Abstract
This paper investigates how a teacher in a rural school in Namibia teaches science. Of interest to us is the nature of the classroom discourse in constructing scientific knowledge that is meaningful to students. We draw on the work of Vygotsky (1978) in order to understand teaching/learning as dialectically entailed and to understand the notion of scientific and spontaneous concepts as distinct from science concepts, and operationalise his pedagogical theory utilising Hedegaard’s (1998) notion of the double-move in pedagogy as fundamental to meaningful engagement. Through a detailed analysis of one teacher’s pedagogical discourse we show how the linking of scientific and spontaneous concepts can either facilitate or hinder learning. Our analysis points to the importance of co-constructing meaning in the class, between teacher and taught and illustrates how analogies and metaphors can fail to create meaning in a classroom if the teacher does not recruit the learners’ own everyday concepts.
Highlights
IntroductionUnderpinned loosely by a constructivist approach to pedagogy, the proposed curriculum expressed a view of children as active rather than passive learners
To redress the inequality in the Namibian education system that was part of the apartheid, the Namibian education system went through comprehensive reforms that encompass Language in Education Policy (LiEP), curriculum revision, as well as the assessment methods
When Namibia got its independence in 1990, the new Ministry of Education and Culture proposed a mode of pedagogical transformation through the introduction of the new curriculum known as Learner-Centred approach (LCE) (Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture) (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2008)
Summary
Underpinned loosely by a constructivist approach to pedagogy, the proposed curriculum expressed a view of children as active rather than passive learners. This view derives in large part through a recontextualised approach to the Piagetian developmental understanding of how children learn (Piaget, 1976). The introduction of the LCE curriculum was regarded as a remedy to curb the educational inequalities of the colonial legacy while at the same time ensuring the quality and democratic educational system that would offer equity to all Namibian learners (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1993). Many of the Namibian schools, those in the rural and township areas are still far from offering the quality education as envisaged by the Namibian’s educational goals due to the lack of resources and unqualified teachers (Kasanda & Kapenda, 2015)
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