Teaching Mathematics during the COVID-19 Lockdown in a Context of Historical Disadvantage

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic widely affected education across the world and engendered unprecedented scenarios that required expeditious responses. In South Africa, the pandemic came on top of pre-existing inequalities in the education system. Using a qualitative research method of exploratory and descriptive nature, this study engaged a social justice framework to explore the teaching and learning of mathematics during the COVID-19 lockdown in a context of historical disadvantage. A sample of twenty-three Grade 12 mathematics teachers at various public secondary schools in Gauteng, South Africa was used in the study. The teachers were selected through purposive sampling. A Google-generated open-ended questionnaire and follow-up telephonic interviews were used to collect data. Data were analysed thematically in five steps. The findings revealed that the WhatsApp platform is a valuable tool that can support the teaching and learning of mathematics beyond the classroom in the contexts of historical disadvantage. The findings also provided insights into how mathematics teachers became learners themselves during emergency remote teaching (ERT) as they had to adapt to digital teaching, find solutions to unfamiliar problems and acquire knowledge from a larger mathematics education community around the globe. The article discusses these findings and teachers’ challenges of transitioning from traditional face-to-face classrooms to ERT and how they were addressed. At the time of publishing the article, most learners in South Africa had started going to school on a rotational basis. Nonetheless, the study reported in this article is of importance as ERT in the context of historical disadvantage has foregrounded issues of inequality in the South African education system that must be dealt with urgently.

Global emergency remote education in secondary schools during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In a study by Langansan (2020), social media helped break down barriers between teachers, students and parents, as the teacher created Facebook groups for each class, creating announcements of work due and had group chats for teachers and parents to keep lines of communication open. However, despite the reported benefits of using Facebook Live for conducting synchronous lessons, adequate internet connectivity was an issue in some cases (e.g., Chirinda et al, 2021) and many teachers opted for WhatsApp 7 instead (Lawrence & Fakuade, 2021).…”

“…Similar methods were used for Drama performances and to rehearse dialogues and presentations (Education Scotland, 2021). In other subjects, personal conversations with students were found to be a powerful way for teachers to informally check student understanding (Chirinda et al, 2021;Kaden, 2020).…”

“…Within these applications breakout rooms were used to undertake inquiry-based group work (Baptista et al, 2020), work on experiments (Kelley, 2020), develop interactive ePortfolios (Weinhandl et al, 2021), conduct online debates (Yan, 2021), assess work with peers (Education Scotland, 2021), or revise and edit work (Turchi et al, 2020). Several studies highlighted a particular focus on student discussions; for example, by building on literature and using 'Dialogic Literary Gatherings' to listen and learn from each other online (Ãlvarez-Guerrero et al, 2020) or by the teacher choosing discussion topics that encouraged social engagement (Chirinda et al, 2021). The increased focus on student social interaction was likely a deliberate effort by teachers to counteract the social isolation students faced during the pandemic.…”

Learning Mathematics of Financial Operations during the COVID-19 Era: An Assessment with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling

“…Nevertheless, the entry of the COVID-19 on the scene has meant a redefinition of the student-professor relationship compared to before the pandemic [9]. Hence, the teaching of this field of knowledge given the current scenario has been denominated as a "Historical Disadvantage" by Chirinda et al [10]. In fact, compared to very recent times in which the evaluation of mathematics learning support could only take the face-to-face mode into account in daily teaching [11], the difficulties caused by the pandemic have represented a disruptive phenomenon with respect to traditional teaching, and, even more so in the teaching of mathematics, since it has resulted not only in the quasi-obligatory decision to opt for online teaching but also in the implementation of practically any element of support coming from the new technologies [12].…”

“…In fact, compared to very recent times in which the evaluation of mathematics learning support could only take the face-to-face mode into account in daily teaching [11], the difficulties caused by the pandemic have represented a disruptive phenomenon with respect to traditional teaching, and, even more so in the teaching of mathematics, since it has resulted not only in the quasi-obligatory decision to opt for online teaching but also in the implementation of practically any element of support coming from the new technologies [12]. In this sense, online teaching of mathematics has been successfully introduced in all educational stages or cycles such as primary school [13], secondary education [10,12,[14][15][16], or at the university level, where these types of initiatives can be found around the world at university systems of countries that are geographically distant and sociocultural heterogeneous, such as the United States [17], Indonesia [18], South Africa [19], or Slovakia [20]. It follows from these facts that the teaching of mathematics from the advent of the COVID-19 onwards is likely to be restricted to automated teaching such that humans will have to limit themselves to interacting with all kinds of technological means [21].…”