Access to mobile gadgets has increased exponentially, altering social and educational conditions in Africa. This also applies to the reading habits of rural learners in secondary schools. This paper investigates how mobile gadgets could be embraced to nurture the reading habits of rural secondary school learners in Southern Africa. This qualitative study employed a multiple case study design in five rural secondary schools in Beitbridge District, Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe, and five rural secondary schools in Vhembe District, Limpopo, South Africa. Focus group interviews were adopted as a data collection tool for this study. Data was then analysed thematically according to the objectives of the study. The findings reveal the benefits of mobile reading, which include sharing reading materials, easy access, and use by rural learners. The barriers to mobile gadget reading include a strong emphasis on academic, as opposed to leisure, reading and internet connectivity problems. The findings further reveal that some rural learners in Beitbridge did not have access to mobile gadgets. In addition, we found that some rural learners in Limpopo were using their mobile gadgets to read e-news and e-novels. Some of them spend five or more hours accessing social media for entertainment purposes only, and this has a negative effect on their reading. The study concludes that some rural learners in Southern Africa use their mobile gadgets to nurture their reading habits, although some challenges were identified. In response, this study presents an integrated framework that could be adopted to embrace mobile gadgets to improve the reading habits of rural learners.

The dismissal and devaluing of indigenous knowledge during the successive eras of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa compelled the African majority to adopt the colonisers’ values, attitudes, language, cultural practices, morality, and institutions. In education, the consequent neglect of sociocultural contexts inevitably influenced the cultural identities of children negatively and disrupted the intergenerational continuity of core values and traditions especially in the early years of development. Early childhood development is acknowledged as the most critical developmental phase when behaviour, attitudes, and values are learnt and retained. It presents an ideal opportunity to impart rich values and social mores, particularly in the current context of moral and ethical decline in democratic South Africa. Local/community resources and positive cultural values and practices can contribute to children’s holistic development by building strong foundations for essential prosocial values that are embodied in ubuntu. With roots in African traditional society and philosophy, ubuntu espouses the ideal of interconnectedness and interdependence among people. This article reports on the views of a sample of urban, rural, and semi-rural early childhood development staff and community members on the inclusion of ubuntu values and principles in the early childhood development curriculum. The collective support for the inclusion of ubuntu in the preschool phase suggests the potential for developing socially responsible citizens for cohesive co-existence in democratic South Africa.

This study uncovers controversies about the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction in Ethiopia. It examines motives for the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction at the elementary level, and on which grounds the rights of minority linguistic groups to be instructed in their mother tongue are overlooked. To this effect, data were gathered from government language policy-related documents as well as 28 purposefully selected key informants through in-depth interviews. The data were analysed through a critical discourse analysis approach. Data showed that the government uses mother-tongue education for political motives and has the power to put its political interests into practice without conducting any societal needs assessments. On the other hand, the government lacks commitment to putting its language-use ideology into practice. It has used only some of the languages as mediums of instruction, with the result that many children of minority groups are not learning their daily lessons effectively. The study recommends that the government should confirm the right to learn through mother-tongue instruction at an elementary level to benefit children so that they can enjoy the opportunities of learning in their languages.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted various aspects of our lives causing economic, social and psychological challenges all around the world. A sector that immediately responded to this unprecedented change was education, which migrated to online platforms. This study explored the attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of a group of students participating in an emergency blended synchronous learning model during the pandemic in Northern Cyprus. The study adopted a qualitative study by surveying a group of 68 undergraduate students’ experiences through analysing their reflective accounts regarding the instructional mode of education that they received over the fall academic semester in 2020. The results of the study indicated that the new mode of instruction adopted in the context of the study not only presented technological, social, and psychological challenges for the students but also provided them with various learning opportunities and options during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the study offer some implications for the use of technology in education in general and language teaching in particular.

