Minority Languages’ exclusion in the Lesotho School Curriculum: Perceptions of Teachers and Learners

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Maboleba Kolobe ◽  
Lifelile Matsoso
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Learning Practices ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

The study sought to know why learners from linguistically disadvantaged backgrounds have low educational morale. A constructivist study  was adopted through the use of focus group discussions with 246 learners and 142 teachers in 23 schools located in Botha Bothe, Mohale’s Hoek, Qacha’s Nek and Quthing districts in Lesotho. The findings revealed minimal if not absolute nonrecognition of minority languages in the teaching and learning of learners from these linguistic backgrounds. Therefore, the study concludes that linguistically exclusive  curriculum, and teaching and learning practices can reasonably be associated with poor performance of learners. Based on these findings, the paper recommends that Lesotho’s education system recognise the existence of national minority languages. In other words, the  curriculum, its implementation and assessment of learners should not be divorced from the linguistic background of learners.

Effects of Language Status on Assessment and Educational Development of Basotho Learners from Minority Languages’ Backgrounds

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maboleba Agnes Kolobe ◽  
Lifelile Matsoso
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Educational Development ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

This paper provides a critical overview of the theoretical and practical questions that prevail in the teaching, learning, and assessment of learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds in Lesotho.  It investigates how far exclusion of minority languages affects both assessment and/or educational development of learners whose mother tongue is not Sesotho but other minority languages spoken in Lesotho. The paper advances a research-evidenced argument that the poor performance of students from such backgrounds is indicative of marginalisation and discrimination of such learners due to their language background. A constructivist qualitative study was adopted through use of focus group discussions with 246 learners and 142 teachers in 23 schools located in Botha Bothe, Mohale’s Hoek, Qacha’s Nek and Quthing districts in Lesotho. These places were selected based on their predominance of minority languages. The findings revealed diminutive if not absolute non-recognition of minority languages in teaching, learning, and assessment of learners from this linguistic background. Therefore, the study concludes that linguistically discriminative curriculum, teaching and learning and assessment educational practices can reasonably be associated with   poor performance of learners. Based on these findings, the paper recommends that Lesotho’s education system should respect and embrace existence of national minority languages. Again, the curriculum, its implementation and more importantly assessment should not be divorced from linguistic background of learners.

scholarly journals Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices, and Beliefs of Lebanese and Palestinian School Children in Lebanon

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanin Fuddah ◽  
Samar Zeitoun
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
School Children ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Health Knowledge ◽  
Health Belief ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Reciprocal Effect ◽  
Mortality And Morbidity

The indicators for health risk factors among school children in Lebanon associated with increased mortality and morbidity were higher than the global percentage based on WHO (2014) statistics. Knowing that the Ministry of Education in Lebanon has been trying to include health education in the national school curriculum since the last reform in 1997, this qualitative exploratory study analyzed the students’ arguments resulting from focus group discussions to identify their level of knowledge, attitudes and perceptions and to provide suggestions for improving the national textbooks and teaching practices. Data were collected through focus group discussions with grade 5 students in 2 schools: Lebanese public school and UNRWA Palestinian School. The content analysis technique was used to perform the analysis and interpretation of data. Data was coded based on criteria from the Rational Model as well as the Health Belief Model. The study found, among other things, that students in both schools acquired the knowledge present in the textbooks about the benefits of balanced nutrition but they gave inaccurate and incomplete justifications with no scientific reasoning. Regarding attitudes, they show negative attitudes toward prefer unhealthy food over healthy ones. Some of their practices were healthy but unhealthy snacks, skipping breakfast, drinking big amounts of soft drinks were prevalent. The arguments of the students in both schools also showed some social related practices as related to the opinions, behavior, advice, and support of the people surrounding students influence their feelings and behavior, and the students have a reciprocal effect on those people.

scholarly journals Educating Progressed Learners in Times of COVID-19: How Can Bricolage Help?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Bekithemba Dube ◽  
Xolisile P. Ndaba
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Attitudes Towards Science ◽  
Thematic Approach

This paper discusses using bricolage to mitigate the struggles faced by progressed learners in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Most progressed learners perform poorly in many subjects, especially sciences. Their struggle has stimulated the need to find ways to enhance their performance. Reinvented artefacts and processes can be used for emancipation, and to transform agendas for improving the performance of progressed learners. To collect data, we used participatory action research, which uses a thematic approach to make meaning of data. We created a WhatsApp group to enable focus group discussions for collecting data, to circumvent COVID-19 restrictions. The group had 14 members, among whom teachers and learners from rural schools. The study found that the factors that contributed to poor performance were a lack of teaching and learning materials, too few teachers, less than optimal teaching methods and learners’ attitudes towards science subjects. The main argument of the article is that, in this time characterised by the COVID-19 pandemic, embracing bricolage has the impetus to mitigate challenges relating to the education of progressed learners. Thus, it is important to emancipate teachers, so that they can bricolise the environment for teaching and learning.

