratorium on accessing government schools by NGOs. It was a shock but we survived by beginning to target community-based ECD sites as we were doing a lot of support that the districts did not have the capacity to provide, and we had a track record, and the trust of teachers”
“The role of NGOs [post-1994] has been to largely assist the government, to supplement and complement the national policies. We haven’t been in a situation when that lifeblood has been cut off. But the PDE has closed its doors... and politics is getting in the way of development... struck me how the GPDE is still really passionate about retaining NGOs relations; in WC it’s the opposite... they seem to be saying, ‘go away’! But is this sign of future developments?”
Workshop timetabling clashes with the WCED, resulting in adoption of a new, more flexible, but more expensive training model: “We have tried to keep on providing the same time as the [original] holiday block training, the same number of total hours. We looked at ways of fitting in more contact time with teachers which means more site support visits”
Budget issues: “You can’t change your activities which actually were envisaged 18 months ago even though things on the ground have changed dramatically. We are squeezed into something thought of 3 years ago.University [of Stellenbosch] oversees our budgets. There are no means or opportunity of making formal changes formally; informally we operate under the broad descriptions/activities [of the original budget] to accommodate our changed dynamics: this is a negative dynamic; we would like to have an opportunity for significant reallocation of the budget elements”
Lack of an effective ‘enabling’ environment in schools consequent, resulting in a ‘poorly integrated approach which is becoming an issue for the teacher groups’.
Competition/clashes with WCED and other ECD training opportunities:
“Along the way a lots of teachers dropped out because they participated in other courses that paid them learnerships that paid incentives for participation – we could not compete.”
“Our training is not accredited – which has led to teacher de-enrolment”
Uneven impact on long-term learning and teaching: “Whilst teachers have expressed appreciation for the new things learnt and the supporting resources however the challenges for them to implement their learning experiences remain. I can’t see us working in these areas again. Some of these teachers have years and years of training and you can’t believe they ever were trained at all!”
The child-centred, rights-based, mediated approach of the ECD curriculum is experienced by parents and teachers from these rural small town schools and communities as “very threatening”: “They experience the approach as a very heavily, westernised mediation kind of thing. We have been battling and battling. We seem to be getting there but certain people have that ability and are able to identity with the values attached to speaking to the child in a certain way and allow the child to explore and experiment ... adding value to the child and the community. It takes other teachers and parents a much longer time.”
Failing significant improvement in the operating environment in the Western Cape, ELRU feels that the pilot would not be capable of being 'scaled- up': “As things currently stand, we don’t believe we will be able to replicate it as it’s a very expensive model [for us].”
ELRU would however take what they have developed and use these resources and the approach in their other programmes. Opportunities exist also in other provinces where ECD provision by NPO’s receives strong support.
Collaboration and co-operation/partnerships with other SEEDS members on project activities has been limited to ‘sharing’ of experiences (not working with) with CMGE, EMEP and GOLD. SCIFEST AFRICA has provided services to ELRU’s enrichment programme.
One explanation for this lack of collaboration is that ELRU is the only SEEDS partner working in the ECD sector: “We are the only one in early learning and then there's a big gap till Grade Seven. ... There’s very little collaboration because there are no dots to join together in the first place”.
ELRU was more optimistic of the value – and potential – of developing a common model at the outset of the project and made some proposals, viz.:
“Plan an exchange of knowledge and ideas within specific activities (e.g. invite feedback and input from partners as the materials are being conceptualised and developed; adding an ECD component to, or supplementing partners’ programmes (adding resources and workshops on the use of the materials with young children - “using waste to educate” - a vehicle for learning about child development, for engaging parents, teachers and children’s creativity, for learning about the environment as well as for introducing Science and Technology.); working with SCIFEST AFRICA on teacher excursions, materials and festivals/exhibitions; a conference or seminar on modern challenges, bringing in some of the approaches to learning we all use as a starting point for discussion, as a joint activity; commission a documentary jointly to disseminate the information on good practice as well as key messages about improving learning in the province, as well as learning about partnerships and collaboration; offer diversity workshops where the consortium partners may identify needs in particular situations”
Now, however, ELRU has a more nuanced view of the collaborative challenge: “The consortium’s common goals/objectives, and actual collaboration is really quite tricky. We pulled together [in the beginning] not because of what we had in common but because the funder thought we could each make an impact, each of us, so it was trying to find points of intersection with the others, rather than developing a single SEED’s 'model' or ‘approach’ for nine projects.”
