Mansa College of Education

Items

• Pupil’s atittudes towards ICTs integration in a social studies classroom: a case of Azele Guze village Zambia
  Journal Article
• Exploring factors contributing to poor pupils’ performance in social studies at grade 9 in selected schools in Lusaka district, Zambia.
• Views of stakeholders outside the education sector on the basic school curriculum: an activity under the BESSIP component of basic school curriculum development.
  This was a commissioned Research under BESSIP for the review of the Basic School Curriculum in Zambia.
• Primary teachers’ conceptual understanding and implementation of components of a science lesson plan in three selected primary schools of Chibolya Zone, Lusaka district.
• Rurality and student transitioning in higher education: an exploration of views of university of Zambia students
  Thesis
• Exploring curriculum hurdles in implementing the social studies curriculum in Zambia: perspectives and experiences of civic education teachers.
  Article
• The evolution of social studies education in Zambia.
  Article
• Teacher futures: global reaction to teacher shortages in rural locations.
  Teacher Shortage, Rural Areas, Teacher Selection, Incentives, Rural Education, Foreign Countries, Teacher Recruitment, Barriers, Educational Policy, Cultural Differences, Intervention, Teacher Salaries, Compensation (Remuneration)
• First year students' understanding of specific concepts in selected mathematics topics: the case of the University of Zambia.
  Research Article
• Strategies teachers use in the management of inclusive classrooms in primary schools: lessons from Kazungula and Livingstone districts, Zambia
  Journal Article
• An assessment of preparation level, survival skills, and enterpreneural knowledge among retired teachers in Zambia.
  Article
• Teachers' language practices in the teaching of mathematics in a grade four multilingual classroom in Zambia.
  Research Article
• Examing Services Available to Greek Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
• Is this ethnography? The Role of labels in contemporary qualitative research
  In this reflexive piece from the field, I explore possible answers to the question: is my current doctoral project ethnography? Furthermore, I question the necessity of finding and claiming a pre-established label for my emergent work. I first provide a brief overview of my current research based in Kathmandu, Nepal and the personal and institutional challenges I faced in preparing for fieldwork. Ambiguity, though disliked by institutions, comfortably occupies space within my research paradigm. It takes deep reflexivity of positionality and power to navigate different perspectives – mine, institutions’, and the peoples’ I interact with in the field. Each interaction, though argued in academia as laden with dynamics of power, doesn’t always feel that powerful. Some moments, in fact, feel really boring. However, in my approach to research, these moments add up overtime to reveal patterns. Recognizing the value I place on the momentary and the emotional, I come to the main question of this article: is my work ethnography? Rather than develop a specific answer, I review the academic boxes I’ve checked that could suggest what labels I can place on this work. However, after considering Creighton’s (1920) definition of “catchwords”, I argue the process of labelling, rather than pushing us deeper into our research, becomes a test, a gauging of our willingness to fit into traditionally accepted scholarship. From the field, I argue it is more important to focus on making choices rather than labelling them.
• Professor Susan Robertson: Inside the Black-box of Journal Publishing
• The Need for an Application of Dual-Process Theory to Mathematics Education
• Accessible and Inclusive Higher Education for Palestinian Students with Disability: Policies and Practices Review
  As a commitment to promoting social justice and building inclusive society, this study aimed to review Palestinian policies and practices that support the right of students different disabilities to access inclusive higher education (IHE). To achieve this aim, four data collection tools were used: email correspondence, two focus group discussions involving 38 participant students with visual, physical and hearing disability, six individual interviews with senior directors of disability care offices in PHEIs, and content analysis of 11 policy documents. The results showed absence of factual information about Palestinian students with disabilities, lack of support to adopting in IHE in almost all existing policies and strategic goals, a mixture of practices facilitating and hindering implementation of core elements of IHE, and experience-based policies and practices proposed by the participants to make higher education more accessible and inclusive. Before presenting the conclusions, the study offered recommendations for the inclusiveness of higher education.
