This study explored and compared metaphorical perceptions of "Innovative Education" among 100 in-service teachers from Turkey and South Africa during the 2020-2021 academic year. A phenomenological research design was adopted for this qualitative investigation. Teachers accessed an online platform to complete the open-ended prompt:…

Academic development is a mammoth undertaking that requires collective effort from all stakeholders, extending beyond academic developers alone. As early career academics, we explore our experiences of academic development within our community of practice. Through a collaborative self-study, we reveal how our community of practice has bolstered…

With the study reported on here we aimed to determine and compare teacher perceptions of the concept of virtual reality between Turkish and South African teachers using metaphors. We adopted a phenomenological approach, and a questionnaire was administered to a total of 100 teachers in both countries, using random sampling. The study included 4…

Elite universities are often believed to represent education's gold standard and to produce highly educated luminaries who rightfully take their places leading all the institutions that matter in societies across the world. We begin by explaining how this is so. Then we discuss what we call monster methodologies, suggesting why and how we employed…

This article reports on teachers' beliefs about teaching and the implications of these beliefs in the teaching of Social Studies. A case study design was adopted using a beliefs tool that was administered to a sample of 21 Social Studies teachers in junior secondary schools and five in-service Social Studies teachers enrolled at the national…

Who we are and who we become as educators is intimately connected to the historical and socio-political milieus in which we, ourselves, were educated and continue to work as educators. In this article I demonstrate how conventional conceptual metaphors are effective analytical lenses, through which we can explore our personal educational…

Background: Research argues that parents/teachers and learners work collaboratively and this active participation in scaffolded activities builds knowledge and extends understandings. However, researchers who have explored scaffolding as a pedagogic tool do not demonstrate how this tool looks in practice. Objectives: As a teacher educator, I…

This article explores the teaching of English poetry in two Gauteng high schools, one a suburban, former Model C school and another in Soweto. Both schools are attended predominantly by Black learners for whom English is not their first language. Nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with educators at the two schools. The choice…

In the light of #FeesMustFall, decolonisation has come to the fore in the South African higher education landscape. Decolonisation proposes the overthrow of entrenched European power relations in higher education and the study of fairy tales within a pre-service teaching degree in a university English curriculum provides an ideal opportunity for…

This article explores the contribution that a teaching strategy, such as metaphoric body-mapping, can make towards the discourse on the development of professional teacher identity. Second-year students in a Life Orientation methodology module in a B.Ed programme were offered the opportunity to validate their local knowledge and make new meaning…

Swami Vivekananda was an influential Indian saint, poet, philosopher and political revolutionary. His work can be seen as a conduit for South African Hindus who are part of the Indian diaspora, allowing them to connect with their historical, cultural and spiritual roots in the religious and conceptual world of India. The first step to decolonising…

This is a theoretical paper that addresses the challenge of educational access to the Humanities and Social Sciences. It plots a theoretical quest to develop an explicit pedagogy to give "disadvantaged" students in the Humanities ways of working successfully with texts. In doing so it draws on Bernstein, Moore and Maton's work to…

This study's focus was two-fold, first to look at forms of gestures teachers of multilingual mathematics classes use during teaching; and second to find out how teachers of multilingual mathematics classes utilize learners' home language, language of learning and teaching and gestures to foster understanding in the teaching of mathematics. This…

Much research is available that details student experiences of immigration and adaptation to receiving countries and schools, but few studies analyze the metaphors used by immigrant students (IS) when talking about the immigration experience, or offer a comparative lens through which to view identity negotiation in two very different contexts. The…

Teachers need creative strategies and techniques when teaching idioms in Setswana. However, they do not know what idioms are nor are they aware that through idioms cultural heritage can be preserved and that idioms can be taught as part of imaginative language, especially in Grade 3. As a result, teachers and learners in Grade 3 Setswana classes…