ELRU has garnered significant learning from the project, including:
“... deepening our own feel for what it means to be a teacher in this kind of changing education environment”
“... understanding the impact on the system of new pressures for professional development - training, FET colleges, learnerships, where to go and what to do”
“... helping [teachers] dealing with change…. There’s a lot of stuff they have to cope with, apart from managing in the workplace and working for the best interests of the child”
“... developed a deeper understanding of the complexities and difficulties of (in-service) teacher training in ECD”
“... we see the pressures on ECD teachers of working in a context with something imposed from western models .. like OBE… and we are thinking: ‘But we hadn’t really thought of that before... and a lot of what we see [with teachers] we need to challenge.”
“We have had an opportunity to develop these learning [numeracy workbook] resources etc which has been a big learning”
“… Another equally big learning has been ‘stakeholder engagement’: ‘in the future… would not work just with teachers but work with local resources and institutions such as libraries and the [National] Parks etc that have become important”
“Project has pushed us into the gaps where we actually work best: we provide a very inspirational workshop, for people who have not had the time and space to exercise their curiosity… Like seeing the sea… taking the people by bus trips has been wonderful - to the SALT Observatory etc added to the experience… Inspiring curiosity and a sense of wonder. I know funders are allergic to this but we have learnt a way of making these [workshops] work. Yes, these are ‘talk shops’ but they can also become an opportunity for training, very specific, not a marketing exercise for the organisation; they enthuse teachers for their environment, widening their horizons which is an essential part of this programme.”
In addition to working more closely with provinces other than the Western Cape where the enabling environment is more conducive and receptive to the project model, ELRU also expressed the feeling that the project results attained so far could be built on in other ways:
“Perhaps we need to stop producing new materials, put our training/materials together and roll this out so we can show actual results?”
“We have our programme set for next year and a half; many books to complete [and support]; it’s what the teachers require and that’s the best way we can respond to those who are ready to run; But there are those who won’t ever be there so what do you do? Do you include them in a kind of peer support group? These are the sorts of exit issues we are dealing with now.”
“The department is not all that involved but if it does become so we could be a resource to them. “
Intermediate and Senior Phase
Seven SEEDS projects in the focus area are directed at quality mathematics and science learning and teaching in the intermediate and senior phases (GET), pre- and in-service training at FET level in the four universities, and public awareness of STEM (seven projects to the sum of R72m, 87% of the available funds in the focus area).
The overall aim is to improve mathematics and science education, performance and participation through improved school-based learning and teaching methods, bursaries for talented learners, more effective mathematics and science pre- and in-service teacher training, and support for school-to-university bridging programme for especially disadvantaged learners:
Support the development of ‘better quality’ mathematics and science education in traditionally disadvantaged schools, where the majority of learners who are Black (University of Cape Town –MSEP)
Advance equal participation and improved performance in mathematics and science in previously disadvantaged communities through effective school-based teaching and learning, a mathematics and science bridging programme for talented but disadvantaged learners to gain university entrance, and providing rural maths teachers with the opportunity to gain a distance qualification in the subject of mathematics (IMSTUS – 3 projects)
Develop and implement professional development training programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers in natural sciences, life sciences and social sciences (AGEI with UWC)
Equip disadvantaged youth with strong capabilities in maths and science so that they can participate fully in the disciplines that make up the knowledge economy (SAILI)
MATHS AND SCIENCE EDUCATION PROJECT (MSEP): UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
MSEP is a collaboration of the University of Cape Town and the Western Cape Education Department. The project is also a Flagship Programme of UCT’s Transformation Strategy to broaden and extend undergraduate admissions into programmes in science, engineering, commerce and health sciences. MSEP is run as an outreach project through the School of Education School Development Unit (SDU).
MSEP’s long term strategy is: "Engaging in research-informed interventions that will not only make a significant difference to individual schools, but also advanced the knowledge and understanding of the complexities of creating a more effective education system"- that is, to establish an effective role that the university can play in schooling.
The project objectives are to improve the quality of teaching and learning in five secondary schools in the Cape Town Metro. In short, to develop systemic interventions in schools that improve the numbers of black students from the Western Cape black, African schools with sufficient grades and necessary subjects in the NSC (HG mathematics/now mathematics and science) to apply to higher education institutions like UCT.
All five schools are participants in the national Dinaledi project, and the focus of MSEP is on mathematics and the sciences. In addition to classroom-based teacher support in maths and science, MSEP has also been drawn into languages, school leadership, ICT, and life skills. MSEP provides bursaries for teachers in maths in addition to its educational research into various aspects of teachers’ practice. MSEP’s learner support in the five schools is limited, mainly focussed on extra-tuition. Staff of the SDU and the School of Education at UCT undertakes all the MSEP work. MSEP also provides support for learners from other schools in working class communities who have not traditionally gained access to the university, primarily through the Holiday School Programme (three four-day Mathematics and Science Holiday Schools for 500 learners held in April, July and September) – again, this intervention with learners is not a core project activity.