• A Vygotskyan sociocultural perspective on the role of L1 in target language learning
• Improving children’s oracy skills: a qualitative study highlighting the student’s voice towards different dialogic teaching strategies used in the classroom within one U.K. Primary School
  Throughout the past 50 years, dialogic teaching techniques have experienced some ups and downs. The benefits of dialogic interactions for children's oracy abilities are widely documented in the literature (Maxwell et al., 2015), however the child's perspective is not often highlighted. The current study aims to determine children's perceptions of a sample of dialogic teaching strategies used in one primary setting, as well as how these impact children's self-confidence and participatory processes to engage in educational dialogue. The study focuses on children who face significant socio-economic deprivation because it has previously been discovered that their language development is underdeveloped compared to their more advantaged peers (Millard & Menzies, 2016). The study utilised a semi-structured interviewing technique in an inner-city primary academy in a city located in the southwest of the UK. Eight children aged 9 to 10 and one primary classroom teacher contextualised their experiences during 20-minute semi-structured interviews. Four key themes were extrapolated using thematic analysis. Theme One is an examination of a primary school's overall oracy metacognitive strategy. Theme Two is how this strategy contributes to the development of a dialogic classroom culture. Children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds can directly benefit from Themes Three (Physicality of Talk) and Four (Visual Indicators), which are prominent and recurrent strategies to boost confidence and involvement. The "Physicality of Talk" theme showed novelty in the field of study because there is a paucity of research on how standing to speak affects a child's perception and increases their confidence to participate in educational discourse. The study has several implications for educational policy, teaching practice, and the use of specific research tools to elicit children's voices.
• The Pedagogical Implication of Creative Arts Practice by Manga Comic Book Readers in Japan
  How do you express your feelings about your favourite story? It is popular among manga comic book fans to share how much they love the manga work through their own creative works. People draw, upload YouTube videos, cosplay with hand-made costumes, or even create original stories based on their favourite manga characters. These activities are collectively called “fan art,” and the field of fan studies supplements our understanding of the research on creative practice among manga readers in Japan. While not always professional, these creators’ works are artisanal and creative, thereby suggesting a new type of informal learning (Marsick et al. 1990) based on possibility thinking (Craft, 2005). This paper suggests that manga fans’ storytelling could impact pedagogy, which in turn nurtures creativity among youths. I will introduce examples of manga fan art from pixiv (an online platform for artists), YouTube, Fandom, and social networking services, and consider how those works potentially have pedagogical impacts on manga readers. First, I will provide a brief history and definition and discuss the uniqueness of Japanese manga and public responses in Japan. Although manga can be classified as comic books, its origin is in Hokusai Katsushika, a famous Ukiyoe artist (Schodt, 1983) deeply rooted in Japanese culture. Next, employing Arts-Based Research (ABR) perspectives, I highlight three examples of manga readers’ creative art practices online. They draw and discuss “what if” questions—what some scholars call possibility thinking (Burnard et al., 2006)—leading to the practice of creative thinking skills. Lastly, I consider the shortcomings of implementing this pedagogy in formal educational settings and propose research questions for the future.
