Infusing Competencies into Foundation Phase Literacy Education: The Competency-based Learning Programme

This article explores one aspect of research conducted in 2020 as part of the Sandbox Schools Project. The Sandbox is a multi-year research project that seeks to explore what “education for a fast-changing world” can look like in South African public schools. We have published a full compendium of short articles on various interventions at the schools, which you can access here.

In the context of what some have termed a “reading crisis” in South African basic education, the Sandbox Schools project seeks to understand how we can deliberately and systematically infuse social, emotional, and cognitive competencies into the teaching of foundational literacy skills. Our view is that these two imperatives – building foundational skills and developing competencies for the fast-changing world – can work in tandem and complement one another, towards the ultimate aim of equipping all learners in South Africa to successfully navigate life in the 21^st century.

As part of our work to understand how this could happen in practice, the Sandbox team designed and launched the Competency-based Learning Programme (CLP) intervention for Grade 1 Home Language in 2020. The key competencies that the CLP seeks to inculcate include: critical thinking, collaboration, mindfulness, ethics, growth mindset, and meta-cognition.

A bridge between present and future

The CLP seeks to bridge the gap between where the system currently is and where we believe it could be, in terms of competency development in the classroom. Drawing on research about changes in teachers’ behaviour and attitudes over time (Guskey, 1986), the programme embeds specific competencies into a structured, CAPS-aligned tool that many public school teachers are relatively familiar with (structured learning programmes – SLPs), thereby providing teachers with the necessary scaffolding to deliberately infuse these competencies into their teaching.

SLPs have experienced positive results in recent years as an approach to improving classroom practice and learner outcomes (Department of Basic Education, 2017; Fleish et al., 2016). The CLP incorporates these evidence-based literacy methodologies, with the addition of deliberate routines, methodologies, and themes to support the development of selected competencies: critical thinking, collaboration, mindfulness, ethics, growth mindset, and meta-cognition.

Design of the CLP

The CLP consists of:

• Materials:
  • Big Book of themed stories per term
  • Detailed lesson plans
  • Trackers for teachers to document their curriculum coverage
  • Worksheet Pack of independent activities for learners
  • Resource Pack, including flash cards and images aligned to the stories
  • Classroom charts
• Training: Quarterly training for teachers on how to implement the methodologies
• Ongoing support: Virtual or in-person support for teachers

The programme is based on a weekly routine, shown below, which highlights the components that are unique to the Sandbox CLP:

The CLP was implemented in Grade 1 Home Language at the 11 Sandbox Schools: 10 in the Waterberg District of Limpopo, and 1 in Soweto (Funda UJabule Primary, which is the University of Johannesburg’s ‘research school’). The intervention was designed in three Home Languages, namely Sepedi, Setswana, and English. Training was conducted with 48 Grade 1 teachers and Foundation Phase HODs, and 4 Subject Advisors.

Due to the disruptions experienced this year, the first CLP training took place in Term 1 and could not take place again for the remainder of the year. While teachers continued to receive the CLP materials, they taught lessons according to the revised Annual Teaching Plans (ATPs) as part of the DBE’s Education Recovery Plan and were also working according to a rotational timetable whereby learners attended school between one and three times a week.

CLP research activities were also disrupted, and we were unable to conduct much of the planned data collection, including classroom observations and interviews with teachers. We did, however, conduct two surveys and gather informal verbal feedback to understand teachers’ experiences of the initial CLP training and materials, which give us some insight into what teachers thought about the programme and some of their challenges.

Emerging themes and insights

Practical training programme and materials

Teachers’ feedback indicated that one of the most useful aspects of the training programme was that they were shown how to use the materials and apply them in practice: “The workshop was useful because it was practical” (Grade 1 teacher)

Respondents also indicated that the training and materials had real world-applicability to their lived practices of teaching. This feedback aligns with the responses to closed questions in Figures 1 and 2 below, in which all respondents either strongly agreed or agreed that the content and training were organised, easy to follow, helpful, relevant, and well-facilitated.

Simplification of teaching and ‘user-friendly’ materials

Another theme that emerged from teachers’ feedback was the appropriate pitch of the materials for teachers – especially the lesson plans – and what one teacher called their “user-friendly” design, which enabled teachers to navigate and understand the materials relatively easily. Three teachers mentioned that this usability helped to “[make] teaching simple” for them.

Implementation challenges

Experience with other structured learning programmes has shown that, while teachers appreciate the high-quality training sessions and are often motivated to implement the programme afterwards, they encounter challenges in the classroom that can discourage them. Although most respondents to the year-end survey indicated that they feel confident to implement the CLP (see Figure 5 below), they articulated challenges around implementation in the open questions and informal verbal feedback. These challenges included:

• Materials (e.g. shared reading stories) being too difficult or long for learners to cope with, resulting in slower learners falling behind, or in time for teaching of other subjects being eroded; and
• Individual activities being unsuitable for Grade 1 learners as they are considered unable to work independently yet or unable to complete certain tasks.

