Yesterday and Today

Developing a game-based learning pedagogy for teaching history using Napoleon total war

Michael Stack — 2023-12-24

Current digital game-based learning (DGBL) methods for teaching history require a significant outlay in information and communications technology (ICT). This, in effect, constitutes a significant obstacle in implementing DGBL in the South African and Zimbabwean school context. Most schools do not have the infrastructure to equip entire classes with gaming-capable computers or sufficient access to electricity or the internet. This paper investigates how access to DGBL can be improved in challenged teaching and learning contexts by designing a pedagogy that is more readily adaptable to challenges presented in South African and Zimbabwean classrooms. The research uses a design-based research design where compatibility issues of DGBL are analysed with the aim of developing a more history pedagogy be integrated to promote the use of Napoleon Total War in Southern African secondary school history classrooms?”
Two schools from South Africa and Zimbabwe were selected as research sites for the implementation of the solution. The interventions were specifically designed to operate with a minimum of ICT resources. The solution comprised a teaching approach that combined DGBL based on a single laptop and projector with the more traditional teaching methods that were observed during formal lesson observations prior to designing the intervention. The research concluded that Napoleon Total War could be used to successfully teach elements of local and international history curricula. The method demonstrated a positive effect on learner motivation and engagement and demonstrated the potential to support formal assessment through tangential learning and assessment tasks designed from DGBL lessons.
The study is significant in that it presents a methodology that can be more readily grasped by in-service teachers as it does not require significant gaming expertise and can also be used to complement their own teaching styles and approaches. A shortcoming of immersive DGBL in history is that it can risk learners mistaking learning for entertainment. With an integrative approach, it is clear to learners that while the medium can be engaging, learning is the primary aim of a DGBL-enhanced lesson. Furthermore, the research demonstrated that collaboration between researchers and teachers is essential to render DGBL research of practicable value in the classroom.

Tracing the substantive structure of historical knowledge in South African school textbooks

Pranitha Bharath — 2023-12-24

This article argues that complex substantive knowledge in South African school history textbooks may challenge learners who struggle with reading and comprehension. While debates continue about the balance of substantive and procedural knowledge, both fundamental elements of history knowledge (Lee, 2004), this study employs a qualitative analysis of the substantive content within a Bernsteinian framework. Seven purposively sampled history textbooks, covering grade 3 to grade 9, across the foundation, intermediate, and senior phases of the South African school curriculum are analysed using Maton’s (2013) language descriptions of context and semantics as conceptual tools. Additionally, nominalisation techniques (Coffin, 2006) are used to examine language in the text. Findings indicate significant growth in substantive knowledge manifesting through time, space, context, and semantics.1 Substantive knowledge shifts from a rudimentary and contextualised nature to a more abstract and dense form, including domain-specific conceptual knowledge. Advancing grades produce decontextualised knowledge with heightened semantic density. Increased events under study accompany greater participant diversity. A History student working with these materials would need to be highly proficient in language skills and also capable of processing substantial volumes of abstract content knowledge. Alarming statistics from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study
(Department of Basic Education, 2023) reveal that 81% of grade 4 learners struggle with comprehension in any language, ranking South Africa at the bottom of 57 countries. It is likely that learners would encounter difficulties with the substantive knowledge evident in
these textbooks.

Building an archive for ‘future pasts’: Undergraduates document their local Covid-19 ‘moment’ in World History

Thembisa Waetjen — 2023-12-24

A substantial body of history teaching scholarship links student archival engagements and primary source work to various desirable educational outcomes, among them an enhanced capacity for historical thinking and imagination. A related scholarly literature considers the interface between pedagogy and public memory-making. This article enters and links these points of discussion by reflecting on a collaborative classroom project of digital archive-building, using the online Dublin Core-complicit platform Omeka. At the University of Johannesburg, during the first six months of 2021, first-year students in an online world history classroom produced, submitted, and categorised a body of primary sources—both textual and visual. These submissions reflected their own, ongoing experiences of Covid-19 and of lockdown policies. They used photographs and wrote in their home languages to convey the disruptions, innovations, hardships, and resiliences felt as young people within diverse lifeworlds. Aligned to photovoice methodologies, the exercise promoted a reflection of historical consciousness in two ways: first, by situating the pandemic of he present within a broad global history; and, second, by considering ‘future pasts’ as a politics of memory, research, and representation. The article describes the production of the archival database, ‘Joburg21’, and considers the pedagogical challenges and rewards of building a digital ‘archive for the future’.

“I used to think … and now I think!”: Notes from a South African teacher educator

Peter Kallaway — 2023-12-24

What is the role of the school and the teacher in the context of democratic social transformation? How has it changed globally and in the South African context during the past fifty years? Is there room for optimism among teacher educators in the 21st century?
I offer some modest reflections on my own career in the hope of provoking some debate from colleagues.
“A life history is a life story located within its historical context.” (Ivor Goodson)
“I used to think that public school were vehicles for reforming society. And now I think that while good teachers and schools can promote positive intellectual, behavioral and social change in individual children and youth, [American] schools are (and have been) ineffectual in altering social inequalities.” (Larry Cuban)
“Nearly half century of experience in schools and the sustained research I have done have made me allergic to utopian rhetoric.” (Larry Cuban)

The body politic and the political body in nationalist science: Physical education at Stellenbosch University in the 1930s

