Using semiotic resources to teach and assess scientific concepts in a bilingual Namibian primary school: A socio-cultural discourse analysis
type: CreativeWork
description: The Namibian school system subscribes to a separatist language policy and ideology that advocates the use of monolingual English as Medium of instruction (MO1) as well as conducting all written assessments from Grade 4 and beyond in English. Despite Namibia being a multilingual country, the Namibian monolingualist Language in Education Policy (LiEP) makes no provision to accommodate multilingual practices and to fulfill the linguistic needs of learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds, who lack proficiency in English. The language separatist ideologies sanctioned in the Namibian LiEP as well as in science written assessments need further consideration in order to embrace language as an open system that is fluid, evolving, and hybrid. Given the complexities of the language policy and pedagogical challenges of language of instruction choices in the Namibian classrooms, I wanted to investigate how primary school Science teachers and learners meet the demand of the Namibian curriculum of Learner Centered Education (LCE) and the ideologies of monolingualism advocated in the Namibian Language in Education Policy. I undertook a small-scale, ethnographically informed case study approach to examine the nature of discourse employed by a Grade 4 teacher and his learners (aged 10- 12) in a bilingual Namibian classroom as they engaged in science classroom discourse, exploring how these specific discourses support or constrain learners' opportunities to construct scientific meaning. I combined various theoretical resources from a sociocultural approach to language as social practice, Bakhtinian heteroglossia and dialogism, neo-Vygotskian ideas of what constitutes the learning of scientific concepts, together with the recent theorising of dynamic bi/multilingualism to understand this phenomenon in depth. The data include video and audio recordings of lessons, field notes, learning materials, policy document, photographs , interviews, written work (drawing and writing) as we…
abstract: The Namibian school system subscribes to a separatist language policy and ideology that advocates the use of monolingual English as Medium of instruction (MO1) as well as conducting all written assessments from Grade 4 and beyond in English. Despite Namibia being a multilingual country, the Namibian monolingualist Language in Education Policy (LiEP) makes no provision to accommodate multilingual practices and to fulfill the linguistic needs of learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds, who lack proficiency in English. The language separatist ideologies sanctioned in the Namibian LiEP as well as in science written assessments need further consideration in order to embrace language as an open system that is fluid, evolving, and hybrid. Given the complexities of the language policy and pedagogical challenges of language of instruction choices in the Namibian classrooms, I wanted to investigate how primary school Science teachers and learners meet the demand of the Namibian curriculum of Learner Centered Education (LCE) and the ideologies of monolingualism advocated in the Namibian Language in Education Policy. I undertook a small-scale, ethnographically informed case study approach to examine the nature of discourse employed by a Grade 4 teacher and his learners (aged 10- 12) in a bilingual Namibian classroom as they engaged in science classroom discourse, exploring how these specific discourses support or constrain learners' opportunities to construct scientific meaning. I combined various theoretical resources from a sociocultural approach to language as social practice, Bakhtinian heteroglossia and dialogism, neo-Vygotskian ideas of what constitutes the learning of scientific concepts, together with the recent theorising of dynamic bi/multilingualism to understand this phenomenon in depth. The data include video and audio recordings of lessons, field notes, learning materials, policy document, photographs , interviews, written work (drawing and writing) as we…
author: Set, Beatha Ndahafa
keywords: Education
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:33Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: School of Education

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/36121