Chapters authored
From Comfort Zone to Reality: A Community Engagement to Enhance Student’s Academic Performance
The involvement of universities in communities is not a new phenomenon, as they have been known to engage their surrounding communities by expanding knowledge beyond the institutional confinements. This paper reports on the feedback received from the learners detailing their perceptions of the community engagement work done by the UJ Learning Development through academic study skills workshops to improve the learners’ academic performance. A quantitative approach was used to collect data by means of a feedback questionnaire. The feedback questionnaire was divided into two parts, namely, the biographical details of the participants and the participants’ perceptions of the academic study skills workshops they had attended. The questionnaire was administered to a target population of 302 learners at Ikamva Youth (Ivory Park and Ebony Park branches). Sixty participants were randomly selected from both grade 10 and grade 11 strata; in the last stratum, all the thirty grade 12 participants were considered. The main findings are that the majority of participants indicated that they do apply the skills learnt from the workshops while learning material and content from other subjects. They also indicated that their academic performance had improved from the time they started applying the study skills.
Part of the book: Health and Academic Achievement
Disciplinary Measures: A Survey from Selected Primary Schools
Corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure has been abolished in South African schools since 1994. The chapter is about the views of the teachers on the different disciplinary measures they use as alternative to corporal punishment at the selected primary schools in Tembisa, South Africa. It used a descriptive research design, and it is quantitative in nature. A population of 100 teachers who are based at Tembisa was considered. Probability sampling techniques were used, whereby 28 teachers were sampled. Data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that the majority of teachers had not received any training pertaining to the management of discipline after the abolishment of corporal punishment in Tembisa schools. Teachers view poor academic performance of learners as affected by the lack of proper discipline.
Part of the book: Reimagining New Approaches in Teacher Professional Development