Mathematical literacy in the curriculum of rural schools as part of educational transformation: some challenges

Abstract

All over the world education is used as a yardstick to allocate people to various careers, in all sectors of the economy, and also to forge national unity. Unfortunately, this was not the case in South Africa before 1994. Education prior to that time was a privilege for the few and used by the white minority government to divide the nation. Under apartheid, the aim of education was to forge white superiority, making white the boss and putting the black in bondage. Black schools were poorly resourced and financed. The curriculum was also poor. Science and mathematics were not taught in many rural black schools. The consequence has been a lack of access to better careers by blacks because of inferior education. The provision of inferior education has been a major cause of the high unemployment among black South Africans today. To achieve equal opportunities in an era of democracy, educational transformation became imperative after political freedom. This paper discusses how the curriculum of rural schools was transformed by including mathematical literacy and some of the challenges that emerged as a result of it.

Introduction

The aim of education is to equip people, mostly the youth, of a country with the relevant knowledge and skills that may enable them to actively participate in nation-building. For an education system to be able to achieve this aim, it must have a curriculum which is responsive to the needs of both the community and the learners. A curriculum is a planned teaching and learning activity for which an educational institution is responsible. It covers all what a particular community or country deems it necessary to be taught to learners by educational institutions (Quan-Baffour, 2001: 3-4). In other words it is the distilled thinking of society on what it wants to achieve through education. A curriculum tends to mirror society itself, reflecting its aims, values and priorities (Farrant, 1988:24).

All over the world education is seen as the yardstick used in assigning community members or citizens to careers in all aspects of the economy. To provide all citizens with the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills fully, the curriculum should be the same for all schools, no matter their background or race. In South Africa before 1994, this was not the case. Under the apartheid government, education had a very narrow political agenda. It was designed to entrench white superiority. That is, it made the white the boss and put the black in bondage. The curriculum of black schools was different from that of whites. There were few subjects in the school curriculum. Subjects like mathematics, science, accounting, economics and indeed any subject that could equip learners with relevant knowledge and skills for employment in the modern world, were not taught in black schools. With an inferior curriculum, poorly resourced schools and under-qualified teachers black school leavers were indeed ‘sentenced’ to be the labourers of the white minority (Christine & Collins , 1984:160). The legacy of apartheid education policies is a lack of access to better careers by blacks in the new South Africa. The high unemployment rate and its concomitant poverty and crime among blacks can be partly blamed on the inferior education provided for them.

To provide equal opportunities in an era of democracy, educational transformation became imperative after political freedom in 1994. Education, and for that matter curriculum transformation, is being done to achieve the ideals of democracy (to provide equal opportunity to all citizens) and also to provide each South African child with knowledge and skills they may need to fit into the world of science and technology and the demands of national imperatives and globalisation. Since 1994, South Africa has undergone a drastic political and socio-economic transformation and the school curriculum must reflect these changes, ideals and values of the new dispensation. The introduction of mathematics literacy into the school curriculum relates to access to quality education for all South Africans. Vambe (2005:1) is more than apt in his assertion that a society such as South Africa, which is emerging from racialised access to education, can benefit minimally if its educational reform concentrates on access at the expense of a critical enquiry of the values underpinning the educational system. Thus, all subjects have to be available to all learners of every race, class and gender, depending on their different competencies or abilities. This paper discusses the experiences of the writers regarding how the curriculum of rural schools was transformed by including in it mathematical literacy.

