This paper reports the findings of a descriptive survey research that explored secondary school students' experiences with mathematics remote learning during the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) school closure. The study involved 367 students of ages 13 to 21 selected from six secondary schools in Kitwe district of Zambia using the cluster random sampling method. Using a mixed-methods research approach, quantitative and qualitative data were merged to provide a comprehensive analysis of the main findings in the context of the existing literature, the government's response to COVID-19 school closure, and the challenges associated with remote learning during that time. Research findings show that more than 56% of the respondents did not have sufficient access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), electricity, and internet services. Most of these respondents also held a belief that mathematics is a subject that is best learned with face-to-face interactions between the teacher and students, and among students. These results suggest a need for the education systems in Zambia and other similar contexts to put up infrastructure that supports the blended and online learning models during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study sought to measure secondary science teachers' level of commitment to traditional culture in Zimbabwe and how this orientation is related to their beliefs concerning science instructional ideology. The study involved 63 in-service science teachers studying for the bachelor of education degree at the University of Zimbabwe. The science teachers in this study maintain a fairly traditional posture with regard to aspects of traditional authority, religion, view of nature, and social change. They show a much stronger shift away from tradition with regard to sex roles, causality, and problem solving. Their scores of commitment to indigenous culture were positively and significantly correlated to traditional noninquiry ideology preference scores but not to inquiry instructional ideology preference scores. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Several studies have shown that high school science teachers base their teaching on what professors of college freshman science expect, and that, in some instances, advanced high school courses are needlessly similar to college freshman courses. In order to gain insight of college science professors' expectations and perceptions on selected goals and outcomes of science education, a survey instrument was developed and mailed to 123 heads/coordinators of freshman chemistry in U.S. state and land grant colleges and universities that offer a graduate degree program in chemistry. The results demonstrated that although the coordinators were positive about many science education goals and outcomes they did not value aspects related to societal issues, and no differences among them existed when the results were analyzed according to demographic subgroups such as age and teaching experience. They perceived high school graduates as possessing inadequate skills and perceived measures to improve precollege science education requiring collaboration of precollege and college faculty positively. The implications for science education were that college chemistry professors place values different from those of science educators on some pertinent goals and outcomes of science teaching, a situation that is not helpful to reforming precollege science education.
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