Cultural hegemony permeates society and is spread through social institutions. These institutions socialize people into the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social groups. Moreover, cultural hegemony is spread and perpetuated through education in the form of compulsory education, a national curriculum, national assessments, as well as the…

In this paper, illustrative excerpts from mathematics lessons are analysed to examine mathematical and multilingual moves between representations within Sepedi and English medium classrooms. Duval's theory of representational registers and the literature on multilingual practices help foreground similarities within and differences between the…

In the study reported on here, we focused on the use of English as language of learning and teaching (LoLT) for isiXhosa-speaking Foundation Phase learners in a historically disadvantaged school in the Western Cape, South Africa. It was a qualitative case study within an interpretive research paradigm. We used focus groups and interviews for data…

This article presents a systematic review of research on language and multilingualism in mathematics education published in the South African journal Pythagoras from 1994 to 2021. This time frame was chosen as the year 1994 marked the acknowledgement of 11 official languages in the new democratic South Africa (including 9 indigenous languages),…

Noise, although ubiquitous, is seldom considered as a factor that may impede learning. In South Africa, most learners are multilingual and learn in English, which is their second language. Most noise studies have been conducted in the Global North, where the school context differs from the Global South. In this article, using questions selected…

This article concerns ZAPP (the South African Poetry Project), which is a community of poets, scholars (including the authors), teachers and students, established in 2013 to promote, in educational systems, the work of contemporary South African poets. For the past three years (2017-2019), we have attempted through outreach and research to…

The teaching and learning of mathematics in South Africa are conducted through the authorised Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT). South Africa has eleven official languages, and English is a Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT) from the Intermediate and Further Education and Training (FET) Phase. This study explores teachers' views on…

The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of a group of South African English Second Language (ESL) Foundation Phase teachers' understanding of, skills in, and training needs to teach phonological awareness (PA) effectively. A qualitative research approach placed within an interpretative paradigm was utilised in two phases.…

Background: IsiXhosa students enrolled for the BEd Foundation Phase qualification at a university in South Africa failed their first year in identified at-risk subjects, namely Mathematics in Education, Language in Education and Computer Literacy. The students stated the reasons for failure as not understanding the concepts and terms of the…

African township schools are characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, hence, teachers have the dual task of ensuring that learners grasp scientific concepts, while also catering for the diversity in the learners' backgrounds. The study reported on here was aimed at investigating teachers' beliefs and practices in teaching life sciences…

Education for multilingual Physics students in South Africa still has a monolingual bias despite such pedagogy being repeatedly identified as the key factor in students' academic underachievement in the subject. The paper reports on the pivotal role language plays in the comprehension and subsequent academic performance of students in science…

The capacity to use language is unique from one individual to another. This could also depend on the individual's exposure to a language. This article aims to contribute to the growing area of research on language anxiety by exploring the extent to which language anxiety affects learners' performance in learning in multilingual classrooms,…

This paper presents a multilingual mobile learning framework that can be used to support the pedagogical development of mobile learning systems which can support learning in under-resourced multilingual schools. The framework has been developed following two empirical mobile learning studies. Both studies were conducted in multilingual South…

This study investigated the challenges that history learners in rural black schools are faced with during assessments when using English as the language of learning and teaching. The aim of the study was to investigate whether English, which is used as a language of learning and teaching in schools, is a barrier to the learning and teaching of…

A new South African testing approach designed to assess potential university students' ability to cope with English-medium academic education is also designed to take into account the effects of educational disadvantagement and minimize reliance on students' content-based secondary school experiences. The approach incorporates principles from…