Journal of Vocational, Adult and Continuing Education and Training, 2021
This article examines the work context of South Africa’s state-employed adult educators. It is ba... more This article examines the work context of South Africa’s state-employed adult educators. It is based largely on a recent cross-sectional study of adult educators commissioned by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), which draws on the DHET’s database of adult educators and qualitative information gained from visits to adult education and training centres in all nine provinces. The study enquired into adult educators’ working lives, their qualifications, their sense of whether their training was adequate, the issue of further training, their understanding of their work, their conditions of service and the support they believe they need. The study showed that the number of adult educators employed by the DHET is declining steadily and that the working conditions of adult educators are uneven: a few work in fairly well-resourced urban centres, but many work in poor conditions, with little support. Nevertheless, the study indicated that almost all the adult educators v...
We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, an... more We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, and are confident that they can tell what the writer has written. We also know that incompetent readers in all languages show the same pattern of moving hesitantly through text, rereading words and lines, stalling over particular pieces of text, and, often with good reason, are not confident that they can discover what the writer means to say. What is not clear from this apparent similarity of reading patterns across languages is whether the minute processes that cohere to produce the activity of reading are similar across languages, and across different orthographies, or whether this similarity is superficial, and elements of established patterns of reading performance differ with different orthographies. These minute processes and their implications for learning to read, for teaching reading skills, and for competence in reading, and ways to measure it are the subject of unresolved debate, especially in relation to reading in different languages. While studies have been done of differences in observable physical reading patterns between European languages, as well as some Asian languages, and between different orthographies, there is conspicuously very little information about reading in African languages. This article focuses on a quest to find out whether there are differences between measurable processes of reading of English text and reading of Zulu text, and particularly on problems thrown up in the course of the study.
This study explored what three Intermediate Phase English First Additional Language teachers unde... more This study explored what three Intermediate Phase English First Additional Language teachers understood about reading and teaching reading, and the strategies they used to develop learners' reading skills. Data gathered through interviews and observations of classroom practice were used to consider the extent of their readiness to achieve the aims implicit in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). It was found that these educators understand reading primarily as the oral performance of decoding text to speech, and view comprehension as a separate and restricted entity; also, limitations in their understanding of comprehension processes involved in reading impeded their readiness to implement CAPS. Shortcomings in educators' schooling experiences, training and professional development were considered with a view to informing future teacher training and workshops. This study formed part of a university led research project which investigated well-documented indications of poor development of literacy skills in South African schools.
... Page 5. 432 Sandra Land and Zanele Buthelezi FIGURE 1: An example of a weekly episode of the ... more ... Page 5. 432 Sandra Land and Zanele Buthelezi FIGURE 1: An example of a weekly episode of the Mkhize story ... Many of these readers are also happy to see the English text in the story because most of them have a strong desire to learn to understand and read English too. ...
Concepts of literacy campaigns provide the context for a description and evaluation of the Siyafu... more Concepts of literacy campaigns provide the context for a description and evaluation of the Siyafunda Literacy Campaign in the town of Richmond, KwaZulu-Natal. Recent political events in the region are noted. The leadership provided by the mayor, the need for the involvement of community members and features of the campaign such as the I Love Reading Month, book flood, Family Book Project, the Mayor's Reading Minutes and storytelling are briefly described as are the implementation and monitoring of the project and the lessons learnt. The traditional concept of a literacy campaign is of a large-scale drive to teach basic reading and writing skills to poor rural people. Goals are often stated in extreme terms such as "the eradication of illiteracy", and have target dates, indicating a relatively short period of intense activity. In addition, campaigns are usually set in contexts of political change to the left, where new governments urge people to learn to use new-found literacy skills to ensure a better life for themselves. In the ideal campaign, on a national wave of enthusiasm, eager and committed volunteers present themselves for brief training and then set off for rural communities, armed with basic workbooks and reading primers, what could be called the "weapons of mass destruction" of illiteracy (Arnove and Graff 1987; Bhola, 1999). In recent years there have been two South African initiatives to promote literacy. In 1999 the organization Easy Reading for Adults (ERA) called for the next ten years to be declared 'the National Decade of Reading in South Africa', but because of the virtual closure of ERA, impetus generated for the Decade of Reading appears to have been lost. In 2000, the Minister of Education announced that the Masifunde Sonke campaign would operate in conjunction with the South African National Literacy Intitiative (SANLI). The aim of SANLI was to teach people to read, while the Masifunde Sonke campaign would encourage people who could read to use their reading skills (Asmal 2000). Sadly, more than two years of the campaign have passed but there is little evidence of progress and it is difficult to maintain optimism. Neither of these initiatives followed the traditional campaign approach, and as Lauglo (2001: 36) notes, the traditional approach of large-scale, mass literacy campaigns appears to be consigned to the past. With the knowledge that short periods of teaching basic reading and writing skills do not result in the development of a reading culture, it is likely that future initiatives in literacy will take different forms, as is happening in Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal. There the current mayor has set up the Siyafunda Literacy Campaign with which the writer of this paper has been involved as part of the community outreach offered by the Centre for
