The skill of reading is regarded as the cornerstone of literacy learning in the foundation phase. Although it is the most complex skill to master, it forms part of literacy teaching. Most learners begin schooling without having any kind of exposure to reading. This lack of exposure introduces a number of challenges, which are consequently exacerbated if teachers have to teach in multi-grade classes. This case study was conducted in two primary schools in the Ndwedwe Circuit in KwaZulu-Natal. It is framed within the interpretive epistemology embedded in a qualitative research methodology. Empirical data were generated from two rural schools where multi-grade teaching was undertaken. To produce data, two teachers teaching multi-grade classes (incorporating both grade R and grade 1) were observed during an isiZulu Home Language reading period. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were used to elicit more data for corroboration of findings. The findings show that teacher agency is crucial in making adaptive decisions. These decisions are based on the intersection of formal knowledge, situational knowledge and experiential knowledge that the teachers have acquired over time.
Miss K taught both grades R and One simultaneously. Learners from both grades were asked to say and act the recitation ‘
The teacher showed them some pictures of animals (rhino, giraffe, monkey, zebra, buffalo and a buck). She asked learners to tell her what these animals were called. The introduction of this lesson was quite energetic with almost the whole class being actively involved in the picture activity. Some of the younger learners from Grade R did not know the names of all the animals. The teacher explained where these animals lived and asked whether learners had seen them. The learners indicated that they had not seen these animals.
The teacher read the story ‘Horns Only’. This was a story about animals who were invited to a party in the jungle. The animals that had to attend the party were only those animals with horns; however, the monkey and the zebra wore fake horns in order to be accepted at the party. After a lot of partying and dancing, the horns fell off. They were then chased away from the party.
The teacher used a big book in which the story was printed. She showed the learners the cover of the book and asked them to tell her what they saw on the cover. She encouraged learners’ responses through asking some questions using the picture cards she had used when introducing the lesson. She started reading from the book, pausing occasionally to ask questions. Grade Ones were more active as compared to Grade Rs. She asked learners to predict what would happen next and she encouraged them to express their thoughts on how they would feel if they were not invited to a party.
The teacher had prepared some flashcards. Words and the names of animals were written next to the picture of the animal. Learners had to look at the picture and then say a word. Grade Ones read these words taking turns as groups and later grade Rs did picture reading. While this was happening, some learners were disruptive and the teacher had to focus her attention on disciplining them.
The above is an observation of a single lesson taught by one of the participants in the study. She was teaching reading in isiZulu to learners in a multi-grade class comprising grade R and grade 1 learners. The lesson lasted for approximately 50 minutes, with many discipline interruptions by the learners. Drawing from this observed lesson, it is clear that the teacher was following a lesson routine that included connecting learners with the previous lesson using recitation, settling learners down for the new lesson using a rhyme, introducing the new lesson with pictures of animals that would be in the story, story reading with a big book; keeping track of learner engagement in the story reading through focusing on learner feelings and lesson assessment through group identification of animals, word reading and picture reading. This lesson procedure raises the following questions: Is this a typical lesson progression in an ordinary classroom? How has this teacher come to teach reading in isiZulu in this multi-grade classroom context?
According to the National Reading Strategy (DoE
Multi-grade schools are a worldwide phenomenon. The concept ‘multi-grade teaching’ is described in different ways. In some countries, it is called ‘multi-groups’ or ‘multi-class’ or ‘combination group teaching’ (Little
Benveniste and McEwan ( are aggravated by the conditions that teachers have to work under; they need to teach these learners using the variety of teaching strategies as stipulated in the curriculum policy, yet there are no special adjustments that are being provided for teachers and learners who are faced with such contexts.
In addition, Ngubane (
In the South African context, there are political undertones that multi-grade teaching (and multi-grade schools) should be eradicated, the reality of which may not be realised as multi-grade teaching is well established and widespread, even in urban contexts (Walters the multi-grade classroom poses a paradox. For children to learn effectively in a multi-grade environment, teachers need to be well trained, well-resourced and hold positive attitudes to multi-grade teaching. (p. 567)
In the South African context, there are no special training programmes for multi-grade teaching. Teachers have to rely on their own agency with little or no support from the Department of Basic Education (Ramrathan & Ngubane
Nkambule
Drawing from the accounts of multi-grade teaching, especially in rural contexts, it seems clear that teachers teaching in these situations have to rely on their teacher agency to make decisions on teaching strategies, lesson context, lesson activities and teaching and learning resources to make some impact on learning. Therefore, the agency would include personal attributes as drivers to continue in their quest for facilitating learning, despite the hopelessness of the situation that they face.
