A Study about the Prevalence of Code Switching in the Junior Secondary Physical Science in the Oshana Education Region

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of code switching in the Junior Secondary Physical Science teachers in the Oshana Education Region. The purpose of this study was to find out the extent to which code switching was practised by the Junior Secondary Physical Science teachers in their classrooms. The study sought to answer the following question: What is the prevalence of code switching in the Junior Secondary Physical Science in the Oshana Education Region? The study followed a mixed research design approach (quantitative and qualitative) to collect data from the participants. The population of this study consisted of all the Physical Science teachers for Grades 8 - 10 in the Oshana Education Region and then a sample of 22 teachers was drawn from 10 schools of the population of Grade 8 - 10 Physical Science teachers in Oshana Education Region. In an attempt to get a representative sample of the population, a combination of stratified sampling technique and convenience sampling was used for this study to select the sample. All accessible Junior Secondary Physical Science teachers from the selected schools in the identified strata were conveniently chosen for the study. Triangulation was used by conducting lesson observations, administering questionnaires as well as conducting interviews to collect the data. The findings from the observations, questionnaires and interviews revealed that code switching was prevalent in the Oshana Education Region in Grade 8 - 10 Physical Science classrooms. About 58% of the teachers’ code switched during the lesson observations, 85% admitted that they code switched during the interviews and 77.3% of the participants in questionnaires stated that they code switched in an average Physical Science lesson. It was found from the interviews that 85% of the participants admitted that they code switched in their Physical Science lessons. The study further found that teachers’ code switching was more prevalent in the classrooms where teachers had the same mother tongue as the learners. It can also be concluded from the results of this study that teachers spoke to students mostly in Oshiwambo when they were outside the classroom. The study also found that there were inconsistencies in the findings related to the prevalence of code switching in the Junior Secondary Physical Science classrooms in the Oshana Education Region from all the three research tools. These were evident from the different prevalence rates of code switching that were found by the different data collection instruments employed in this study. The researchers recommend the Ministry of Education to acknowledge that code switching is prevalent in the Junior Secondary Physical Science classrooms. The Ministry needs to formulate a policy that will guide the use of code switching in the Junior Secondary Physical Science classrooms as well as guidelines on how the teachers should handle code switching in the learners’ answers in the national examinations. This study also suggests that there is a need for similar studies to be carried out in the other Education Regions so as to determine the prevalence of code switching at the national level in order to take actions that will benefit all schools in Namibia.