Quality of Teaching and Learning Mathematics in South Africa

Quality of Teaching and Learning Mathematics in South Africa

Introduction

In spite of providing the basic education to the population of South Africa, it is still a dream to provide an effective and potential access of education to its citizens. There are many factors that are hindering in creating the better environment of teaching and learning. The situation of declining literacy and numeracy in South Africa need to be addressed in urgency. At present, South Africa stands at the eighth position in literacy where as it is at ninth position in numeracy (SACMEQ, 2010). The report proposed by SACMEQ proposed that the basic obstruction in providing the learning and teaching of mathematics is the lack of qualified teachers among the people of South Africa.

CREATE (“Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equality”) carried out one study regarding learning and teaching of mathematics in grades 5 and 7. It highlighted the deprived excellence of learning in numerical competence. In 2009, CREATE took the mathematical test of grade 4 from the 487 students of grade 5 and mathematical test of grade 6 from the 662 students of grade 7. The test was carried out in 12 secondary and primary schools situated in Ekurhuleni and Dutya districts. The overall result concluded the severe deficit in intensities of mathematical ability. The tables below demonstrate the scores obtained by the learners in five tests. (Source: Pereira and Du Toit, forthcoming)

Factors of Poor Quality of Learning and Teaching

Although, the South Africa got success in the provision of education in almost all parts of the South Africa, but the access is not sufficient and useless. The following factors are the basic reasons of this poor quality education in South Africa.

Dreary teaching

Lack of appraisal

Fundamental coverage of subject Learner nutrition

English proficiency Education of parents

Dreary Teaching

It was observed that most of the teachers depended on the practice of a rudimentary structure to which maximum class lessons appeared to imitate. Mostly the teacher used to talk, the students answered to the mathematical problem questions in the chorus line to end with an exercise of practicing questions. Teacher assigns the exercise comprise of questions limited to easy sentences. Moreover, teachers do not enhance the habit of copying regularly as a tactic to evade teaching. There is an example of Grade 4 in which the teacher of mathematics rebuked students who were not learning and directed them to copy down corrections from the board, and then left the classroom.

In some schools, teachers could not get time to teach due to workshops and meetings that usually scheduled at the time of classes. Therefore, mostly there is no teaching for a long period time. Researchers and investigators also reached at the same time when teachers are busy outside the classes. One more factor is the large number of students in a single class. Teacher alone is not able to concentrate on each learner. That is why, learner ...