In order to make sense of how teachers teach reading in a multi-grade teaching context, this study was informed by two theoretical constructs. The first was on Shulman’s (
Teacher agency is closely linked to Shulman’s notion of pedagogical content knowledge, focusing on the decision-making processes of teachers. Agency, as explained by Campbell (
Teacher adaptation can then be more clearly understood through the lens of teacher agency and pedagogical content knowledge that teachers acquire over time as they forge ahead in teaching within a context that is limited in all respects, among others, limited facilities, limited resources, limited teacher training and limited ongoing professional development. These two theoretical constructs frame the analysis of the data leading to the conclusions reached in this article.
A qualitative research, framed within an interpretive epistemology study was conducted to produce the empirical evidence for this study. Marshall and Rossman (
Case study as a methodology was used for this research. Rule and John (
The data were generated through observations of lessons taught by the participants over a period of 2 weeks. Ten lessons were observed for each teacher over the 2-week period. Observation during the actual teaching enabled us to receive the natural reality of multi-grade classes and helped us to make sense of how reading was taking place (Maree
The data produced during the interviews were coded using firstly open coding and later axial coding (Merriam
While the process of data production seems sanitised and smooth, there were several issues that disrupted the process. These included not being able to observe a planned lesson because of time inconsistency for lessons. Some lessons took longer to complete while some finished early because of several reasons, including time management by teachers, learner discipline disruptions and administrative demands. Being at the research site for the duration of the data production process provided the flexibility to accommodate time issues. Getting detailed and in-depth information from the participants about their experiences of teaching reading in the multi-grade contexts was a challenge. Superficial responses were probed through the use of information gleaned from the observations to encourage the participants to think deeply and to articulate their thinking that influenced their teaching practices. The language through which the interviews with the participants took place was predominantly English, which added to the difficulty of gaining deeper insights from teachers on their teaching practice. Being multi-lingual, the interviewer used English as the predominant means of communicating and isiZulu when deeper information was needed. These challenging issues were anticipated during the planning process for the data collection. In order to minimise the effects of these limitations, it was necessary to be on site for a longer period of time – 2 weeks was then deemed to be adequate. In addition, the interview process took on an iterative process. This included probes on observed aspects of lessons. Participants were given the opportunity to reflect on their teaching.
A further constraint in the data collection process was the presence of the researcher. Researchers entering rural schools are a rare phenomenon, which drew extreme curiosity from all – teachers, managers and learners. It was difficult to establish whether the data collected at the research site were greatly influenced by this intrusion and the prevailing scepticism of our presence or by that of the normality of its teaching and learning environment. We were acutely reminded of St. Pierre’s (
Specific attention was paid to ethical considerations. The principal of the school and the Ndwedwe Circuit Manager were contacted for permission to conduct this research. Clear and precise outlines of the research were presented, and the aim of the research was disclosed to foundation-phase teachers, the principal and circuit manager. All participants were guaranteed anonymity through the use of pseudonyms and a pseudonym was given to the school. The participants and the school principal were informed of their rights to participate in the research process, including the unconditional right to withdraw their participation or permission to further engage in the research process.
The participants were not able to translate theory into practice. They found in difficult to use their knowledge about what and how to teach reading in the foundation phase and apply it to their practice especially in the context of combined grades. The data collected from the two foundation-phase teachers revealed that they were aware that reading plays an important role in the teaching of isiZulu Home Language in the foundation phase of schooling. They were having difficulties in dealing with addressing children’s reading needs according to the age and stage of development.
Miss L said:
‘Yes, I believe that knowing how to read is important, but tell me how do you tell when a learner is not really reading. Just imagine in my class I have Grades R and 1 combined and I can’t teach them ‘imisindo’ (phonics) that they are supposed to be in, I’m always left behind. I know really that knowing to read is very important.’