Research on reading in African languages is particularly pertinent in South Africa now, in view o... more Research on reading in African languages is particularly pertinent in South Africa now, in view of the poor reading performance in many South African schools. This paper is based on a study of competent adult readers of isiZulu that analysed what its orthography (the way it is written) requires of readers. As an agglutinative language with a conjoined writing system, isiZulu carries meaning not only in separate words, but also in morphemes that cluster together, forming long complex words. Eye tracking data shows that competent readers of isiZulu move their eyes across text in saccades (shifts of the point of focus) that are short in comparison with the saccades of efficient reading of English. It also shows that readers of isiZulu fixate on points of text for longer periods than do readers of English. The study links eye movement data to information gained from a stimulated recall process, to discover strategies consciously used by competent readers of isiZulu. Some of these strate...
For many rural, impoverished South Africans who continue to live in conditions of political and e... more For many rural, impoverished South Africans who continue to live in conditions of political and economic oppression, ten years of democracy have not reduced their marginalisation. Started in 1999, the Human Rights, Development and Democracy project is a co-operative initiative between an NGO offering adult basic education (ABE) in rural centres in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Centre for Adult Education, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The project aims to serve participants in rural areas, who are undereducated, mostly unemployed, and whose participation in democratic procedures is extremely limited. Informed by, among others, Mezirow’s transformational theory, the project combines adult basic education with education for democracy and income generation projects, with a view to enable people to reach new perceptions of their lives and South African society. The article shows how participants moved from early expectations, and how different paces and rhythms of different participants ha...
In this paper we address an area that has been largely neglected by researchers-state provision o... more In this paper we address an area that has been largely neglected by researchers-state provision of adult education in South Africa. We argue that there have been decades of neglect, or, at best, token support for our country's adult education system, and we look at how the system could be revitalised, both in terms of minimal requirements for immediate basic improvement as well as for a more radical and forward looking transformation of the system. South Africa has a history of attempts to provide school equivalent education to black adults through night schools. Suppressed in the 1950s and 1960s, they resurfaced after the 1976 Soweto revolt, and in 1996 the Constitution secured adult basic education as a right. State night schools were renamed Public Adult Learning Centres (PALCs), and seemed poised to become a powerful delivery mechanism, but continued as inadequate night schools. In 2015 the PALC system was ostensibly transformed into a community college one, but this transformation was based on the weak foundation of inadequate PALCs. A new 2019 plan for the Community Education and Training College System includes long needed major overhauls that must be made if adults' right to effective and relevant education is to be finally realised.
This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we... more This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we need to move beyond the predominant mode of reading as oral performance, where the emphasis is on accuracy and pronunciation, to reading as comprehension of meaning in text. While reading research in South Africa has been conducted mainly in school contexts, this case study is of a school and Adult Basic Education and Training Centre in a rural KwaZulu-Natal community near Pietermaritzburg. It found that an oratorical approach to reading dominated in both settings. It suggests that developing the way in which teachers understand the teaching of reading and transforming the teaching practices of those who teach as they were taught in the education system of the apartheid era are key to improving the teaching of reading.
Automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essentia... more Automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essential for proficient reading in any language. The article explores automaticity amongst competent adult first-language readers of isiZulu, and the factors associated with it or its opposite - active decoding. Whilst the transparent spelling patterns of isiZulu aid learner readers, some of its orthographical features may militate against their gaining automaticity. These features are agglutination; a conjoined writing system; comparatively long, complex words; and a high rate of recurring strings of particular letters. This implies that optimal strategies for teaching reading in orthographically opaque languages such as English should not be assumed to apply to languages with dissimilar orthographies.Keywords: Orthography; Eye movement; Reading; isiZulu
We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, co... more We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, confident that they can tell what the writer has written. We also know that incompetent readers in all languages move hesitantly through text, rereading words and lines, stalling at particular points, and, often with good reason, are not confident that they can discover
Journal of Vocational, Adult and Continuing Education and Training, 2021
This article examines the work context of South Africa’s state-employed adult educators. It is ba... more This article examines the work context of South Africa’s state-employed adult educators. It is based largely on a recent cross-sectional study of adult educators commissioned by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), which draws on the DHET’s database of adult educators and qualitative information gained from visits to adult education and training centres in all nine provinces. The study enquired into adult educators’ working lives, their qualifications, their sense of whether their training was adequate, the issue of further training, their understanding of their work, their conditions of service and the support they believe they need. The study showed that the number of adult educators employed by the DHET is declining steadily and that the working conditions of adult educators are uneven: a few work in fairly well-resourced urban centres, but many work in poor conditions, with little support. Nevertheless, the study indicated that almost all the adult educators v...
