Browsing Faculty of Education by Subject "Education"
Now showing items 1-12 of 12
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Mangope, B.; Kuyini, A.B.; Major, T. (IJSRE, http://www.ijsre.com, June NaN, 2012)[more][less]
Abstract: This study examines the role and functions of the Botswana Assessment Centre in diagnosing the learning needs of primary school students. It also examines the issues and challenges faced by learners with special needs who are not assessed for placement and/or instructional modification in regular primary schools. This study endeavours to articulate the issues around this lack of assessment and its implications for the learners and teachers of such learners. Forty-nine teachers from primary schools in Gaborone and surroundings responded to a thirteen-item questionnaire. Data from this questionnaire was analysed using descriptive statistics, t-tests and ANOVA. The results show that the Botswana Assessment Centre (Central Resource Centre (CRC) is unable to assess all students who require assessment and that there is a long wait time for assessments. The results also revealed that although the majority of schools had School Intervention Teams (SIT) who were responsible for referring students to assessment, the role of teams was unclear in some schools. This study recommends that government address the critical shortage of staff facing the Centre and pay more attention to the composition and functioning of the SITs. Finally, the Ministry of Education should explore other ways of ensuring that assessment for placement and modification of instruction can be efficiently and effectively carried out across Botswana. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1079 Files in this item: 1
Mangope_IJSRE_2012.pdf (1.630Mb) -
Mafela, L. (Research and Development Unit, University of Botswana. http://www.thuto.org, NaN, 1997)[more][less]
Abstract: In both precolonial and Westerm forms of schooling, education was a crucial medium of construction and articulation of ideas concerning the role and behaviour of women. Precolonial education reproduced and maintained sharp gender differentiation in the division of labour. Socialisation and women's own internalisation of their role and position in society, upheld dominant male ideology and subordination of women. Under colonialism, missionary and colonial education renegotiated but did not fundamentally change the role and position of women. However, it inadvertently also provided women with ways to move out of the household sphere into the wider labour market, albeit as unequal participants. Missionary education strictly separated the sexes and rested on the continued association of women with Victorian notions of 'domesticity'. The concept of ideology is used in this paper to tease out and highlight the gender dynamics which have influenced and directed education among Batswana. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/525 Files in this item: 1
mafela Competing gender ideologies.pdf (794.6Kb) -
Raditloaneng, W. (Academic Journals, http://www.academicjournals.org, November NaN, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper provides a critique of globalization with a special focus on the declining role of subsistence agriculture as the backbone of peasant economy in colonial Botswana and the changes that have occurred since independence 30th September 1966. During the colonial and pre independence era, agriculture was the backbone of peasant economy and poverty eradication in Botswana. The post independence era in Botswana resulted in reforms in all the public sectors including education, health, agriculture, tourism, trade, industry, science and communication and others which are typified in the cash economy. Based on a mixed methodology of qualitative and participatory activities in the study of the impact of learned identities of a total of 30 poor people poverty in two selected communities (one rural and one urban) in Botswana, this paper argues that with the advent of globalization, agriculture as the backbone of peasant economy is faced with competition from the other sectors of the modern economy. Despite efforts to engage in diversification of the agricultural sector and harsh climatic changes and human factors, the sector has been adversely affected by climatic changes and human factors too. Based on the deliberation of the poor who participated in the study; to be the backbone of peasant economy and poverty eradication. Registered destitutes who participated in this study had not graduated form poverty to non- poverty at the time of the qualitative study conducted between August 2008 and March 2009, despite the monthly food basket they received from the Government of Botswana. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1065 Files in this item: 1
Raditloaneng_JDAE_2009.pdf (1.513Mb) -
Jotia, A.L. (IJSRE, http://www.ijsre.com, October NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper registers that there is a strong relationship between the prevailing global discourse on Education for Sustainable Development and Democracy in Education. As such, in order for any nation to be seen to be having a relevant and quality education, its education system should be seen to be addressing the principles of democracy in a more direct and robust way. The role of education in advancing the global dream of sustainable development-which of late is also being marshalled by Environmental Education, cannot be overemphasized. However, the paper contends that unless we begin to democratize education to give learners a voice and a sense of being partners and key stakeholders in the process of educating and or advancing the state’s socio-economic and political aspirations, the objectives of having sustainable development will remain an absolute nightmare. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/977 Files in this item: 1