This paper presents a survey that explored the impact of service-learning in the realm of higher education on the readiness of students for their forthcoming leadership positions as citizen leaders. A narrative review approach was adopted. A significant amount of research has been conducted on service-learning outcomes; however, few studies have investigated the role of service-learning in developing civic leadership of higher education students. The primary aim of this study was to assess the current body of literature regarding the pedagogical significance of service-learning in fostering engaged citizen leaders within higher education. The findings of this investigation demonstrate the effectiveness of service-learning as a valuable tool for cultivating leadership abilities among students in higher education. Notable skills enhanced through this approach include problem-solving, critical thinking, public speaking, decision-making, and interpersonal proficiency. These are also considered the top employability skills in the current job market. Based on the findings, the paper supports the integration of service-learning as a useful educational approach in higher education curricula to develop leadership skills of graduates.

South Africa lags behind in terms of competing globally in science and technology. Thus, the purpose of the study was to investigate teacher factors that influenced learners’ motivation to learn science in a secondary school. The study also aimed to determine whether significant differences in motivation regarding teacher influence existed among age groups and genders. The research was conducted in a public secondary school in Gauteng province, South Africa with 462 learners from Grade 8 to Grade 11. Using a quantitative approach, the learners completed a questionnaire that involved several motivation constructs (mastery and performance goal oriented). The study identified some problems that could impact on learner motivation and also found that some significant differences existed among different grades and genders. A number of recommendations were made regarding the teacher’s role in motivating science learning.

The nature of the relationship between parents, teachers, and the school are continuously important because of teachers’ changing social expectations. While formal education is traditionally viewed as the job of teachers, they cannot be expected to address all educational issues that are influenced by multifaceted social issues. We explore parents’ and teachers’ understanding and experiences of parental involvement, and the nature of parental involvement in rural schools. We used the phenomenological approach; semi-structured interviews were administered to comprehend teachers’ and parents’ experiences of parental involvement in school activities. Complex parental views of schooling shaped the manner of involvement in school activities, and the nature of partnerships that were imbalanced. Teachers’ discourses of parental involvement were unsurprisingly influenced by associating classroom spaces with professional qualifications and curriculum pressure, resulting in the exclusion of parents from classroom activities. The dominant nature of parental involvement that teachers mentioned was that parents’ participation was limited to helping outside the classroom to ensure the upkeep of the schools. The findings also revealed that parents’ dominant experiences relate to viewing schools as inaccessible spaces without invitation or permission, as they view themselves as outsiders, and questioned the nature of communication channels.

Failure and low completion rates are a general concern at universities. We investigated the relationship between students’ admission profiles, undergraduate academic outcomes and completion rates in a four-year Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) programme in South Africa. The programme uses a unique student selection method and problem-based learning pedagogy. A retrospective cohort study, including 112 BPharm students, compared selection marks with annual cumulative final marks for each of the four years of study. The relationship between admission and cumulative marks were determined using Pearson’s correlation (p˂0.05 considered significant). The overall pass rate was high (93%) irrespective of the number of years taken to graduate, whereas 64.3% of students graduated in the minimum time of four years. Matriculation life sciences admission marks correlated with cumulative academic final marks in the second (p=0.032), third (p=0.005), and fourth (p=0.041) years of study. Physical sciences matriculation marks correlated with the fourth-year cumulative final marks (p=0.015). Correlation between the admission marks and academic outcomes was moderate, suggesting that the problem-based learning BPharm programme is able to level students’ admission profiles and academic outcomes. However, other factors could have influenced academic success/failure during the post-admission period. Current understanding of students’ success could benefit from qualitative studies exploring these factors.

Students’ academic performance is determined by certain intrinsic and extrinsic attributes, which are shrouded in their stages of development. The focus of this study was, therefore, to analyse factors influencing students’ performance in two randomly selected junior secondary schools in Maun, Botswana. Guided by McClelland’s motivational theory, a multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select a sample of 124 students. Demographic/socioeconomic data were obtained from the students in the study area through the use of questionnaires. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics (including mean and standard deviation) were used to summarise the data while Cramer’s V, Pearson product-moment correlation, multiple linear regression, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were employed to determine the relationships between explanatory variables and students’ academic performance. Results revealed that students’ academic performance is affected by both home background (e.g. family size) as well as the school environment (e.g. class size), including their study habits. The study recommends that teachers’ self-efficacy, more parental involvement, and improved government policies in educational development are critical for the attainment of high-quality education in Botswana.