scholarly journals Online conferencing for focus group discussions with teenage girls

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-293
Author(s):  
Roberta Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Remote Access ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Spontaneous Interaction

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of online conferencing platforms for focus group discussions with teenage girls. Design/methodology/approach The paper discusses the use of online conferencing for focus group discussions with Australian teenage girls aged 12–14 years who were participating in a study about their online interaction with friends. It examines both the practical application of online conferencing as a qualitative method as well as the inherent challenges of this context for youth research. Design decisions are explained and methods for ensuring rich contribution are detailed. Findings Online conferencing offers three distinct advantages for focus group work. First, the environment consciously engages participants in spontaneous interaction with other participants by using communication tools familiar to them. Second, elaborated discussion can be stimulated by introducing ideas and trends through visual mediums and artefacts. Third, the virtual setting provides remote access by the researcher which shifts power relationships so discussions flow more naturally between participants. Practical implications Outcomes indicate that online conferencing is an effective method for encouraging participants to share ideas and experiences about aspects of their lives that are often private and/or sensitive. Originality/value Technological advances in online collaboration tools have resulted in an increased use of online conferencing platforms across disciplines especially for teaching and learning contexts. However, application of online conferencing for focus group discussions with young people has not received much attention. Research presented here demonstrates that it is a useful tool for engaging teenage girls in focus group discussions.

scholarly journals “Moments That Glow”: WhatsApp as a Decolonising Tool in EFAL Poetry Teaching and Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Naidu ◽  
Denise Newfield
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Text Message ◽  
After School ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Creative Space ◽  
English Classroom

This article, based on a research project with learners in a township school in South Africa, seeks to discuss whether WhatsApp was able to transform the space of the poetry classroom in positive and productive ways. The project was designed in response to research in EFAL (English First Additional Language) classrooms that revealed the marginalisation of poetry as a component in the English classroom, a lack of enthusiasm for it on the part of teachers, and a lack of engagement and energy on the part of learners—all of whom seemed to find poetry remote, irrelevant, unengaging and difficult. The shift to a WhatsApp chatroom, after school hours and outside the classroom, revealed encouraging results. The article seeks to explore the transformative effects of that move, how the chatroom gave learners a creative space in which to express themselves, to speak with their own voice, in their own tongue and to take control of their learning—which seem to us to be decolonising effects. We use Maggie MacLure’s idea of selecting “moments that glow” from the text message conversations and the subsequent focus group discussions and questionnaires to show moments of pedagogic decolonisation.  

Drivers and Barriers to the Uptake of Learning Technologies

2011 ◽  
pp. 125-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Davies ◽  
Kelly Smith
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Education Institution ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
Learning Technology ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions

This chapter discusses key findings from three focus group discussions held with practitioners in a higher education institution about their experiences of using learning technologies to support student learning. Focus groups were organised in March 2004 to further explore staff responses to a 2003 campus-wide survey, which gave a general overview of learning technology use among teaching staff. The chapter will examine the key issues that staff raised during the focus group discussions, including the barriers to and implications of introducing and implementing learning technologies into different subject disciplines within a research-led institution. The question of whether or not the use of learning technologies enhances, or has the potential to enhance, the teaching and learning experience is also discussed, as well as the lessons that staff have learnt from this use.

scholarly journals Research-based language learning through framing analysis as an effort to change the culture of learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 202 ◽  
pp. 07066
Author(s):  
Suharyo
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Framing Analysis ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Culture Of Learning ◽  
The Media

This research aims to change the culture of listening to a culture of communication/speaking in teaching and learning activities in the classroom because so far, students tend to be passive and lectures go in one way. Besides that, lectures are intended so that students can think and speak critically. For that, a number of models of learning that allows students to think and communicate critically are applied. In addition to that, learning a research-based language is also applied in the lecture. In this study, the analysis of Pan Kosicki's framing model was taken as its approach. The methods are (1) the application of a number of models of learning (discovery, inquiry, focus group discussions, and problem-based) on the learning activities and (2) take the coverage of the contestation of Jokowi and Prabowo which are published in the media viva.com and tribunes.com as examples of research cases. The results are (1) has occurred a change of culture, namely from culture to listening into culture of communication, (2) a method of learning discovery and inquiry as well as FGD are models of learning which are considered effective, (4) there are a number of students who wrote the thesis by using analysis of framing, and (5) the media tend to be less objective in reporting.