We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, an... more We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, and are confident that they can tell what the writer has written. We also know that incompetent readers in all languages show the same pattern of moving hesitantly through text, rereading words and lines, stalling over particular pieces of text, and, often with good reason, are not confident that they can discover what the writer means to say. What is not clear from this apparent similarity of reading patterns across languages is whether the minute processes that cohere to produce the activity of reading are similar across languages, and across different orthographies, or whether this similarity is superficial, and elements of established patterns of reading performance differ with different orthographies. These minute processes and their implications for learning to read, for teaching reading skills, and for competence in reading, and ways to measure it are the subject of unresolved debate, especially in relation to reading in different languages. While studies have been done of differences in observable physical reading patterns between European languages, as well as some Asian languages, and between different orthographies, there is conspicuously very little information about reading in African languages. This article focuses on a quest to find out whether there are differences between measurable processes of reading of English text and reading of Zulu text, and particularly on problems thrown up in the course of the study.
This study explored what three Intermediate Phase English First Additional Language teachers unde... more This study explored what three Intermediate Phase English First Additional Language teachers understood about reading and teaching reading, and the strategies they used to develop learners' reading skills. Data gathered through interviews and observations of classroom practice were used to consider the extent of their readiness to achieve the aims implicit in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). It was found that these educators understand reading primarily as the oral performance of decoding text to speech, and view comprehension as a separate and restricted entity; also, limitations in their understanding of comprehension processes involved in reading impeded their readiness to implement CAPS. Shortcomings in educators' schooling experiences, training and professional development were considered with a view to informing future teacher training and workshops. This study formed part of a university led research project which investigated well-documented indications of poor development of literacy skills in South African schools.
... Page 5. 432 Sandra Land and Zanele Buthelezi FIGURE 1: An example of a weekly episode of the ... more ... Page 5. 432 Sandra Land and Zanele Buthelezi FIGURE 1: An example of a weekly episode of the Mkhize story ... Many of these readers are also happy to see the English text in the story because most of them have a strong desire to learn to understand and read English too. ...
Concepts of literacy campaigns provide the context for a description and evaluation of the Siyafu... more Concepts of literacy campaigns provide the context for a description and evaluation of the Siyafunda Literacy Campaign in the town of Richmond, KwaZulu-Natal. Recent political events in the region are noted. The leadership provided by the mayor, the need for the involvement of community members and features of the campaign such as the I Love Reading Month, book flood, Family Book Project, the Mayor's Reading Minutes and storytelling are briefly described as are the implementation and monitoring of the project and the lessons learnt. The traditional concept of a literacy campaign is of a large-scale drive to teach basic reading and writing skills to poor rural people. Goals are often stated in extreme terms such as "the eradication of illiteracy", and have target dates, indicating a relatively short period of intense activity. In addition, campaigns are usually set in contexts of political change to the left, where new governments urge people to learn to use new-found literacy skills to ensure a better life for themselves. In the ideal campaign, on a national wave of enthusiasm, eager and committed volunteers present themselves for brief training and then set off for rural communities, armed with basic workbooks and reading primers, what could be called the "weapons of mass destruction" of illiteracy (Arnove and Graff 1987; Bhola, 1999). In recent years there have been two South African initiatives to promote literacy. In 1999 the organization Easy Reading for Adults (ERA) called for the next ten years to be declared 'the National Decade of Reading in South Africa', but because of the virtual closure of ERA, impetus generated for the Decade of Reading appears to have been lost. In 2000, the Minister of Education announced that the Masifunde Sonke campaign would operate in conjunction with the South African National Literacy Intitiative (SANLI). The aim of SANLI was to teach people to read, while the Masifunde Sonke campaign would encourage people who could read to use their reading skills (Asmal 2000). Sadly, more than two years of the campaign have passed but there is little evidence of progress and it is difficult to maintain optimism. Neither of these initiatives followed the traditional campaign approach, and as Lauglo (2001: 36) notes, the traditional approach of large-scale, mass literacy campaigns appears to be consigned to the past. With the knowledge that short periods of teaching basic reading and writing skills do not result in the development of a reading culture, it is likely that future initiatives in literacy will take different forms, as is happening in Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal. There the current mayor has set up the Siyafunda Literacy Campaign with which the writer of this paper has been involved as part of the community outreach offered by the Centre for