• The Prevent Duty in Primary Education: A Comparative Study
  In 2015, the Prevent Duty (HM Government, 2015) placed a legal requirement on educational institutions to show ‘due regard’ to the need to prevent young people from being drawn into extremism or terrorism. Following this, training programmes were created so that teachers could fulfil this responsibility. In this study, primary school teachers’ experiences and opinions on the Prevent Duty are compared between two different schools in the same metropolitan council. The first school is situated in a community in which most people living there are Muslim; the second school is situated within a predominantly white, middle-class, non-Muslim community. Teachers were interviewed in semi-structured interviews about their experiences of the Prevent Duty, its training programmes and how relevant they considered it to be for the children they teach in their setting. Their responses to these questions are compared to identify any differences on attitudes towards the Prevent Duty between the two areas. Findings suggest that the way in which the Prevent Duty is viewed by teachers, including the importance they place on it, their experiences of the training programmes and how relevant they see it as being to the children in their setting differs between the two areas
• The importance of verbal language in the development of social understanding in autistic children
  Language has been identified as a significant factor for long-term cognitive, social and adaptive outcomes, such as social understanding. The relationship between verbal language and social understanding has been widely explored in typically developing children. However, the same could not be said for the relationship between verbal language and social understanding in autism. To fill this gap, the following literature review evaluated studies which have employed nonverbal measures to investigate the impact of an absence of verbal language on the development of social understanding in autistic children. Nonverbal measures were used to explore how autistic children attend to and process nonverbal language and social cues such as facial expressions, eye gaze and biological motion. Across the reviewed literature, it was strongly hypothesised that autistic children depend more heavily on verbal language to bring attention and meaning to nonverbal cues they would otherwise miss. Limitations of the reviewed studies were further discussed. Future research investigating this relationship would benefit from discarding a deficit model of autism and instead employing a humanistic perspective which can lend a holistic understanding. In addition, the use of qualitative methods in the form of semi-structured interviews can encourage more participants from under-represented subgroups on the spectrum (i.e., minimally and nonverbal autistic females) to feel empowered in sharing their unique experiences.
• Becoming a leader? A narrative inquiry into the leadership practice of an English Language Centre Administrator of a higher education institution in Hong Kong
  This paper presents a narrative inquiry into an English Language Centre Administrator of a higher education institution in Hong Kong, China. The participant of this narrative inquiry, Angel, was invited to take up a new role of the Department of English. Using narrative inquiry as a research method and intersecting the narrative analysis by drawing on Bush’s (2010) three dimensions of leadership, the author evaluated Angel’s role as an English Language Centre Administrator and made meaning of her perceptions and contested her assumed responsibilities and the responsibilities she has been assuming. Among the three leadership dimensions suggested by Bush – influence, values and vision, it was perceived that from the participant’s personal practical experience, the three dimensions were not of equal weighting or did not emerge in a linear sequence. Values and vision may be the driving force of the participant’s leadership practice whereas influence may or may not be intentional. It is hoped that the findings will facilitate readers to generate a new understanding of educational leadership, management and administration and gain an insight into the reconceptualisation of leadership. By bringing forth the participant’s first-hand accounts, it is also hoped that this paper may have useful implications for those who are taking up a new role of an organisation, be it fledging or well-established, to excel themselves.
• Glocalization as it Affects East African Female Youth Transitioning out of a Catholic Boarding School in Uganda
• Following the Breadcrumbs: Young Adult Holocaust Novels and their Intertextual Use of Fairy Tales
  This article explores young adult Holocaust literature and its intertextual use of fairy tales, examining the primary text Gretel and the Dark (2014) by Eliza Granville which uses the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. I discuss the ethical complications of using fiction to represent the un-representable and how intertextual use of fairy tales provides opportunities and limitations for navigating the moral grey area between fact and fiction. I employ Smith’s (2007) framework of intertextuality to examine two methods of intertextuality: explicit incorporation through framed silences and through metafictional discussion of fairy tales. I seek to answer three questions: How are fairy tales used intertextually in this text; what can be gained through the intertextual use of fairy tales; and what problems arise from the intertextual use of fairy tales? I find that the use of non-realist storytelling techniques such as framed silences, meta-framed silences and metafictional elements allows the reader to actively collaborate with the work of fiction in meaning making and to build literary competence. However, intertextuality can potentially be frustrating for a reader unable to grasp the intertextual references or unable to interpret the framed silence. I conclude that the use of fairy tale intertextuality in Holocaust novels creates cracks in the text which point the reader to the fictionality of the text itself, this is significant when negotiating the difficult ethical borders in Holocaust fiction between fact and artistic creation.