This feedback aligns with experiences documented through other structured learning programmes globally (Piper & Dubeck, 2021) and locally, which speak to the challenges teachers encounter in mastering the routines and methodologies, understanding the cyclical nature of the programme, managing time, and managing classroom dynamics in large classes.

Focus on reading

When asked what was most helpful about the programme in both the first and second survey, one common theme was the improvement of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge – i.e. knowledge of teaching strategies for Home Language literacy, especially in the area of reading. Particular mention was made of group-guided reading, which is one of the more complex and challenging components of the Home Language weekly routine (Cilliers et al, 2020). Informal feedback from teachers suggests, however, that many of these strategies remain a challenge to implement despite their improved knowledge of the pedagogical practices.

Competency-development

Baseline conversations and surveys of Foundation Phase teachers across the Sandbox Schools indicated a wide variety of perspectives about how teaching and learning should change in the 21^st century. Some teachers mentioned competencies for a changing world, but the majority did not, which indicates a lack of awareness and consensus about these competencies before the introduction of the CLP.

From responses to the CLP survey’s open-ended question, “What did you find useful about this training workshop?”, gains appear to have been made in awareness of and general pedagogical knowledge related to these competencies, as some teachers mentioned appreciating the mindfulness, reflection, and problem-solving activities. However, only a handful of teachers from the Gauteng school mentioned intending to use this knowledge in the classroom, which indicates that the awareness was not necessarily translated into practice for most teachers.

Similarly, in responses to the second survey’s closed questions, teachers reported a transfer of knowledge regarding methodologies like morning mindfulness (see Figure 6 below). Despite these indications, however, these competences were mentioned only once in the second survey’s open-ended questions, and this was in the form of a negative comment: the respondent regarded the morning mindfulness activities as unhelpful.

What can we learn from 2020?

Some initial insights from this preliminary feedback include:

• The programme is helpful for teachers insofar as the materials are easy to understand and the training is practical and relevant to their classroom experience
• The programme appears to have been most successful in increasing pedagogical content knowledge in the content areas of reading and phonics
• Despite apparent gains in pedagogical content knowledge, teachers still seem to face implementation challenges in the classroom, with most citing the complexity and/or length of the stories and learner activities as the main issue
• While there seems to be a growing awareness of competencies among teachers, there is a lack of clarity in understanding what the specific competencies are and how to incorporate them into teaching practice.

When building on these insights, it is important to remember both the context in which the Sandbox project is being implemented – i.e. Quintile 1-3 schools in peri-urban and township areas – as well as the fact that the CLP was not implemented as planned, including a drastic reduction in the training dosage for 2020. Participating teachers, like most South African Foundation Phase teachers, were probably underperforming in terms of equipping learners with the foundational skills of reading and writing. This makes the adoption of the CLPs even more challenging: as well as learning, understanding, and implementing a literacy programme, these teachers had the additional challenge of dealing with competencies in an explicit way. The expected change in behaviours and practice is thus relatively large, and it will likely take place over years of implementation with consistent training, mentoring, and the recognition of improvements in learning over time.

The Sandbox team plans to conduct deeper research on the CLP and its implementation in 2021, which will enable us to gain a richer understanding of teachers’ experiences, and further insight into how we can improve the programme. We are also currently undergoing a critical review of the CLP in collaboration with the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR), a group of local expert teachers, and teachers from the Sandbox Schools with the intention of strengthening the programme. We look forward to developing a deeper understanding over the next few years of the CLP’s potential as a bridge to the future we want.

References

Department of Basic Education. (2017). Summary Report. Results of Year 2 Impact Evaluation: The Early Grade Reading Study. Pretoria: Department of Basic Education.

Center for Curriculum Redesign. (2019). Competencies/Subcompetencies framework. https://curriculumredesign.org/framework/

Cilliers, J., Fleisch, B., Kotze, J., Mohohlwane, N., Taylor, S., & Thulare, T. (2020). Can Virtual Replace          In-person Coaching? Experimental Evidence on Teacher Professional Development and       Student Learning in South Africa. Working Paper.

Fleisch, B., & Schöer, V. (2014). Large-scale instructional reform in the Global South: Insights from the mid-point evaluation of the Gauteng primary language and mathematics strategy. South African Journal of Education, 34(3), 1–12.

Guskey, T.R. (1986). Staff Development and the Process of Teacher Change. Educational Researcher.

Piper, B., & Dubeck, M. (2021). Structured Pedagogy: Literature Review. Science of Teaching for  Foundational Literacy and Numeracy. RTI International.

Spaull, N., & Pretorius, E. (2019). Still Falling at the First Hurdle: Examining Early Grade Reading in South Africa. In N. Spaull and J. D. Jansen (eds.), South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality. Springer.