Research on reading in African languages is particularly pertinent in South Africa now, in view o... more Research on reading in African languages is particularly pertinent in South Africa now, in view of the poor reading performance in many South African schools. This paper is based on a study of competent adult readers of isiZulu that analysed what its orthography (the way it is written) requires of readers. As an agglutinative language with a conjoined writing system, isiZulu carries meaning not only in separate words, but also in morphemes that cluster together, forming long complex words. Eye tracking data shows that competent readers of isiZulu move their eyes across text in saccades (shifts of the point of focus) that are short in comparison with the saccades of efficient reading of English. It also shows that readers of isiZulu fixate on points of text for longer periods than do readers of English. The study links eye movement data to information gained from a stimulated recall process, to discover strategies consciously used by competent readers of isiZulu. Some of these strate...
For many rural, impoverished South Africans who continue to live in conditions of political and e... more For many rural, impoverished South Africans who continue to live in conditions of political and economic oppression, ten years of democracy have not reduced their marginalisation. Started in 1999, the Human Rights, Development and Democracy project is a co-operative initiative between an NGO offering adult basic education (ABE) in rural centres in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Centre for Adult Education, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The project aims to serve participants in rural areas, who are undereducated, mostly unemployed, and whose participation in democratic procedures is extremely limited. Informed by, among others, Mezirow’s transformational theory, the project combines adult basic education with education for democracy and income generation projects, with a view to enable people to reach new perceptions of their lives and South African society. The article shows how participants moved from early expectations, and how different paces and rhythms of different participants ha...
In this paper we address an area that has been largely neglected by researchers-state provision o... more In this paper we address an area that has been largely neglected by researchers-state provision of adult education in South Africa. We argue that there have been decades of neglect, or, at best, token support for our country's adult education system, and we look at how the system could be revitalised, both in terms of minimal requirements for immediate basic improvement as well as for a more radical and forward looking transformation of the system. South Africa has a history of attempts to provide school equivalent education to black adults through night schools. Suppressed in the 1950s and 1960s, they resurfaced after the 1976 Soweto revolt, and in 1996 the Constitution secured adult basic education as a right. State night schools were renamed Public Adult Learning Centres (PALCs), and seemed poised to become a powerful delivery mechanism, but continued as inadequate night schools. In 2015 the PALC system was ostensibly transformed into a community college one, but this transformation was based on the weak foundation of inadequate PALCs. A new 2019 plan for the Community Education and Training College System includes long needed major overhauls that must be made if adults' right to effective and relevant education is to be finally realised.
This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we... more This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we need to move beyond the predominant mode of reading as oral performance, where the emphasis is on accuracy and pronunciation, to reading as comprehension of meaning in text. While reading research in South Africa has been conducted mainly in school contexts, this case study is of a school and Adult Basic Education and Training Centre in a rural KwaZulu-Natal community near Pietermaritzburg. It found that an oratorical approach to reading dominated in both settings. It suggests that developing the way in which teachers understand the teaching of reading and transforming the teaching practices of those who teach as they were taught in the education system of the apartheid era are key to improving the teaching of reading.
Automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essentia... more Automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essential for proficient reading in any language. The article explores automaticity amongst competent adult first-language readers of isiZulu, and the factors associated with it or its opposite - active decoding. Whilst the transparent spelling patterns of isiZulu aid learner readers, some of its orthographical features may militate against their gaining automaticity. These features are agglutination; a conjoined writing system; comparatively long, complex words; and a high rate of recurring strings of particular letters. This implies that optimal strategies for teaching reading in orthographically opaque languages such as English should not be assumed to apply to languages with dissimilar orthographies.Keywords: Orthography; Eye movement; Reading; isiZulu
We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, co... more We know that competent readers of text in all languages move through text with speed and ease, confident that they can tell what the writer has written. We also know that incompetent readers in all languages move hesitantly through text, rereading words and lines, stalling at particular points, and, often with good reason, are not confident that they can discover
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