Jotia_IJSRE_2010.pdf (1.559Mb) -
Maruatona, T. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, NaN, 2005)[more][less]
Abstract: This empirical paper demonstrates that in spite of being a multiethnic society, literacy education in Botswana has ignored gender and cultural diversity. It demonstrates how planners endorsed a technocratic view of planning, emphasizing their curriculum expertise instead of learners' realities. The article argues that planners systematically ignored gender and minority issues through assuming that learners shared common concerns and that they are passive consumers. The planners reinforced their dominance by using one national language in a multilingual community, arguing that it is a natural choice and nobody objected to its use. Finally, the paper suggests that in order to address gender and minority issues, the programme should use the mother tongue and adopt participatory approaches in curriculum planning. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/513 Files in this item: 1
Maruatona_IJLE_2005.pdf (1.475Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, June NaN, 2002)[more][less]
Abstract: Curriculum reviews during the past two decades in Botswana have had mixed fortunes for geography in secondary schools. While the subject has modernised over the years it has at the same time shrunk in terms of its spread over the entire secondary schooling period. This paper describes this contradictory development, teasing out some of the most salient forces that have shaped the geography curriculum in secondary schools in Botswana. It argues that the subject's future is precarious and uncertain. Deliberate and concerted effort to promote and 'sell' the subject is required of those with vested interests in it. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/515 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_IRGEE_2002.pdf (1.042Mb) -
Tabulawa, R.T. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, January NaN, 2004)[more][less]
Abstract: This study reports on the strategies (overt and subtle) employed by students in one senior secondary school in Botswana to keep their teachers in an information-giving position. Contrary to the prevailing view that the 'teacher dominance' of classroom activities so often reported in classroom studies results from teachers' desire for social control, this study sees the dominance as a negotiated product, resulting instead from teachers and students exercising power on one another. Such a view of classroom practice is only possible where power is conceptualized not as a negative force that dominates, but as a productive force that simultaneously constrains and enables human action. Viewed this way, classroom reality becomes a co-construction, a 'joint project' by teacher and students. Attempts to change this reality, therefore, must include both teacher and students. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/516 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_JCS_2004.pdf (1.362Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, February NaN, 2003)[more][less]
Abstract: Recent pronouncements by international aid agencies on their interest in and preference for a learner-centred pedagogy so far appear not to have attracted much scholarly attention. This paper attempts to explain this interest. It argues that although the efficacy of the pedagogy is often couched in cognitive/educational terms, in essence, its efficacy lies in its political and ideological nature. The fact that the aid agencies’ interest in the pedagogy became explicit soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall is in itself significant. The paper argues that aid agencies’ apparent lack of interest in pedagogical issues before 1989 lay partially in the very central hypothesis of the modernisation theory of development which became enshrined in policies of aid agencies soon after the latter were created. The hypothesis, coupled with human capital theory, viewed education in technicist terms. However, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as a development paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s elevated political democratisation as a prerequisite for economic development. Education, then, assumed a central role in the democratisation project. Given its democratic tendencies, learner-centred pedagogy was a natural choice for the development of democratic social relations in the schools of aid-receiving countries. Aid agencies, therefore, had to be explicit about their preference for the pedagogy. Thus, the pedagogy is an ideological outlook, a worldview intended to develop a preferred kind of society and people. It is in this sense that it should be seen as representing a process of Westernisation disguised as quality and effective teaching. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/518 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_CE_2003.pdf (1.336Mb) -
Ketlhoilwe, M. J.; Jeremiah, K. (IJSRE, http://www.ijsre.com, June NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: Environment and sustainability issues are contemporary in educational innovations in institutions of higher education particularly in their core business regarding teaching, research and community engagement. The introduction and implementation of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) (2005-2014) has added impetus to the contemporariness of environment and sustainability issues in education. This paper is based on the empirical data generated within a selection of University of Botswana departments and units to determine the extent to which sustainability issues and concerns are implemented. The paper provides the outcome of the audit exercise that indicated that some of the University of Botswana departments and units are not incorporating sustainability issues in their practices (be it in teaching, research, community engagement or management practices). The paper recommends a systematic approach to mainstream environment and sustainability issues across the faculties. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/975 Files in this item: 1
