This paper reports on the use of out-of-school everyday contexts in Namibian science classrooms. This use is portrayed against the backdrop of an explicit educational philosophy of learner-centred teaching. Data were collected through audio-taped teacher-learner interactions and non-participant field notes in 29 junior and senior science classes taught by 12 teachers in six schools. An existing typology was applied to classify episodes of use of everyday contexts and identify teachers' pedagogic strategies for their use. The results show that more everyday contexts are used in junior secondary than in senior secondary classes, that only a limited range of types of everyday contexts are used at both levels, and that their use often follows theoretical exposition or teacher questioning. These findings are related to three interpretations of learnercentred teaching. Recommendations for a fuller implementation of learner-centred teaching are made.

Incidences of prescnbed textbook usage in science classrooms in 1Vamzbia have been analysed using an approach adapted from linguistic analysis. Aspects of pedagogic purpose, text genre, and the social interaciions between teachers and learners were used to characterise teacher and Ieamer engagement with textbooks, and thus caregon' se their usage in relatioN to a national policy of learner-centred edu(anon. Results ind1cale a reacher dominated textbook use and a low Jr�qwuc_ 1' and resrncrt•d range of texrbook references per lesso11, u.1ith some 40% of the Semor Se(,mdwy dasws obsen•ed mahng no use of their uxtbook in class. The major uses of textbooks in class w.:re for diagrams and daw, and to venfy factual information Occasionall y, questwns m textbooks were used as homework to rest and/or co11solidate knowledge. Pupill-rarely mitiated a reference ro a rexrboa!?. It is suggesred that if lear11ers are ro benefit fully from the mvestment m textbooks then their teachers need to be helped to use the resource in more construaic;e ways.