In this article, we report the findings of a qualitative, collective case study exploring the academic experiences of six grade 11 gifted students in two schools in diverse socio-economic communities in rural Western South Africa. Gifted students represent an important component of a nation's intellectual capital. They possess the qualities needed…

The changing societal context in South Africa (SA) has necessitated curriculum reform to deal with the challenges of education, from apartheid to democracy, with the aim of promoting active citizenship education. The aim of the paper is thus to illuminate to what extent the Grade 11 Life Orientation (LO) curriculum prepares learners for active…

Creating effective pathways for students to transition from high school to college or career is immensely important and, although challenging, some have developed promising approaches. This case study examined how formal and informal leaders in an urban high school and district collaborated to implement a college and career academy model,…

This study explored the relationship between teachers' content knowledge and their pedagogical skills, and reports on that relationship in the teaching of Assembly Drawing (AD) in a South African context. Given that Engineering Graphics Design (EGD) learners perform poorly in the AD section of the matriculation examination, we need to understand…

The purpose of this multiple instrumental case study was to explore approaches of four high school instrumental music educators assuming the role of facilitative teacher in responding to challenges affecting the social and emotional well-being of their students. This study utilized the framework of social emotional learning as a lens to view the…

This article examines the discursive positions South African high school students take up in response to a teaching intervention that invites them to historicize their identities. It thus seeks to contribute to the growing body of education research on how to meaningfully engage young people in post-conflict societies with their recent past.…

The transition from school to the workplace has been identified as challenging for at-risk youth who have already disengaged from learning and feel disenfranchised in the context of school. Work-based education (WBE), including co-operative education, has been recognized in recent years as an effective strategy for enabling at-risk youth to…

This research aimed to examine students' perceptions of their life skills while attending project-based learning (PBL) schools. The study focused on three questions including: (1) What are students' perceptions of their development of life skills in project-based learning schools?; (2) In what ways, if any, do students perceive an increase in…

The authors argue for creating a context within education where teachers can utilize critical pedagogical practices to explicate the hidden curriculum, explore students' sense of self and embodied identities, and engage students to empower themselves to speak up and take action about issues of embodiment and their understanding of social…

Developing an appropriate competence in reading in English as a second language is a key factor for subsequent academic success. This study investigated second language reading anxiety of secondary school students. A questionnaire was distributed to 72 female students and focus-group interviews were conducted with 19 volunteer students. Overall…

Sustained professional development can support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) reform. The authors describe a 3-year study of sustained professional development for 3 diverse urban schools across the salient factors of fidelity of implementation of project-based learning, development of professional learning communities,…

The purpose of this study was to explore Grade 11 students' perceptions of programs related to the prevention of alcohol use in high school settings through an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data elicited from student questionnaires (n=452) and focus groups. It was found that students felt a need for increased information on alcohol…

Close reading is an instructional practice that has gained attention of late. It involves reading a complex text, annotation, and repeatedly reading to answer text-dependent questions. Although there are a number of recommendations for the use of close reading, there has not been a systematic analysis of student or teacher perceptions of this…

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and present the status of student synthesis with color coded formula writing for grade level six through twelve, and to make recommendations for educators to teach writing structure through a color coded formula system in order to increase classroom engagement and lower students' affect. The thesis first…

Movement skill competence is important to organised youth physical activity participation, but it is unclear how adolescents view this relationship. The primary aim of this study was to explore adolescents' perception of the relationship between movement skills, physical activity and sport, and whether their perceptions differed according to…