UTILISING ICT TO ADDRESS LANGUAGE CHALLENGES IN LIFE SCIENCES CLASSROOMS

"Language is not everything in the teaching and learning process, but without language education becomes worthless. A normal classroom in South Africa consists of learners of different cultures thus having different home languages. Previous studies showed that teaching has become a complex task for Life Sciences teachers who are responsible for meaningfully teaching linguistically diverse learners in public schools using English, a second or third language for learners. With the advent of the Fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and the technology use in science education, the current study sought to determine how teachers utilise ICT tools to address language challenges in Life Sciences classrooms. The use of ICT provides multiple representations which are pertinent in the teaching and learning of Life Sciences - a subject with many languages (e.g. Greek, Latin and English). In an explanatory mixed method research design, 42 Life Sciences teachers were purposefully selected from public schools in Johannesburg to take part in the study. Data was collected first through administration of questionnaires to the 42 teachers to establish their beliefs about the role of technology in mitigating language challenges and also their ICT competencies. Secondly, three teachers who had shown to be more digitally literate based on the analysis of questionnaire data, were selected for lesson observations. Nine lesson observations were made in total to investigate how teachers use ICT tools to mitigate language challenges. The observed teachers were interviewed once to provide them with an opportunity to explain and elaborate on some of the episodes observed in their lessons. Data analysis involved computation of descriptive statistics from quantitative data and thematic analysis of qualitative data. Findings of the study indicated that 97.62% of the teachers believed that technology can be useful in solving language problems in the Life Sciences classrooms and 95.24% indicated that they were confident in using technology when teaching Life Sciences. Teachers used PowerPoint presentations, YouTube videos and tutorials amongst others when teaching. However, in the interviews two of the teachers failed to explain how these tools helped in mitigating the language challenges learners encounter during the teaching and learning process. Another important aspect that came out is that the lack of access to appropriate technological devices thwarted teachers’ efforts to use ICT tools. These findings have implications on resource distribution in schools to ensure quality teaching and learning occurs within the disadvantaged communities where the language of teaching and learning is problematic and also development of teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge."