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This paper reports on the South African findings from an international mixed methods study between the LEGO Foundation, Dubit and the Universities of Sheffield (England) and Cape Town (South Africa) on young children's learning with digital technology. The findings of the study, the first of its kind in South Africa, show the consistency of qualities and experience of play, but also reveal socio-economic, linguistic, ethnic, gender and racial inequalities in the play environments of both groups of 3-11-year-olds. Yet, despite these structural inequalities, the play ecologies of children in resource-constrained environments show their creativity within the digital/non-digital environment. The paper discusses some of the analytical tools used and the geo-political issues raised, and considers these in conjunction with selected data. We conclude that the different socio-cultural conditions and geo-political realities offer new insights about the role global education research can play in helping combat structural inequalities in resource-constrained environments.

Background: Given the comprehensively documented literacy crisis in South Africa and the gaps in what is known about the effective teaching of reading and writing in schools, high-quality literacy research is a priority. Objectives: This article evaluates South African research from two annotated bibliographies on reading in African languages at home language level (2004-2017) and South African research on teaching reading in English as a first additional language (2007-2018). It also aims to provide guidelines for addressing these weaknesses. Methods: Examples of 70 quantitative and qualitative research studies from the annotated bibliographies were critically analysed, identifying key weaknesses in the research as a whole and examples of excellent quality. Results: Weaknesses evident in the research reviewed, suggested greater consideration is needed to lay sound methodological foundations for quality literacy research. Three methodological issues underlying local literacy research that require greater attention are research design, selection and use of literature and research rigour. High-quality research examples are referenced but, for ethical reasons, examples of what we consider to be flawed research are described generally. Guidelines are offered for addressing these pitfalls that, in our view, contribute to research of limited quality. Since many universities require submission of a journal article as a requirement for postgraduate students, preparation for such an article is considered. Conclusion: While this article is not intended to be a comprehensive guide, we hope it is useful to supervisors, postgraduate students and early career researchers currently undertaking, or planning to undertake, literacy research and to writing for publication.

The Grade 2 learner results of the Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS) randomised control trial (RCT) in the North West province showed that the structured pedagogic intervention model that included instructional coaching, lesson plans, and quality learning materials was more cost-effective than a similar intervention model that excluded coaching. These results are read against the growing body of literature that questions the value of RCTs in identifying mechanisms of change. For this reason, two small-scale qualitative case studies were undertaken to identify the difficulty in detecting workings of classroom practice that RCTs cannot show. Three mechanisms of change: the organisation of space, time, and implementation of routines drawn from the work of Foucault, were analysed to interpret observed changes to teacher practice and some of the weaknesses in the EGRS programme.

Inclusive education is a global rights-based response to educational exclusion. It is communicated through a range of modalities, but analysis predominantly focuses on discourses constituted in written texts. Systematic research is needed to understand the discursive ensembles constituted by the visual mode. Our interest is in images of inclusive education that are available online and sourced via a Google images search. Using a critical approach to visual analysis, we conducted a visual content analysis and a multimodal discourse analysis. Four prominent discourses of inclusive education are evident: discourses of diversity, childhood, connection, and celebration. Education is a discursive absence. Each discourse reflects ideas of the field, but together these images present a distorted view of inclusive education and trivialise its concerns. This raises questions about the extent to which images can adequately capture the complexity and import of notions of access, equity and social justice.

Refugee education has become an issue of national and international concern as the numbers of refugees rise globally. In a world where global issues such as forced migration are communicated and consumed through the visual mode, understanding how discursive agendas are constituted visually is important. This paper explores the representations of Refugee Education, toggled with Refugees and Education with a focus on images available from a Google Images search. The analysis is framed by critical visual literacy, with the assumption that visual images are embedded in wider sociocultural practices and ideologies. Images of Refugee Education depict impoverished, teacher-centred classrooms, restricted knowledge and a docile population. Toggling with images of Refugees emphasises the racial otherness of refugee students, their numbers, and schooling as the means to contain the discursively constructed representations of refugees-as-threat. Toggling with Education emphasises Refugee Education as merely an issue of access, rather than quality, inclusive or lifelong learning as envisaged in Sustainable Development Goal 4. We conclude that images of refugee education undermine the quest for a compassionate inclusive education for refugees of all ages and that caution and critique are needed in the consumption of images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications (MRTEQ) document outlined by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) envisages a particular type of teacher. These teachers need to be, amongst other things, reflective, committed, critical practitioners with sound content knowledge (DHET 2011). It is with this in mind that a remark made by a foundation phase teacher in Limpopo raised several questions for the research team investigating communities of practice in the foundation phase. The fact that teachers considered themselves to be "workshopped", where something is done to them, is in opposition to the kind of teacher envisaged by government, which sees teachers as pivotal to educational transformation. This paper unpacks the implications of teachers constructing themselves as "workshopped" and its relation to workshops as vehicles through which knowledge is acquired. Using Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics (SFL), two instances of this statement used by teachers are analysed. We consider how the mode of the workshop currently presented as a form of professional development is inimical to knowledge acquisition and how it may even negatively impact a teacher's ability to reflect on pedagogical gaps.

