Student learning needs

We in Higher Education are confronted with youth that is growing up in the post-apartheid South Africa. UWC as a particular Higher Education institution was and is still influenced by its historical legacies as well as the links it has to schools established in the apartheid era. Liebowitz (2013: 8) identified the following key elements that influence students’ academic achievements in developing them to become global graduate citizens: financial and material support, their prior education, cultural capital and aspects of identity.

Mathematics students in general have content gaps (Lannin, Webb, Chval, Arbaugh, Hicks, Taylor, Bruton, (2013) accumulated from high school, a lot of times due to poor schooling. Numerous researchers, especially those whose focus on students who come from previously disadvantaged schools, confirm this. These students constitute the majority of the student population at UWC. The extent to the content gap can be identified through pre-tests at the commencement of especially content modules. I can then adapt and pitch my lectures at an acceptable level. As a Mathematics education lecturer, conducting a pre-test in the first week of classes, can give me a picture of the needs of the students assigned to me. Through the analysis of different assessments after marking, I highlight to tutors where to focus on weekly as I am aware of the major misconceptions students battle with in the content modules. I also steer my examples and exercises to those that addresses misconceptions and common errors, also those common errors that school teachers do not pick up a lot of times.

I can go on SASSI to find out the students' backgrounds in order to support them better. I regularly make my consultation hours known to my groups and on my door, I also encourage students to email me and make appointments of they need to meet outside of my consultation hours. By doing this, I am more readily available to students to support them in addressing their needs. When a see students who are busy drowning academically, I ask them to come to my office for consultation or I allude the tutor to focus on certain aspects with the individual students when needs are identified through these channels.

In general, the Mathematics major students are quite dependent on the calculator, which create other challenges. In some instances, I ask students to attempt exercises in class without the use of a calculator or cell phone in order to force these students to practice their mental maths, a skill very much needed to be developed for a mathematics future teacher. I regularly remind them of the importance of them setting the example to their future learners on doing some of the calculations mentally instead of relying constantly on the calculator as they need to practice what they preach.

The students also seem not be exposed to critical thinking (Ebiendele, 2012) and higher order questions in general and struggle to answer them. They answer questions superficially and think that by going around that way and adding examples, they should be given good marks. My approach to this is to highlight to students what are the basic skills and knowledge that they should acquire on a topic and where the application, which is the most important aspect of the topic, resides. Emphasis is then placed on the application of concepts in real life context and more time is then spent on introducing the higher order questions as means of application.

With the final year students in the Mathematics methods modules, I was quite disappointed in their limited ability to answer higher order questions (Samo, 2017). It seems to me that it is mostly due to a lack of exposure to higher order questions and their understanding of which level (very low) they need to function on as future teachers. I then remind the students of the challenges we face in South Africa with Mathematics and challenge them to think and act at a higher level to ensure that we change the education landscape for the better.

I get the idea that students are marks driven instead of understanding the concepts. During teaching practice, students confidently approached me to requested that I increase their evaluation scores due to reasons given, ignoring the feedback I have given them. I link this to their identity as student who need to pass instead of the identity of a future mathematics teacher who is equipping him/herself to the very best in order to change the education landscape in South Africa. I believe we as teacher educationalists need to constantly remind the future teacher where we heading towards.

Then writing skills under South African undergraduate students is a major challenge (Pineteh, 2014). Students cannot express themselves in a manner or at the level that I expect a Higher Education student should. Academic writing and also basic English writing skills is lacking among a lot of our students. Good academic writing skills need to be supported through interventions which are done in context to their subject fields. It cannot be done as a stand-alone entity as it will not address the students' needs to write better. Writing skills challenges goes hand in hand with poor reading skills. I therefore emphasis the importance of reading carefully and not to jump to calculations before you clearly understood the instructions. Forcing students to use mathematical terms when they answer me, is a way of steering future teachers to be more fluent in their talking and writing in a mathematical language.

Students at final year level struggle to interpret academic articles. This create problems as at times the lecturers expect competencies in interpreting academic articles to be prior knowledge and structure their assessments as having that as prior knowledge.