scholarly journals FEEDBACK

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (01) ◽  
pp. 156-164
Author(s):  
Naheed Mahsood ◽  
Brekhna Jamil ◽  
Usman Mehboob ◽  
Zeeshan Kibria ◽  
Kashif Ur Rehman Khalil
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Time Constraints ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Feedback Model ◽  
Timely Feedback ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Academic Workload

Objectives: To explore perception of Khyber Medical University teachersregarding challenges in provision of timely feedback to students. Setting: Khyber MedicalUniversity, Peshawar. Period: March 2016 to September 2016. Methods: A qualitative multiplecase study in which seven focus group discussions with seven constituent institutes of KhyberMedical University have been conducted, each institute is taken as one case, selected throughpurposive maximum variation sampling technique. Each FGD was audio-recorded, transcribedverbatim, analyzed and themes were identified. Results: Total forty faculty members participatedin seven focus group discussions. Three themes that emerged were ”institutionalization offeedback” indicating need of establishing a feedback culture so that it is taken as a norm bothby teachers and students; “Lapses in feedback priority” indicating teachers don’t give priorityto feedback due time constraints, work overload, lack of training and resource deficiencies:“establishing manageable model of feedback at organizational/institutional level” indicatinga need for developing a feasible feedback model compatible to university contextual needsinstead of implementing any ideal feedback model. Conclusion: The concept of providing andreceiving feedback is deficient and its significance with respect to teaching and learning islacking. Contextual academic workload and time constraints may impact the quality and timingof feedback provided. There is need of collaborations between university administration andfaculty so that feedback can be utilized effectively in the learning process.

Dari Idealisme ke Pragmatisme: Pergeseran Paradigma dalam Pengembangan Hukum Ekonomi Syariah di Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Addiarrahman Addiarrahman ◽  
Illy Yanti
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Business World ◽  
Key Informants ◽  
The Public ◽  
Financial Products ◽  
Legal Consideration ◽  
Economic Law ◽  
Islamic Economic

This study seeks to understand the pragmatism of the development of sharia economic law, and its implications for Islamic financial products in Indonesia. The data comes from the results of interviews and focus group discussions with key informants from academics, practitioners, authorities, and the public. This research finds that pragmatism in the development of Islamic economic law is an approach that still dominates the DSN-MUI fatwas. The pragmatism style used is complex-eclectic pragmatism which is represented through makhārij al-fiqhiyyah, which is to choose a mild opinion by sticking to the strongest method or also called "taysīr al-manhajī". The use of this method is intended to ensure that the fatwa is truly able to answer the needs of the business world, as well as being in line with sharia principles. DSN-MUI also does not use maslahah as a legal consideration in a free or liberal way. Rather, it returns maslahah in consideration of the method, so that it is permissible to use the bay’ al-'inān contract only in a forced state (ḍarurah).

scholarly journals “Stages of change, smoking behavior and acceptability of a textmessaging intervention for tobacco cessation among cigarette, dokha and shishasmokers: A qualitative research study.”

BMJ Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. e029144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusra Elhidaia Elobaid ◽  
Andrea Leinberger Jabari ◽  
Aisha Al Hamiz ◽  
Abdul Rizzak Al Kaddour ◽  
Sherif Bakir ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Smoking Cessation ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Text Messaging ◽  
Tobacco Cessation ◽  
Text Messages ◽  
Controlled Study ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions

ObjectivesTo explore: (A) the underlying motivators and barriers to smoking cessation among young Arabic speaking smokers and (B) to examine the suitability and preferences for tobacco cessation interventions (specifically text messages) and study the possibility of enrollment methods for a randomised controlled study using text messages as an intervention for tobacco cessation.DesignQualitative research using focus group discussions and content analysis.Setting(s)Two universities, one of them is the first and foremost comprehensive national university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The third setting is the largest hospital in the UAE and the flagship institution for the public health system in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.ParticipantsSix focus group discussions with a total of 57 participants. Forty-seven men and 10 women. Fifty-three of them were current smokers.ResultsThe analysis of six focus groups was carried out. Main themes arose from the data included: preferences for tobacco cessation interventions and acceptability and feasibility of text messaging as tobacco cessation intervention. Different motives and barriers for quitting smoking including shisha and dokha were explored.ConclusionInterventions using text messaging for smoking cessation have not been used in the Middle East and they could potentially be effective; however, tailoring and closely examining the content and acceptability of text messages to be used is important before the conduction of trials involving their use. Social media is perceived to be more effective and influential, with a higher level of penetration into communities of young smokers.

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