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…

Classroom readiness and the attendant theory-practice disjunction remains a key concern of policy makers, stakeholders and graduate teachers themselves. Links between the theoretical knowledge that preservice teachers gain during initial teacher education (ITE) courses and the practical learning of their school placements need to be strengthened…

This chapter describes an innovative method of curriculum design that is based on combining phenomenographic research, and the associated variation theory of learning, with the notion of disciplinary threshold concepts to focus specialised design attention on the most significant and difficult parts of the curriculum. The method involves three…

New stakeholders and new roles for old stakeholders have emerged with the development of entrepreneurial universities. A new systemic framework is therefore required which includes these various stakeholders and their goals and thus gives a clear picture of the process of entrepreneurship encouragement and business development support (EE&BDS).…

This case study presents a descriptive portrait of how one general mathematics teacher transformed her classes from a computational to a conceptual orientation. The outcomes of the transformation for student learning and instruction are discussed. The findings suggest student gains in computational competence, mathematical effort, and attitude via…

In this publication, one of a series of six for the Consumer Education Materials (CEMP), form and focus are given to skills emphasized at the elementary school level which parallel consumer competencies. The case studies are organized in two sections. The first section, case studies of interdisciplinary programs, examines a variety of approaches…