hose accessories, tools and items used by the teachers to assist learners in understanding the concepts of the lesson. The authors further declare that there are many types of teaching aids that go beyond a traditional teaching format. (p. 448) These include, but are not limited to, visual, audio and audiovisual media. Based on the different types of teaching aids mentioned, this study is about the use of visual aids or tools in numeracy classrooms. The authors define visual tools as physical objects that are designed to represent explicitly and concretely mathematical skills that are abstract. The study pays particular attention to the teachers' understanding and their practical use of the visual tools to teach early numeracy.The importance of using visual tools is not new in the field of education. Previous studies have shown the significance of visual objects in facilitating teaching and learning in different subjects. Mohamed and Ahmad (2016) focused on the secondary learners' perceptions of the use of visual tools by history teachers and observed that the learners' perceptions were positive and the use of visual tools facilitated their understanding of the history concepts. In another study, King (2018) explored the use of visual objects as tools to understand subject-specific terminologies in life sciences. The results indicated that visual tools helped to facilitate students' understanding of life sciences. These two studies are of different fields and are cited to testify that the use of visual tools facilitates the teaching and learning processes in various subjects. The focus of this Background: Previous studies have shown the significance of visual objects in facilitating teaching and learning in the numeracy classrooms; however, what we do not know is how South African teachers negotiate the use of visual tools. Aim:The aim of this study was to explore teachers' understanding and the use of visual tools in their numeracy classrooms.Setting: This study was conducted in two rural primary schools in Tshwane District, Gauteng. Methods:The study was qualitative in nature and a case study design was followed. Five Foundation Phase teachers were purposively sampled from two primary schools. Open-ended questionnaires were administered to solicit information from the sampled teachers. The collected data were analysed thematically. Results:The findings revealed that the majority of teachers had a limited knowledge of visual numeracy tools, and as such their implementation was restricted to a few familiar ones. This manifested itself in the fact that the majority of teachers (three out of five) mentioned the general use of the visual tools without clearly relating them to their own classroom experiences. Finally, the findings of the study revealed that all the teachers were desperately in need of training on how to use visual tools in their numeracy classrooms. Conclusion:The authors concluded that the teachers' limited knowledge about a variety of visual numeracy tools restricted their utilisation of such tools...
There has been a growing need to advance the use of thermal ablation therapy as a minimally invasive technique in cancer management. Consequently, this study was undertaken to investigate the use of radiofrequency (RF) energy by developing and testing an economical and effective radiofrequency thermal probe that will effectively destroy volumes of pathological tumours by means of hyperthermia. The thermal probe was tested on different tissue samples and evaluated for effective tissue destruction capability. The results show that, at power settings of 20 watts for soft tissue, 13 watts for kidney tissue, 6 watts for liver tissue, 3 watts for brain tissue and 2 watts for lung tissue, the radiofrequency thermal probe effectively destroys volumes of pathological tumours within a temperature range of 50 -100 o C during a 15-minute treatment time
Determining a space for collaborative activities involves the creation of a unique space which encourages reciprocal learning and the creation of products that can benefit all participants. The aim of this article was to explore the experiences of group members in this collaborative space.The group consisted of lecturers from different Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) tasked to create quality open-source materials for teaching and learning Literacy in Foundation Phase at HEIs (coming together and work in one space) in the endeavour to connect and share collaboratively. Selected components of the theories of space suggested by Lefebvre and Soja were employed to explain the data which were gleaned through interviews with all participants in the group. This article makes two important contributions: firstly, it substantively presents a deeper understanding of the experiences of the group in collaborative work and secondly, through the use of a theoretical framework on space, offers insights into the nature of collaboration within diverse spaces.
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