Mathematical literacy: its nature and justification

Mathematical literacy is a slippery concept, and the subject of a lively debate in Australia, England and the United States. The idea that mathematics literacy is mainly concerned with mathematics used in context is fundamental to all the definitions of mathematical literacy, whether it is seen as a ‘social practice’ form of literacy, a critical approach or a behaviour. Mathematical literacy is to do with using mathematics in context and that to be numerate is to have the capacity to use mathematics effectively in context mathematics focuses on climbing the ladder of abstraction, while mathematics literacy clings to context. While mathematics is a general principle that can be applied in a range of contexts, mathematics literacy is about seeing every context through quantitative lens (Bowie & Frith, 2006:29- 30). Mathematics literacy is a subject driven by life-related applications of mathematics. It enables learners to think numerically and spatially in order to interpret and critically analyse everyday situations and to solve problems (Department of Education, 2003: 9). Indeed, some amount of mathematics is very crucial in the day-to-day operations of tools with which people work in the contemporary modern world. Evans (2000: 236), for instance, defines numeracy as a social practice; the ability to process, interpret and communicate numerical, quantitative, spatial, statistical, even mathematical information in ways that are appropriate for a variety of contexts and that will enable a typical member of the culture to participate effectively in activities that they value. Thus said, to deny today’s children the opportunity to study basic mathematics is tantamount to denying them opportunities for work in future. The history of education in South Africa indicates that blacks were provided with inferior education. During the previous political dispensation, very few peri-urban black schools made an attempt to include mathematics in the school curriculum. Even in such schools, mathematics was not compulsory and the handful of students who chose to study it hardly passed because the schools did not have resources and qualified teachers to teach it. The situation denied black students, especially, those in rural schools, the opportunities for better school subjects and, for that matter, better careers. This has been one of the reasons for lack of skills for employment among many black South Africans. Mathematics literacy was introduced into the school curriculum to break the myth that rural learners cannot do mathematics, and to enable parents, educators and learners to see mathematics as an important part of the modern world of work, communication and life as a whole. The subject has the potential to provide learners, who were previously denied the opportunity to do mathematics, to learn skills that are crucial to their participation in socio- economic life of the modern society.

One of the tenets and ideals of democracy is the right to education. In democracy, there must be equal opportunity for all citizens. All school children from constitutional point of view must be given an equal chance to study any subjects according to their abilities and not their race or background. Mathematics literacy would provide students with an awareness and understanding of the role that mathematics plays in the modern world.

The inclusion of mathematical literacy as a fundamental learning area in the school (primary and secondary) curriculum will ensure that students acquire numerical skills to enable them live and work in today’s world. The teaching and learning of mathematical literacy will provide students with the opportunities to engage with real life problems in different contexts. It will also help them to consolidate and practice their basic mathematical skills.

Training mathematical literacy teachers

The teaching of mathematics literacy in schools should naturally be the task of substantive or existing mathematics teachers in each school. This, however, has not been possible in many of the rural schools due to the paucity of mathematics teachers in the education system and in rural schools in particular. To get teachers for this new learning area, the department appealed to existing teachers teaching non-mathematical subjects to consider new careers in mathematics literacy. This motivated some of the teachers, who suspected that, with the emphasis on new learning areas, they could soon become redundant, to opt to teach mathematics literacy. Most of the teachers who opted to teach mathematics literacy also received their education under the apartheid regime and have not done mathematics at school. A few of them might have done mathematics up to the primary or junior secondary levels. This necessitated a serious retraining of the selected teachers. The department of education organised some short courses for them. The inservice training, in the form of face-to-face teaching sessions by subject specialists, took place during school holidays. The trainers were drawn from district and regional offices of the department to empower the ‘new’ mathematics literacy teachers with the knowledge and skills to teach the subject at their respective schools. At the school level, the principal and the governing bodies requested substantive mathematics teachers to support and mentor the ‘new’ teachers. This ad hoc training of mathematics literacy teachers might have its own problems, too.

Some immediate challenges in introducing mathematical literacy into the rural school curriculum

The first batch of the so-called ‘newly’ trained mathematical literacy teachers started teaching the subject at the beginning of 2006 school year. By then, it was obvious that most of them were not practically and psychologically ready to teach the subject effectively. The training was very short (for example, five to seven days per school holidays) was not enough to equip teachers with the knowledge and the pedagogical skills to teach the subject so that any meaningful learning could occur. It is very unlikely that teachers who are studying mathematics for the first time could master both the content and the new teaching methods within a very short space of time. Indeed, the rapidity with which the subject was introduced created many challenges

Most of the rural schools did not have single mathematics teachers because, prior to the introduction of mathematics literacy, mathematics was not in the curriculum. Many of the rural schools are several kilometres apart and the subject specialists are not readily available for consultation on a regular basis. It was equally difficult for ‘newly’ trained mathematics literacy teachers to obtain support and mentorship in schools where there are no substantive and experienced mathematics teachers. The quality of teaching mathematics literacy could therefore be compromised.