Anell Daries — 2023-12-24

Stellenbosch University (SU) was the first university in Africa to introduce a dedicated physical education certificate course in 1937. In defining the Physical Education Department’s raison d’etre, the first head of the department, Dr Ernst Jokl, declared that his main aim was to transform SU into the recognised centre for scientific physical education in South Africa. Beyond this purpose, the institutionalisation of physical education resonated with the institution’s Afrikaner-nationalist ethos. At the volksuniversiteit, standardised physical education was intended to contribute to the strengthening of the corporate and individual Afrikaner body. While Jokl played a pivotal role in the establishment of standardised physical education at SU, his tenure was abruptly terminated following controversy surrounding medical examinations of female physical education students. In examining the events that led up to Jokl’s swift departure, we explore the origins of physical education at SU and the ways in which the university’s institutional culture shaped the trajectory of this nascent discipline. In essence, we argue that Jokl’s exit was precipitated by his ‘scientific methods’ that required students to undress for their medical inspections. While all the students underwent the same examination, the uproar was rooted in the fact that women students were subjected to the inspections. While he argued that his approach was an extension of his scientific endeavours, Jokl transgressed the traditionalist and strongly gendered values of SU and the idealised Afrikaner nation that it sought to both represent and shape.

The epistemic views of rural history teachers on school history as specialised subject knowledge

Mbusiseni Celimpilo Dube — 2023-12-24

This study aimed to understand the epistemic views of history teachers on school history as specialised subject of knowledge. This study adopted the qualitative research approach and interpretivism paradigm. I purposively sampled seven professionally qualified history teachers. For data generation, I used card sorting. What emerged was an unquestionable epistemic certainty to which the teachers steadfastly returned. Broadly speaking, to them school history as the specialised subject of knowledge was about past human actions, promoting human rights, critical thinking, and understanding values. In many ways this spoke of a fixed mindset in which the ideas of what school history should be—namely, procedural historical thinking as part of an analytical approach to the subject as found in the CAPS-History document—had limited to no impact. This could be attributed to the fact that the rural teachers who participated in this study had limited opportunities to be exposed to training related to the CAPS-History curriculum. Hence, their knowledge about school history is rooted in their historical, social, political, educational, and economic reality in which historical knowledge, common or general knowledge, political knowledge, generic skills, and character education are key matters.

A Forgotten History: A Historical Overview of Kuilsriver Primary School 1908–2023

Gerald Hamann — 2023-12-24

This article focuses on the history of Kuilsriver Primary School as it is known today. Whilst this specific school has a very interesting, sometimes difficult, but also a very proud background, not many people in Kuilsriver know and understand its history. This year, 2023, the school is 115 years old. It is really a remarkable achievement for an institution which had to endure extreme hardships through its history. Kuilsriver Primary School, as it is known today, was first called Kuilsrivier Laer Kleurling Skool. This name was given to the school long before legalised apartheid came into being in South Africa. Currently there is no publication on the history of the school.
The school opened its doors in January 1908 in Van Riebeeck Road, the main road of Kuilsriver. The placement of the school was a welcome relief to the learners of Brackenfell and Bottelary who had to walk almost six km to the nearest school namely, Sarepta Primary School. After 1948 the country experienced the draconian political system called Apartheid. The area where this school was located was proclaimed as a white area in 1958. The school was therefore removed and relocated to the coloured area of Sarepta. Various attempts were made to disaffirm the existence of the school in the main road. The school also experienced a name change to Jan Bosman Primary School in 1970 but reclaimed the original name in 2011. The old school building structure in the main road of Kuilsriver was demolished in January 1970. The only proof that is left of the school building is a photo of the school.
The purpose of this article is to put the school’s history into perspective in the Kuilsriver area as well as in the broader South African context as Kuilsrivier was part of the early Cape Colony. This article also refers to a similar situation regarding the relocation of a coloured school in Carnarvon in the Northern Cape.

Conference report: 5th Afrika Association for History Education (AHE) International conference 02-04 August 2023

Johan Wasserman — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Conference Report: The 37th South African Society for History Teaching (SASHT) Conference 03–04 October 2023

Johan Wasserman — 2023-12-24

No abstract

The 37th South African Society for History Teaching (SASHT) Conference 03–04 October 2023 - Keynote Address

Johan Wasserman — 2023-12-24

No abstract

The American Dream in history, politics, and fiction

Margaret Blair — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Leftist Thought and Contemporary South Africa

Charity Khumalo — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Everyday Communists in South Africa’s Liberation Struggle: The lives of Ivan and Lesley Schermbruker

Tasleemah Hazarvi — 2023-12-24

No Abstract

History Education at the Edge of the Nation: Political Autonomy, Educational Reforms, and Memory-shaping in European Periphery

Walter Sengai — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History

Sue Krige — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Editorial

Johan Wassermann — 2023-12-24

No Abstract

Unveiling The Tapestry: Nurturing Empathy and Perspective Through School History

Paul M Haupt — 2023-12-24

No abstract

An analysis of gender bias in Kenyan History textbooks and its implication for the youth

Abigael M. Malelu-Gitau — 2023-12-24

No abstract

A reflection on the use of Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony and South African music produced in the 1950s to 1990s in the history classroom

Lufuno Lerato Monguni — 2023-12-24

No abstract