Analyse the Issues and Challenges in Teaching Writing Among English Teachers

Teaching one of the productive skills of the English language, writing, involves developing students' linguistic competence, which many E.S.L. teachers find difficult. The study's main goal is to examine the challenges faced by E.S.L. teachers in teaching writing skills to students in university classrooms. This study aims to identify problems faced by teachers of Arts Colleges in Universities. The researcher used questionnaires to survey teachers' concerns about teaching writing skills. The researcher used a descriptive method to report the problems encountered by the sampled teachers in teaching writing skills. The survey had 12 questions. This study's findings not only revealed the problematic factors but also suggested some practical solutions. This study's findings and recommendations may help teachers reflect on their teaching practices and assist authorities in supporting teachers' efforts to improve student writing skills.

Exploring Primary School Principals’ Experiences in Supporting Teachers Living with HIV/AIDS in Gauteng Province

The study highlighted the exploration and description of the primary school principals’ experiences in supporting teachers living with HIV/AIDS in Gauteng Province, South Africa. As a result of qualitative research method through literature review and interviews which were used in collecting data from the primary school participants, the results revealed that at primary level, school principals still lack the experiences in as far as supporting their teachers living with HIV/AIDS in Gauteng province is concerned. Received: 7 October 2021 / Accepted: 25 November 2021 / Published: 5 January 2022

Multilingual Writing in Digital World

This chapter examines teachers' practices and strategies while using digital tools for writing. The chapter argues that when teachers use digital writing, they need to change their teaching strategies in order to ease their students' writing tasks. It also highlights the purposes of integrating digital tools for the writing classes and the challenges they face while adapting digital writing. The data are collected from teachers who work at schools, colleges, and universities, through a survey generated by Google forms. The findings show that integrating suitable digital tools requires mastering the use of technologies by supporting teachers' digital literacy skills before integrating them into classes to overcome any emerging challenges. This is to reinforce students to improve their writing levels. The chapter suggests more extended studies to examine students' attitudes and experiences with using digital tools and the impact of coronavirus pandemic on education.

Analyse and challenges of teaching writing among the English teachers

Teaching is a one of the productive skills in the English language writing, involves developing students' linguistic competence, which many ESL teachers find difficulties. The study's main goal is to examine the challenges faced by ESL teachers in teaching writing skills to students in university classrooms. This study aims to identify problems faced by teachers of Arts faculty in the Universities level. The researcher used questionnaires to survey teachers' concerns about teaching writing skills. The researcher used a descriptive method to report the problems encountered by the sampled teachers in teaching writing skills. The survey had 12 questions. This study's findings not only revealed the problematic factors but also suggested some practical solutions. This study's findings and recommendations may help teachers reflect on their teaching practices and assist authorities in supporting teachers' efforts to improve student writing skills.

Designing for Framing in Online Teacher Education: Supporting Teachers’ Attending to Student Thinking in Video Discussions of Classroom Engineering

Participating in discussions of classroom video can support teachers to attend to student thinking. Central to the success of these discussions is how teachers interpret the activity they are engaged in—how teachers frame what they are doing. In asynchronous online environments, negotiating framing poses challenges, given that interactions are not in real time and often require written text. We present findings from an online course designed to support teachers to frame video discussions as making sense of student thinking. In an engineering pedagogy course designed to emphasize responsiveness to students’ thinking, we documented shifts in teachers’ framing, with teachers more frequently making sense of, rather than evaluating, student thinking later in the course. These findings show that it is possible to design an asynchronous online course to productively engage teachers in video discussions and inform theory development in online teacher education.

Re-thinking teachers’ body awareness to support well-being and resilience practices during COVID-19

In this paper, the concept of body awareness is introduced in view of supporting teachers’ well-being and resilience practices, with a focus on COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers experience high rates of stress and pressure to cope with current working conditions due to COVID-19 pandemic. Depression and anxiety related to teachers’ duties have been largely researched worldwide. Research is being done around well-being from different perspectives, mental health, emotional and spiritual well-being, among other research done. However, little research has been done associated with body experiences and awareness from a holistic dimension that focuses on developing well-being and resilience practices; a state of mind and body that goes beyond acquiring physical skills to develop better physical condition. Thus far, despite relevant reviews and works have been published in relation to well-being and resilience practices in education, there is a need to explore the body experience to support teachers’ challenges during COVID-19 pandemic. For doing so, this work aims to review literature on the concept of well-being to elaborate, first, on the importance of supporting teachers’ well-being during COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we elaborate on the concept of body awareness in education. Third, we briefly explore the concept of resilience in relation to teachers’ well-being. Last, we raise some critical remarks about body experiences in education post COVID-19, and the need of re-thinking well-being and resilience practices in the school community to face with uncertainty.

Exploring indiginising the university’s science curriculum through bottom-up decolonisation : Affordances and hindrances

The integration of indigenous knowledge (IK) in the science curriculum is a spreading phenomenon driven by the need to bring about relevancy and equality in science education. In South Africa, for instance, the need to integrate IK in science education is part of the global effort to build a democratic state from the debris of apartheid. Henceforth, the integration of IK is backed up by both the National Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996) and the South African Department of Basic Education’s (2011) National Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement. However, the success of this policy seems to be hindered in part by the fact that the teachers who are the implementers of the curriculum changes seem to lack the relevant pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to integrate IK in their science teaching repertoires. Such a trend is often blamed on their Eurocentric educational background. Interestingly, very little research has been done to explore ways of supporting teachers to develop the relevant conceptual tools and teaching strategies that will enable them to integrate IK in science teaching. It is against this background that an interventionist case study on how to support the Bachelor of Education Natural Sciences in-service teachers in particular to develop exemplar science lessons that integrate IK as easily accessible resources was conducted. The study is underpinned by three complementary paradigms, namely, the interpretive, the critical, and indigenous research paradigms. While the interpretive paradigm enabled me to understand and interpret descriptive data, the critical paradigm enabled me to take an emancipatory stance and challenge the micro-aggressive elements embedded in conventional research practices; within the indigenous research paradigm, Ubuntu was the relational perspective that informed the researcher-participant relationships in this study. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory was used as an overarching theoretical framework, in conjunction with the cultural historical activity theory. Additionally, the topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge provided the methodological and analytical tools. Data were gathered through questionnaires, individual face-to-face interviews, focus group interview, participatory observation, and the teachers’ reflections. This study established that if teachers are given back the agency to collaboratively resolve the contradictions that confront them in their workplaces, they can generate their own ideas on how to integrate IK in science vii teaching. The teachers in this study experienced a shift in their agency from a paralysed state of resisting the integration of IK at the beginning of the intervention to an ‘I can do it’ attitude at the end of the intervention. Thus, it could be argued that this study’s major contribution to new knowledge lies in demonstrating possible ways of supporting teachers to integrate IK as easily accessible resources in their science teaching. Additionally, the study also challenged the Eurocentric approach to ethics and offered Ubuntu as a relational perspective that can be used to complement the shortcomings of Eurocentric research paradigms. The study thus recommends that continuing professional development or professional learning communities should afford teachers the opportunity to collaboratively engage with the challenges that they face in their workplaces in order to resolve the contradictions that confront them.