Ketlhoilwe_IJSRE_2010.pdf (1.417Mb) -
Chilisa, B. (Routledge, http://www.informaworld.com, March NaN, 2002)[more][less]
Abstract: The article critiques pregnancy policies in the education systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Policies discussed are divided into expulsion, re-entry and continuation policies. Arguing from the standpoint of theories of oppression, it is postulated that expulsion policies symbolise direct violence against girls who become pregnant and are more common in those countries with poor human rights records. Continuation and re-entry policies are prevalent in countries that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of Children. It is argued that re-entry policies also violate girl mothers' right to education through a retreat ideology that requires temporary withdrawal of the pregnant girl from school. Moreover, gender inequalities are built into the policies and supported by traditional and institutional ideologies that make re-entry of the girl mother into the school difficult. The Botswana re-entry policy is reviewed to illustrate difficulties in the readmission of girl mothers to school. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/835 Files in this item: 1
Chilisa_GE_2002.pdf (789.0Kb) -
Nenty, H.J. (Kamla-Raj Enterprises http://www.krepublishers.com, April NaN, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: At the students’ level, researchers’ orientation tends to be undefined and hence students easily fall prey to having their orientation determined by factors other than those related to the nature of their research problems. The difficulties they experience especially in quantitative methods, biased supervisory advice, research orientations and motivational factors constitute some level of impediment to content learning, choice of research problem and to students’ views of the importance of research skills for their future work. The tendency is for them to narrow their choice of problem to only that which will suit their non-crystallized orientation. This exploratory study tried to look at such interconnected web and to determine the influence of research orientation on some research-related affective and cognitive behviour of UB graduate education students. To test the six research hypotheses posited to guide the study, data were collected from 78 UB graduate education students who registered for education research courses in 2006. These hypotheses were tested by carrying out z-test of independent proportion, chi-square analyses and one-way ANOVA statistical analyses. The results showed that a significantly higher proportion of the students prefer qualitative to quantitative research and gender has a significant influence on such preference. Research orientation was found to have significant influence on attitude towards research, research motivation, and perceived level of intellectual demand by research; but not on intention to enroll in a doctoral programme; willingness to be involved in research study; and their self-reported academic performance in research course. Problem with numbers was found to be a significant determinant of students’ research orientation. These results were discussed and recommendations made. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/732 Files in this item: 1
Nenty_JSS_2009.pdf (637.8Kb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge http://www.informaworld.com, April NaN, 1998)[more][less]
Abstract: Attempts to improve the quality of education in Botswana have, inter alia, included an emphasis on a learner-centered pedagogy. Attempts at implementing this pedagogy have been made within the ambit of the technical rational model of curriculum development. The attempts, however, have produced inconclusive results, and these results have often been rationalized in technicist terms, e.g. as being due to lack of resources and poorly trained teachers. Overlooked in this technicist model are the teachers' perspectives on the innovation. Using the case-study approach within the rubrics of the qualitative research paradigm, this study sought to establish the perspectives of geography teachers in a senior secondary school in Botswana vis-a-vis the learnercentered pedagogy advocated in Education for Kagisano (Social Harmony), a report produced by the 1977 Commission on Education. The findings indicated that teachers' classroom practices were influenced by many factors other than technical ones: these included the teachers' assumptions about the nature of knowledge and the ways it ought to be transmitted, their perceptions of students, and the goal of schooling. It also emerged that their assumptions were incongruent with the basic tenets of the learner-centered pedagogy. The findings, then, are an indictment of the technical rational model of change implementation applied in Botswana. They indicate that disregarding what teachers know and think about their taken-for-granted classroom practices when effecting change can lead to disappointing results. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/698 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_IJQSE_1998.pdf (1.076Mb)
Now showing items 1-12 of 12