Advances in technology, changes in communication practices, and the imperatives of the workplace have led to the repositioning of the role of writing in the global context. This has implications for the teaching of writing in schools. This article focuses on the argumentative essay, which is a high-stakes genre. A sample of work from one Grade 10 student identified as high performing in a township school in Cape Town (South Africa) is analysed. Drawing on the work of Ormerod and Ivanic, who argue that writing practices can be inferred from material artifacts, as well as critical discourse analysis, we show that the argumentative genre is complex, especially for novice first additional language English writers. This complexity is confounded by the conflation of the process and genre approaches in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document. Based on the analysis we discuss the implications of planning, particularly in relation to thinking and reasoning, the need to read in order to write argument and how social and school capital are insufficient without explicit instruction of the conventions of this complex genre. These findings present some insights into particular input needed to improve writing pedagogy for specific genres.

This paper explores a multidimensional mentorship model implemented between lecturers from the foundation phase at the Wits School of Education and four master's students from the University of Limpopo, as part of the Departments of Education's research initiative to strengthen foundation phase teacher education. Using three critical incidents, we interrogate mentors' experiences of their mentoring practices. Two sets of literature, mentoring and social capital are used as a lens for analysing these incidents. Initial findings suggest the relationship has moved from the initiation to cultivation stage (Kram, 1985; Ragins & Kram, 2007). But, cultural preconceptions, implicit assumptions and institutional practices can impede or enhance information flows and trust. It is argued that weak ties characterised by mentors' heterogeneity is a strength that has resulted in growing professional development. Through a process of reflection-on-practice, we have begun to think of ourselves as a fledging community of practice. This opens up possibilities for the larger research project.

Although the literature on picture books is extensive, very little work focuses on how they are integrated into teacher education curricula. We contend that effective use of these resources requires an understanding of the relationship between preservice teachers' conceptions of children and of picture books. Second-year South African undergraduate preservice teachers were asked to review 12 picture books of their own choosing, discuss some of these books with children, and write reflections on what they learnt from the children's responses. Two hundred and thirty picture-book reviews and 62 reflections were analyzed. The data show that preservice teachers' criteria for choosing books were disrupted by children's views. We conclude by considering our own assumptions about our students and the implications for teacher education curriculum design.

Despite critical literacy being identified as a desired outcome of South Africa's new curriculum statement, in reality this does not seem to be occurring (DoE 2002, pp. 5, 11). Critical literacy is one way in which spaces of contestation and resistance can be opened up. In order to do so it is necessary to provide students with basic literacy skills. Currently in South Africa, this does not seem to be the case as many children are not reading at a minimal level. One of the reasons for this is that children have little access to mother tongue education. This article explores one of many challenges that inhibit the construction of language classes as spaces of resistance: the institutional constraints that arise from of South Africa's National Language Policy and schools individual language policies. It considers the failure of the National Language in Education Policy in its calls for mother tongue instruction and a multilingual approach. Using a critical approach, the article analyses the language policy and research instrument from one desegregated Johannesburg school. The analysis shows that the status quo of previous policies remains. The hegemony of English is entrenched at the expense of other languages and a multilingual constituency. This is expressed in a discourse of deficit. The construction of a survey to elicit parent views merely gives the illusion of choice revealing the disempowerment of parents. We argue that such an analysis is crucial in understanding views on language and language teaching that are entrenched in schools. It is also important that schools are supported in the construction of policies. If schools are unable to be critical of their own language practices, then it is unlikely that classrooms will be spaces of critical contestation. (Contains 3 footnotes and 4 tables.)

This article considers a noted trend by teacher educators at a South African University where student teachers seem to have very little connection with children they teach on their teaching practicals. This lack of engagement and ability to see individual children that are being taught and respond to them is the focus of the paper. The paper considers how such a circumstance may come into being by looking at socio-historical practices in education through a Foucauldian lens using the notions of government and governmentality. Ways in which people were managed and dominant forms of knowledge and being are in tension with curricular shift that construct children as competent and able. It then proposes that within teacher education a shift of perspective is needed in enabling students to "look" at the children in their classrooms in a deeper, more engaged way. This draws from research methods that use observation as for researchers to understand participants through their eyes (Hatch A, "Doing qualitative research in education settings," State University of New York Press, Albany, 2002). Three examples are given from classroom observations as a way of exploring what close observations of children can teach us about children's needs and interests. The paper concludes with a general framework students might draw on that places children as the focus in the classroom.