Multi-grade teaching of reading seemed to lag behind the expectations of what learners should learn, using mono-grade teaching as a benchmark. Hence, despite having the knowledge of what and how to teach reading to learners in these multi-grade classes, achieving the required level of competence was a major challenge for them. The implications are that these learners lag behind in their expected learning, the time to teach the learners is not sufficient and the coverage of teaching is far less than expected in a mono-grade class.
To explore the curriculum knowledge that these teachers possessed, we had to clearly understand the terminology ‘curriculum knowledge’. Shulman (
Ms L said:
‘I am confused … [
Defaulting to intuitive teaching, an aspect of teacher agency, is an adaptive strategy used by the multi-grade teachers. Deciding what to teach, how to teach and when to teach is the adaptive competence that these teachers have developed in order to facilitate teaching and learning. Furthermore, traditional teaching methods that they were exposed to as trainee teachers formed the bedrock for these teachers to enable the minimal teaching that was possible in the classroom context. Repetition and rhyme were examples of traditional teaching methods that were used by these teachers.
Curriculum knowledge involves many programmes in which teachers have to engage (Ball, Thames and Phelps
The Handbook on Teaching Reading in the Early Years and the National Reading Strategy (DoE
Environmental print comprises those written texts that the child sees in his everyday life such as billboards, advertisements, cartoons, food packaging and clothing labels (DoE
Miss K. said:
‘I first acquired knowledge for teaching reading through my engagement with learners; I developed my own ways of understanding how they learn to read and what techniques to apply when learners are behaving in a certain way. Angikaze ngiyisebenzise lendlela oyishoyo (I have never used this strategy you are speaking about), but what about this situation we are … multi-grading, it is really hard, our learners are very poor in reading, we do not offer them enough time for it anyway …’
Rural communities are generally not exposed to massive advertisement and billboards and even if there are some, most would be printed in English. Kebeje (
In the absence of supportive elements within the environment, these teachers relied on intuition, experience and situational appraisal, which were not based on any sound pedagogical principles and theories. Knowledge of what is to be taught was evident; however, their situational appraisal skills informed their teaching practice and their adaptive skills were reinforced over several cycles of their teaching. Multi-grade classes do offer these teachers opportunities to teach a cohort of learners over a 2-year period. Hence, they do have the opportunity of a second cycle of teaching. Based on his research in the Amathole District, Brown (
According to the Handbook on Teaching Reading in the Early Years (Department of Education [DoE]
Furthermore, Miss K adds:
‘Yes, it is easy teaching reading using this method but while helping the other group some of the learners find this to be a good time to misbehave.’
In a classroom that is multi-graded, teachers prefer to use shared reading as all learners are engaged in the reading activity simultaneously. Hugo (
The use of a single large book for shared reading worked for these teachers. The different learning expectation for each of the grades in the multi-grade class was made possible by observable variances. For example, word reading and picture reading formed the variances among grade 1 and grade R, respectively.
Independent reading demands setting aside time that is used exclusively for reading. When reading independently, each learner is expected to read material or a book that interests him or her individually. According to the National Reading Strategy (DoE
Participants were asked whether they set aside time for learners to drop everything and read and give reports to the class or group.
Miss K said:
‘Yes, we do have that period and learners are really trying, but the problem is with the reading resources, we don’t have them here in our school.’
Miss L said:
‘I always try with my learners but they are still young, they need my help because we don’t have resources. They end up reading one and the same books and find that others are suitable for a certain grade and not the other.’
The greatest challenge to independent reading in the school was the lack of resources and the inconsistent supply of new reading materials. Moreover, rural learners have very little access to books in their homes. For these reasons, it was difficult for these teachers to use this form of pedagogy on an ongoing basis. The learners would have read most of the books that would be available to them. Repeat reading of the same text would result in boredom, disruptive behaviour among the learners and no growth in knowledge for the learners. Furthermore, teachers found it difficult to distribute the available books among the learners in a manner that would support learning. Distribution of limited reading material became a technical exercise merely to ensure that the learners would have something to read. This negated the need for appropriate and age-related reading material. This contextual appraisal of resources and the implications of repeat reading of the same texts led these teachers to pay less attention to this strategy for teaching reading; therefore, it was not done as frequently as required.
The National Reading Strategy (DoE
Participants showed much interest in this method as they indicated that although they were teaching in multi-grade classes, working with texts using this method was viable.
