The Effects of Teaching Assistants on Letter Knowledge of Foundation Phase Students in South Africa: Findings from an exploratory trial

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Across ages and stages: effects and effectiveness drawn from literacy assessments for children and youth

Proposal

There is increasing evidence that letter knowledge is a significant predictor of early-grade reading achievements and that interventions designed to improve learning of this constrained skill can be effective. However, little is known about ways to enhance the teaching of letter knowledge in African languages and the degree to which teaching assistants can facilitate this process. This paper reports findings from an exploratory study designed to establish if teaching assistants can improve letter knowledge in African languages. A pre-post-trial with 249 pre-Grade R and Grade 1 students was conducted in two South African provinces with two distinctive African languages, isiXhosa and Sepedi.

The pilot study was designed to assess the potential feasibility and potential effectiveness of a teaching assistant programme focused on teaching letter knowledge. Judged against several criteria, the pilot model and programme are promising. Our analysis shows significant positive correlations for both languages between students’ exposure to teaching assistants and their improvements in the number of attempted letters as well as correct letters in a standardised test. The study suggests four important insights.

First, the programme design is consistent with current educational change thinking. Specifically, the programme makes use of three approaches: 1) the use of a structured pedagogy, 2) teaching at the right level, and 3) learning through play. Structured pedagogy (UNICEF, 2020), while not without its critics, is an approach that focuses on emphasizing instructional designed learning packages. These packages incorporate aligned and coherent learning materials, training, assessment and ongoing support with carefully planned scope and sequence of content to be learnt. The programme certainly incorporates these design features. The idea of teaching at the right level (J-PAL, no date) is not new in education, and it is one of the central principles of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. The idea is that learning is optimized when the student is provided a task in a zone that is neither too easy nor too complex, but at the right level, and can be mastered with appropriately targeted instruction. The initial assessment of letter knowledge, and the grouping of students based on the performance on assessment of their letter knowledge and then the tailoring of instruction to the average level of the small group is consistent with the principle of teaching at the right level. The principle of learning through play is also not new, with its origins in the work of Maria Montessori and John Dewey but provides a strong evidence-based principle to enhance learning outcomes for young children. The research shows that play enhances levels of engagement, provides a healthy social and emotional climate for learning, and ensures a balance between kinaesthetic and cognitive development. The set of eight games that are at the core of the programme embodies the learning through play idea.

Second, the programme addresses important implementation criteria. In terms of the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) (Marangunić & Granić 2015) on the take-up of new technologies, intervention technologies are most likely to be successfully institutionalised if two conditions are met, that is, that the new technology is easy-to-use/easy to learn-to-use and that the users perceive them as effective in their daily work. The evidence from the Eastern Cape version of the pilot suggests that these have been met.

Third, the programme addresses important implementation criteria. It focuses on an early learning gap that has been identified in South African research as a crucial obstacle to literacy learning outcomes, i.e. very slow progress in letter knowledge development (Ardington et al, 2021). Letter knowledge has been shown to be both associated with and more recently causally linked to building an understanding of the links between phonemes and graphemes, word decoding and ultimately reading for comprehension (Koel Foulin, 2005). That said, letter knowledge is a necessary but far from sufficient condition for reading progress. Without all the other building blocks, letter knowledge in-and-of-itself is unlikely to address the reading crisis faced by the country.

Fourth, although the teacher assistants have neither the level of training nor the experience of most fully qualified teachers, the narrow focus on improving students’ letter knowledge may enable young people to make a meaningful educational contribution. The shift of the work of education assistants in the first years of the national rollout from administrative tasks in schools to educational tasks ensures that two of the key government objectives - extending work opportunities and improving reading outcomes - could be addressed concurrently.

The findings of the pilot study complemented with the insights from the discussion provide a compelling basis for a Phase 3 large-scale randomized control trial.

Author

• Brahm Fleisch, University of the Witwatersrand