MSEPs project methodology is to research the impact of learning and teaching interventions aimed at teachers so as to grasp what works in schools and what doesn’t. Each project component has a different way of working, is reasonably independent from the other, sets its own detailed research agenda, and is led by a different team leader under the MSEP project manager.
The maths and science components (interventions also target English, Life Skills etc) adopted very different approaches:
“The maths component has chosen to the route of video-taped lessons to produce academic papers, with very little intervention with teachers…. [Maths] teachers were not interested in our initial solution which was based on what we saw going on going on in the classroom, and then working with teachers through seminars workshops weekend etc. What we found was that the teachers were not interested in coming. So we had to change strategy. MSEP provided bursaries for teachers to participate in programmes in the postgraduate diploma in education programme and ACE. We are luring them that way with 22 teachers participating in our ACE programmes that included a school management component, so that we can establish a common, co-ordinated approach with teachers/students involved in school management and evaluation, and leadership. “
Science component has adopted a different approach, they say let's try and understand why teachers are doing what they are doing? They create detailed case studies of teachers as their key instruments. They are looking for key informants: the idea is to get closer to the teachers in the classroom for extended periods of time, ask teachers what they want done.... In both scenario’s Master's students and our field workers work with the teachers.”
MSEP acknowledges the tension/paradox in its approach where it seeks to both understand what’s going on (observe) and find solutions (implement):
"The MSEP starting point was to avoid doing what schools want you to do, which is to help out with the kids rather than working with the teachers, and the knock-on effect on indicators. This is the major tension in the project."
"There is a tension between reacting to the short-term needs of the kids as opposed to the SDU's use of a long-term strategy. By going back to the classroom and committing ourselves to a lot of classroom-based support, we are realising the extent to which committing to change teacher performance you realise you are there for the long-haul. You have committed yourself.”
“We look for the larger view in schools. We can’t make a claim that we are contributing to increasing in learner performance at school since we can’t claim that it’s all due to us. We are contributing.”
What became apparent reasonably quickly was the fact that school contexts played a huge role in the extent to which teachers would participate in the project, and therefore on improving teaching outputs:
"The overall task that you want to understand is what teachers are doing in the classroom and ultimately impact on the performance"
“Our work with management teams and teachers in schools is helping schools understand that what their own limits are, in terms of their own preferences. The dynamics are very different in each school. Very careful documenting of these dynamics. Schools report very different circumstances.”
“The work of the teachers is still being tempered with the work of the SMT. Schools are gripped by an 'authority crisis'. Principals can sometimes not initiate anything and it is sometimes necessary rather to go through subject teams to get into the classrooms.”
Case studies are developed to be able to argue for the complexity of schooling and also explain the complexity of change, the difficulties of change, and of working at the school level:
“Through classroom observation -- in a good month we are able to get 150 class observations -- we are realising the complexity of classroom practice. We are developing very nuanced descriptions and interpretations of those factors impacting classroom practice in science and maths.”
"In one in four cases MSEP are successful. The issues start when it comes to the gritty thing of classroom observation. That’s why our classroom case studies are so exceptionally interesting, as they provide us with [an all too rare] reasoned account of working with schools."
“Very revealing, and unique case studies. Unprecedented data. I think we are going to have accounts of schooling which are quite unique in terms of richness and quality of the data and how we are able to describe these contexts in going is going to be unprecedented. I'm not aware of anything else in South Africa that is able to shine a light on schools and how they operate in South Africa in quite the same way other operations in Africa in quite the same way."
According to MSEP, the individual case studies “arethe main vehicle for developing more nuanced understandings of key elements of the complex dynamics play between ‘school, staff, students and self (i.e. the teacher)’ evident in each school. As such, it is anticipated that the project’s research findings will make a significant contribution to the literature.” Other project contributions apart from the research itself include various data gathering tools/methodologies.
Progress has been difficult: “MSEP achievements have been quite severely blunted by circumstances on the ground, despite using schools with levels of functionality that should have allowed us to work with the teachers and learners to bring about positive impact on student performance. On the ground, in these five majority black, African, Dinaledi-participating schools the challenges have been a lot greater than we thought initially.”
MSEP’s latest quarterly report (June 2011) notes: “As was the case during 2010, at three schools – Thandokhulu, Spine Road and Sophumelela, there has been in general satisfactory progress; whilst at the other two (Rhodes and Harry Gwala) the Project has experienced ongoing difficulties with respect to meeting its objectives”
Through the project MSEP has come to realise the uniquely difficult conditions prevailing in Western Cape schools which have been “completely underestimated”: “The Western Cape is particularly complex environment in education. Partly because of the perception that everything is hunky dory. There are also higher levels of unionisation here than in Gauteng. The lack of penetration in classrooms is as bad here as anywhere else.”
With its unique research-based approach, MSEP is emerging with the elements of a new innovative approach to teacher development in maths and science which is inclusive of whole school development:
"Unless you get alongside teachers in the classroom, you actually cannot really suggest you could have an impact in practice. Teachers are rhetorical about their practice as soon as they close their classroom doors. When they are off-site, at workshops, however well done by expert practitioners if you don’t get this access how do you know what they are translating any different practice into their classrooms? The number of teachers willing to let you alongside them is a modest number. You've need to show how they have made positive shifts and gains in teaching differently to other colleagues who haven't. This is opposed to the top-down approach for example in Dinaledi where often only the principal drives the programme and is on board. The problem is when you try to engage with teachers, everything is very different on the ground. School-based work is the hardest to try to do. It's easy to run off-site workshops and do after school activities. It's when you want to really get at the rub of the problem, which is to change the nature of teaching and then the real issue, changing the nature of learning. But you can't get to the learning except through the teacher, if you can't get to the teachers unless you get through the doors.
The project has faced many challenges including:
"One of the single biggest challenges faced by school-based projects such as MSEP is the difficulty of obtaining buy-in from teachers.”
“The extent to which meaningful and lasting changes can be affected in a relatively short time frame needs to be carefully considered. There is a real danger of underestimating the constraints at play.”
“Dinaledi is all smoke and mirrors – school’s participate to obtain funding and the extra posts but don’t change their practice so other criteria are needed in choosing which schools to work with in improving maths and science”
"Not one of the MSEP teachers translates or sees the need to translate the need for teaching into learning by students.”
"District officials are critical to the project impact."
“The role of language in maths and science teaching and learning is critical but progress is dependent on the willingness of teachers to open up their classroom practice.”
“There continues to be a relatively low level of participation in project activities at two schools [of the five]. The reasons for this are various and specific to each school but include [in the first instance] a broad failure of management to maintain appropriate levels of organisational coherence [which] has made it very difficult for project staff to gain any significant purchase at the school. [In the second instance] “the principal continues to play a somewhat negative ‘gate-keeping’ role”]
Useful repeating in full MSEP’s reflexion on the project aims in respect of the challenges to be overcome:
“A central aim of the project is to bring about constructive shifts in teachers’ pedagogic practices to ensure that more productive teaching and learning takes place. However, in our school-based work we are continually reminded of the extent to which in so many of the classes we observe, the focus seems firmly fixed on teaching as opposed to students’ and their learning. Further evidence for this lays in the fact that assessment, formal or otherwise, rarely extends beyond the minimum curriculum requirements (which are in any event quite modest in most subjects).
From our observations of teachers, we have come to appreciate the extent to which many of their habituated practices are firmly entrenched, and reinforced (perhaps quite unintentionally) by the regulatory regimes in the broader school environment which demand little more than a narrow compliance with curriculum requirements. Schools are characterised by quite weak accountability structures, which in effect leave many teachers not having to answer for their actions. When coupled with underlying shortfalls many teachers content, pedagogic and classroom management skills, then what goes on in classrooms seems quite limited indeed.
Be that as it may, two and a half years into the project there are some encouraging signs starting to emerge of where individual teachers are able, with support, to broaden their repertoire of productive practices.”
Collaboration and co-operation/partnerships with other SEEDS members on project activities has been limited. MSEP presented to a SEEDS Research Forum. MSEP and IMSTUS’s science teams met to strategise. MSEP and EMEP met to discuss possible collaboration. MSEP shared research capacity with SAILI whose students also participated in MSEP’s Winter School Programme but MSEP does not view this as an example of a planned SEEDS collaboration: "The kind of cooperation that does happen is completely spontaneous.”
MSEP reasons that lack of collaboration with other SEEDS parties can partly be attributed to the nature of MSEP’s project:
"Our project is very much academic in orientation and very different to something being run for example by GOLD. There is a big difference.”
For MSEP, additional reasons for the absence of project collaboration and co-operation include:
"The Consortium was formed to get the money…. We could have done things more coherently from the beginning. The problem was that this was sprung this on us. It wasn't set up this way. Working together was a post-hoc imposition.”
“SEEDS was not a carefully crafted strategy that has as its goals a particular set of outcomes”
“Look at diversity of organisations, even if you explicitly tried to put them together, how would you? Many of the organisations are service providers, and when they work together, this is not an example of collaboration, but the provision of a service.”
“Members have widely diverging interests and expertise…”
"Misunderstanding of partners' motives is rife"
“There's been a failure of collective leadership – from the partners not [the project manager].
“We need some incentives to work together, to enforce working together."