Miss K said:
‘I really like this method of teaching reading and my learners like it too. It is useful even to those learners who are in the other grade because they all read along. We read stories together.’
Miss L said:
‘This is a very good method in our situation. We all read, both grades read simultaneously. Their vocabulary increases and the way words are pronounced in their Home Language also develop.’
These teachers believed that reading aloud was shown to benefit learners in multi-grade contexts; therefore, it was a favoured approach to teaching reading in a multi-grade classroom. Younger learners benefit from acquiring more vocabulary and the appropriate pronunciation of different words. Older learners also benefit from this approach as they would have had this opportunity in their previous year of schooling and the repeat process helps reinforce their learning. Furthermore, this is one opportunity in which the whole class can participate without the teacher making any differentiation in the teaching strategy or the teaching content. The reading aloud teaching exercise, thus focuses on a technical issue of word pronunciation and word acquisition rather than on comprehension of reading.
Drawing from the lesson observation presented in the introduction of this article and from the interviews with the participants, it was clear that several action steps were required to teach reading in a multi-grade class. The use of rhyme to re-cap the previous day’s work was a useful strategy used by the teacher to do two things. Firstly, it was used as a way of reminding the learners of what they had learnt the previous day, and secondly, it was used as a strategy to bring the class to order so that the new lesson could start in a disciplined manner. Other strategies that were used by the teacher to focus the learners’ attention included the use of a large reading book so that the learners could see the book and its pictures clearly. Hence, the choice of the book was an important consideration in the teaching of reading in this multi-grade classroom. Word reading and picture reading were intended as differentiation strategies between the two grades in this class, and this was made possible by the use of flashcards and pictures. The flashcards with words targeted the grade 1 learners while the large pictures of animals targeted grade R learners.
Timetable considerations of what needs to be taught, how the content should be taught and how long the teacher should spend on teaching a content was not of material benefit to the teacher and therefore not adhered to. Contextual realities, the nature of learners and what content was possible to teach formed the basis of teacher appraisal that informed their teaching practice. Teacher agency and their adaptive skills were strategies relied on by these multi-grade teachers in facilitating teaching and learning in their classes. External inputs into teaching of reading within a multi-grade classroom in a rural school are clearly something that may not assist these teachers. One has to immerse oneself in such teaching situations and learn by experience as a way of gaining knowledge through practice.
These teachers relied on adapting teaching strategies to the situation. For example, oscillating between standing and sitting was one way of making the teacher visible and acknowledging the presence of learners in the teaching process as was observed in the lesson taught by one teacher. Other strategies included the whole class being interspersed by grade-based emphasis during the lesson. When and how one should do this is largely by trial and error developed through experience over time. Use of diverse learning materials and activities during the lesson and encouraging learners to imagine what would happen as the story unfolds are additional strategies that assisted teachers in teaching reading in a context-deprived situation.
Teacher development, curriculum support and curriculum structure were clearly lacking for these teachers, suggesting that they had to rely on their professionalism or teacher agency to teach in such teaching contexts. Campbell (
A curriculum for multi-grade teaching is a sophistication that requires a careful assessment of potentiality of achievement across content, context, pedagogy and teacher competence. Hence, a loaded content curriculum is futile in achieving nationally set outcomes in these contexts. Having more specific outcomes of learning within a multi-grade class and of rural school education will reduce the stress of teachers and learners, thereby creating a context of exploration and adaptation, developed through experience over time that will provide appropriate and quality education relative to these learners. Professionalism in their teaching practices will take on a more nuanced approach to teacher development and can be sustained if rapid teacher turnover in these contexts is stemmed.
In this study, we have explored the situational realities of teaching reading in foundation-phase multi-grade classrooms through the lens of two foundation-phase teachers. Clearly, the realities of multi-grade teaching through this case study are complex, the teacher being the central influencing factor in mediating teaching and learning. Teacher agency has been identified as crucial in making adaptive decisions, which were based on the intersection of formal knowledge, situational knowledge and experiential knowledge that the teachers have acquired over time. Accountability and meeting all learning objectives were marginalised in their teaching practices as they had to take pedagogical decisions that made sense in the situation.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
J.M. provided the empirical evidence and the literature review emanating from her Masters dissertation under the supervision of L.R. L.R. provided the analysis, theorising, structuring and conceptualising of this article.