Schools in rural areas are poorly resourced. Teaching and learning materials are either inadequate or do not exist. This situation could frustrate and demotivate both teachers and learners. When mathematics literacy was introduced to the schools, basic equipment, such as mathematical instruments, compasses, graph books and calculators, were not supplied to the schools. For a new learning area, a lack of motivation resulting from lack of resources for teaching and learning, could be a recipe for disaster.

Most of the learners in rural schools come from non-literate homes and so lack the culture of reading. They have difficulty in reading and comprehending information written in English (their second or third language). In addition to this, teachers may be overloaded in most schools, in view of the fact that every learner in every school is studying either mathematics or mathematical literacy. The increase in the number of learners does not correspond with the number of teachers and teachers may experience burn-out as a result of too many teaching periods and their concomitant administrative tasks.

Conclusion

This paper has discussed the rationale and importance of introducing mathematical literacy into the South African school curriculum. The discussion has made it clear that the introduction of the new subject is part of the broader transformation agenda to redress some of the injustices in the past. Although there are many challenges in its implementation, the department of education should listen address teachers’ problems by providing them with the necessary support, training and teaching materials, in order to make the teaching of mathematics literacy a success. Bowie and Frith (2006:29) add that, as we implement the mathematics literacy curriculum and identify the difficulties we face, we need to engage with constructive criticism of the curriculum, so as to improve it and make it more likely to achieve the goals for which it was introduced.

References

Bowie, L & Frith, V (2006). ‘Concerns about the South African mathematics literacy curriculum arising from experience of materials development’. In Pythagoras (64)pp29-36.
Christie, P & Collins, C (1984). Bantu education: apartheid ideology and labour reproduction in apartheid and education; the education of black South Africans. Edited by P Kallaway. Johannesburg: Raven Press.
Department of Education, South Africa (2003). ‘National Curriculum Statement Grades 10-12 (General) Subject Assessment Guidelines’ In Mathematical Literacy. Pretoria .Government Printers.
Evans, J (2000). Adults’ mathematical thinking and emotions: a study of numerate practices. London. Routledge / Falmer, Taylor & Francis.
Farrant, JS (1988). Principles and practice of education. Singapore, Longman publishers.
Quan-Baffour, KP (2001). ‘A model for the evaluation of ABET programmes’. Doctorate of Education thesis. Pretoria. University of South Africa.
Vambe, MT (2005). ‘Opening and transforming South African education’ In Open Learning Journal Volume (20), no. 3 pp1-8.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr Kofi Poku Quan-Baffour is a teacher and adult educator, a development practitioner and a curriculum designer. He has taught in many schools, colleges and universities in Ghana, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa. He regards teaching, research and writing as his turf. Until this year, Dr Quan-Baffour worked as an education consultant for the Institute of Curriculum and Learning Development. He is now a senior lecturer at the Institute for Adult Basic Education and Training. Dr Quan-Baffour coordinates the B.Ed honours programme at the institute. He lectures Development Studies for Education and Training (ETD) practitioners, in a course that covers small business development and management and tourism issues. Kofi, as he is affectionately called, has published over 12 articles in international peer reviewed journals in his field. He has a passion for learner support, curriculum issues and education for development and believes in development through education. Dr Quan-Baffour has a doctorate in education and three masters degrees in adult/distance education, development studies and education management. He is a Christian who is married with three children.

Mr James Owusu-Mensah is a teacher by profession. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and an MBA in business studies. He is currently completing an M.Ed degree in mathematics education at the University of South Africa. Mr Owusu-Mensah teaches mathematics and mathematics literacy in a rural community. He has taught this subject for the past 19 years in Ghana, Lesotho and South Africa. He is currently the head of department of mathematics at Bogosing Secondary School. He is married with three children.

 

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