Elephants and the Grass Wapiganapo tembo nyasi huumia. (Swahili) When elephants fight, the grass (reeds) gets hurt.5
The demands of postgraduate supervision are huge for supervisors. These demands can however be lessened by taking advantage of the online operated information and communication technology (ICT). Supervising online provides important tools and/or applications which are the 21st century era enablers of supervision especially in an open and distance learning (ODL) institution such as University of South Africa (UNISA). The supervisor-student working relationship, however, presents a human aspect that should take precedence over technology and thus guide how technology can be used in supervision. It is in this light that this reported study inquired into the supervisors' knowledge of the technological tools and their stance in the use of (online) technology in their supervision given the human aspect. UNISA's hundred-and-twentynine supervisors who are attached to College of Education (CEDU) were investigated in this study with respect to their supervision characteristics and exposure to technology and level of knowledge of the technological tools. That was followed up by face-to-face interviews with seven supervisors to determine their stance about the use of technology given the human aspect of students. The findings showed that the supervisors are knowledgeable in terms of the tools or applications such as MS Word, myUnisa and Discussion Forum. Furthermore, the findings indicated that there is a need for the training of other supervisors with respect to the use of certain online applications and/or tools. The most important finding is that supervisors value the human aspect such thatthough supervisors are positive about the role of technology in supervision, the human aspect should enjoy precedence in their supervision of students.
This study applied factor analysis for exploring technological knowledge of beginner and veteran Office Data Processing (ODP) teachers at Further Education and Training (FET) or Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges in South Africa. These ODP teachers use Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the technology-enhanced classrooms. The Mishra & Koehler (2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework was extended by replacing Technological Knowledge with Procedural Functional Knowledge (PrFK) to realise the PrFPACK theoretical framework that enabled the researchers to holistically explore the contextual technological knowledge of teachers in the digital classroom environment. We developed an inventory of 65 comprehensive measures based on the PrFPACK framework and validated the inventory on a dataset of responses from 107 ODP teachers. The findings of this study generally revealed that Procedural Functional Content Knowledge is the most important factor in explaining the technological knowledge of ODP teachers.
The phenomenological study on which this article is based inquired into Grade 9 Technology teachers' professional development through workshops on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as well as their training needs. The workshops took place in Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Data were gathered from two groups of teachers who attended the workshops on two different days, but who were trained in the same way and were subsequently conveniently selected to participate in the study. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with these teachers and the workshop facilitator was also interviewed. The training manual was scrutinised, the facilitation of the workshops was observed and a follow-up visit was done at two schools where the workshop participants taught. The findings revealed that while the teachers felt that the workshops developed them, such training did not fully meet their needs or expand their PCK repertoires. This study will inform the Mathematics, Science and Technology Academy (MSTA), which is tasked with offering in-service training to subject teachers in the province, about whether the workshops meet the needs of the attendees, thereby possibly necessitating a review of the training.
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