Creating an innovative primary school Mathematics teaching environment: The case of Eastern Cape Province

Abstract

Today’s learner population is diverse and replete with situational, personal, emotional, and learning challenges that inevitably find their way into the mathematics classroom. This paper draws from a project intended to investigate issues of classroom practice in mathematics used, extrapolate, or improve on them for the better development of teachers and learners’ meaningful understanding of intermediate and senior phase mathematics in a district in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa during the COVID-19 lockdown period. A qualitative approach in which three teachers were interviewed has been used. Results indicated that teachers benefited from technology informed collaborations with other teachers on WhatsApp groups and used those experiences to promote learning in their own environments. Moreover, it was observed that teachers modified their instructional strategies, shared mathematics teaching practices through WhatsApp, and engagements using online tools easily accessible to their learners.