Resultados Equivalent Porous Media(EPM)

The English-isiZulu bilingual glossary was created by the bilingual resource creator and me and made available to all the learners doing the experimental course through hyperlinks in the online course and as a printed page in their homework books. Difficult terms were identified during the online OLICO Youth Fractions course last year when it was run in English with a

75

different group of Grade 7 learners, during which time I made note of words the learners did not understand. I gathered this information by asking learners what some of the terms meant, and noting when learners asked what terms meant. During this time an attempt was made at building a collection of difficult terms, and learners were encouraged to contribute to this by writing down terms they would like a definition for and sticking them on the ‘glossary board’, or by notifying a facilitator when they did not understand a term. This did not work however, as only one learner submitted one term. This could be for a number of reasons, which could include (a) that the glossary building activity was not fully incorporated into the teaching and learning space and was instead seen as an additional task, (b) that learners did not want to expose their lack of understanding, or (c) that learners did not think a glossary would be useful. The terms that were identified last year were included in the glossary and also used as a guideline for which other terms may be difficult and were to be included in the glossary. The intention was to give learners explanations of the terms they encountered in the experimental Fractions course both in English and isiZulu, using familiar context-embedded language as discussed in the theoretical framework. The aim was to give learners the

opportunity to access meanings of terms in whichever language they were more comfortable. The glossary was created as follows:

1. I selected terms from the mathematics course and homework books based on and informed by observations I had made of learners’ understanding of the Fractions course last year.

2. I wrote short definitions in English, similar to an explanation I would give to a learner in class, which would be informed by my experience in the subject which includes reading textbooks, watching videos, attending classes and so on.

3. I then passed this list on to the bilingual resource creator and he gave short definitions in isiZulu, also similar to an explanation he would give to a learner in class. ‘Borrowing’ (Mawonga et al., 2014: 73), that is, using English terms within isiZulu, and

‘paraphrasing’ (Mawonga et al., 2014: 74), that is creating descriptions of the term, were used in the creation of the glossary and the videos. This process was rather basic as the intention is to find a method that is replicable by other teachers with similar linguistic proficiencies and mathematics backgrounds.

4. The project co-founder then uploaded this glossary onto the online bilingual Fractions course, so that whenever learners encountered one of the words from the glossary they could simply click on it and both the English and isiZulu short explanations would pop up.

76

5. I printed these glossaries and attached them to the homework books of all the learners doing the bilingual course, so that they could refer to them while doing their homework.

As is common with DBR, many people were involved in the implementation of the design. Below follows the process of design implementation, from creation to

implementation to review.

Before the creation of the design experiment tests and discussions were held to explore learners’ English and mathematics abilities and learners’ and parents’ attitudes towards different languages in the learning and teaching environments. At the beginning of the year diagnostic mathematics assessments created by the OLICO Youth maths coordinator were conducted with all Grade 7s at OLICO Youth in order to ascertain learners’ existing knowledge. In these assessments it was found that the learners’ mathematical proficiencies were in line with Spaull and Kotze’s (2015: 21) projections outlined in Chapter 1, section 1.2.1.2, and were roughly three grades behind grade level.

Quarterly parents’ meeting are held at OLICO Youth to discuss the term’s programme with the parents and learners. At the first parents’ meeting of 2015 a focus group discussion was also held, in which parents’ attitudes toward learning through English and L1 were discussed.

At the OLICO Youth Winter School, which consisted of intensive mathematics sessions during the June 2015 school holiday preceding the introduction of the Fractions course, all OLICO Youth Grade 7 learners participated in questionnaires (see fig. 61 and Appendix C) around their experiences of the Maths videos and their attitudes towards English and their L1s as LoLTs. After these questionnaires were completed, volunteers conducted focus-group interviews with the learners to further explore their thoughts and attitudes.

The online Fractions course was already in existence from when it ran for the first time in 2014. The OLICO Youth mathematics coordinator created the Fractions videos and content, and the OLICO Youth project co-founder created the online course and uploaded all the content.