Learners’ learning through digitized learning resources in Mauritian primary schools.
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Date
2019
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Abstract
With the fourth Industrial Revolution on our doorstep, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) continue to have a major impact on our everyday living, and more so in education. There have been many initiatives to integrate the use of ICTs in teaching and learning, worldwide. The Mauritian National Curriculum Framework, Grade 1-6 (NCF, 2016) advocates an emphasis
on the integration of ICT in Mauritian Primary Schools. In the context of this initiative, Mauritius has embarked on the digitisation of the print-based curriculum. In classrooms, the interactive digitised learning resources are displayed on ‘Interactive hiteboards’ (IWBs) to support teaching and learning.Hence, this resulted in the reconceptualisation of the teaching and learning processes within the classrooms. Moreover, since the use of technologies in primary classrooms is relatively new, minimal research has been done to analyse learning through digitised resources in Mauritius. This study contributed to addressing this gap by providing a critical examination of learners’ learning through digitised learning resources in Mauritian primary schools. Moreover, analysing learners’ learning through digitised resources was an important step that would eventually inform policy. The goal of this study has been to explore learning through technology in the metamodern era. The framework used for this study as ‘metamodernism’.
The route to gain insights into learners’ learning deploys an analysis of the participants’ interactions through the digitised learning resources in Grade 4 primary classrooms. The interpretative paradigm determined the choice of case study as a research methodology. Purposive sampling was used to select eight to nine-year-old learners from two different schools. The sample size was seven learners from both schools. Collection of data was made possible through semistructured interviews, observations and children’s creative drawings. An assemblage of the data collected from the different sources was carried out. To better foreground the richness and authenticity of the children’s learning, the findings were presented through short stories. The short stories were woven into texts that depicted the learning patterns and the influential factors that informed learning through digitised resources. The findings were analysed through the inductive approach. They revealed that ‘all learning is narrative’ and that learning happens within context. They also indicated that habits or culture, learners’ experiences and personality of learners
largely determine the ways the learners learn through digitised resources. Moreover, blurred boundaries wherein a multiplicity of intersecting factors provided explanations of the ways learners learn through digitised resources. In the same vein, a ‘narrative model of learning’ was presented. The thesis concludes by elaborating on the theoretical, methodological, conceptual and scholarly contributions of the study. The main scholarly contribution is that enabling conditions combine to bring the learner’s learning to a higher level of cognition, which refers to virtual reality.
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Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.