Faculty of Education

Teaching practice is an integral component of teacher training. It grants student teachers experience in the actual teaching and learning environment. We explore the experiences of student teachers in the Vaal University of Technology Post-graduate Certif icate in Education (PGCE) during their 10 weeks ’ teaching practice in the Vaal area. In this article we aim to establish the ways in which these experiences influence the student teachers ’ perception of the teaching profession. Semi-structured interviews with all student teachers were used to collect the data while content analysis was used to identify themes and analyse the data. We established that, despite the positive experiences during teaching practice, student teachers experienced challenges which affected their percep-tion of the teaching profession. Based on the findings of this study, measures are suggested on how to improve teaching practice in order to have a positive influence on the student teachers ’ perception of,...

This article investigates the ways in which two rural Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) Centres in the Limpopo Province address the challenges of HIV/AIDS. Theories of social capital are used to explain the different responses of the Centres. The communities surrounding both Centres face similar structural problems of poverty, unemployment, migrancy, gender inequality, poor health and low levels of education. In one Centre, educators and learners denied that HIV/AIDS was a serious issue. They had no confidence in the public health service, and no access to information or networks which support HIV/AIDS work. In this centre, no efforts were made by educators or officials to integrate HIV/AIDS in the ABET curriculum. In the second Centre, situated closer to town, the educator responsible for Life Orientation had engaged learners in a variety of social networks which directly or indirectly addressed AIDS. These networks increased the exchange of information among learners, and facilitated collective goals. The paper concludes that developing the social capital of ABET officials, educators and learners plays an important part in efforts to build the capacity of ABET Centres to respond positively to the challenges of HIV/AIDS.

This conference presentation will report on a method and formula for assessing student work online. Two tests of validity of the method and formula for assessing student work online were conducted with undergraduate education students (pre-service teachers) on the expert-peer online assessment method and formula. Validity was determined by calculating a Pearson product-moment correlation and corresponding coefficient of determination that compared the average grade assigned by the pre-service teachers with the grade assigned independently by the course instructor. Results of both studies showed that the expert-peer online assessment method and formula were valid with these groups and generalizable to undergraduate classes engaged in similar tasks. Findings from these studies provided information about my claim about the validity of the expert-peer online assessment method and formula, and met my evaluation needs as an instructor.

Computer-aided instruction, more often referred to as computer-assisted instruction or CAI, often means different things to different people. An active CAI developer will design a project based on a preferred method or guideline. The guideline can usually be associated with a particular definition of multimedia learning. All but one guideline relies for support on impact studies alone, testing users immediately after the treatment. Alternatively, the SSF model is based on studies conducted on attentional memory in adults and children measuring their performance over several weeks. Eight conclusions can be drawn from this discussion, one for each design guideline.

This paper is a description of a pilot study that compared the relative effectiveness of three versions of a hypermedia system (Text, Sound/Text, Sound) designed to permit inservice teachers to learn instructional design from a computer. Analysis of the test data of twenty-seven participants showed that learning was greatest in the Sound version. Results of the interviews indicated that those working with sound could focus their attention on the critical information needed to make successful interpretations. Participants working in the Text and Sound/Text versions of the system, however did not learn as much and stated their displeasure with reading so much text from the screen, despite the presence of three graphical browsers. Recommendations for revisions to the materials and test items arc suggested. 0 I997 Elsevier Science Ltd

This study examined the effects of student-created paper-based website frames on their recall and knowledge restructuring. Statistical and observational comparisons were made of 25 students' knowledge and web page products in Frame and Nonframe groups. The Nonframe group outperformed the Frame group on the posttest immediately after class lectures. While both groups improved in their knowledge of content after the authoring activity, the experimental (Frame) group had a statistically superior improvement in test scores (n=18) and out-performed the control group (the group without the precomputer framing activity) on the final recall test. Implications of the study are reported and future directions discussed. The results are intended to inform researchers and teachers about how to reverse a trend among students who prefer to approach website programming as a technocentric design activity that is largely dependent on the capabilities of the computer system.

Two tests of validity were conducted with undergraduate education students on the post and vote model of Web-based peer assessment. Validity was determined by calculating a Pearson product-moment correlation and corresponding coefficient of determination that compared the average grade assigned by the pre-service teachers with the grade assigned independently by the course instructor. Results of both studies showed that the post and vote model of Web-based peer assessment were valid with these groups, and generalizable to undergraduate classes engaged in similar tasks.

Forty-five years of intuitive combinations of audio-visual information have produced only mixed results. This paper proposes a conceptual, case-based method for adding audio to software. This method, unlike the intuitive approach, requires the researcher to assign structural and functional attributes from the SSF Model to specific software activities.

This research focused on the prediction that children in their school setting would learn more from educational multimedia when critical information was presented as spoken instead of textual cues. Analyses of a study (n = 42) showed that 12-year-olds did not learn any more from temporal speech cueing than from temporal text cueing. The findings suggest that multimedia learning for children is a different kind of learning experience than for adults or older adolescents. The results indicate underdeveloped executive control of the referential connections in the children's working memory between reading screen text while listening to spoken cues, and between watching on-screen animations play while listening to spoken cues. Further study is warranted. Implications may be derived for educational multimedia research in school settings.

This paper will introduce the sojourner's model of Post-Secondary learning (SMOPL). This new model illustrates the integrative and overlapping structures of culture shock and participatory action research into a single conceptual framework. The aim of SMOPL was two- fold; first, to help the visiting international student (i.e., sojourner) to cope with the common problem of debilitating academic performance. The second

INTRODUCTIONSpoken and written discourse is at once the products of our brains (i.e., cognition) as wellas the consequences of our social interactions with others in a variety of contexts (Firth &Wagner, 1997). How we use language (i.e., in writing and speaking) denotes an ontology(Aspenson, 1998), and defines the phase (Mann, 1998a). In this context, phase theory canbe described as a