Digital competence and the language issues in South African classrooms
Abstract
After the first democratic elections in South Africa there has been increased pressure on educational authorities to provide greater access to computers and ICT knowledge for the learners in the country. An ICT initiative by the Western Cape Educational Department has as its goal to implement the use of computers in all primary schools in the province partly as an effort to eliminate the digital divide between the previously advantaged and previously disadvantaged groups of learners and especially to help raise the levels of teaching and learning in disadvantaged schools.
This paper discusses some preliminary findings as a result of fieldwork that has been conducted in three primary schools in Cape Town, where computers are being used for curriculum delivery. The focus of the study is on disadvantaged students and their access and digital competence using computers and the Internet. The three schools each have different language of learning and teaching.
A question is raised which pertains to whether students' skills and use of computers is affected by their home language when the majority of software used in the classroom setting is in English and when the lingua franca of the Internet has primarily been English. The main findings point towards the importance of steadily access, qualified teachers and not the least localised and relevant content. Combined effort of various stakeholders within education is needed to assure greater educational equality in South Africa.
Greta Björk Gudmundsdottir
Greta Bjork Gudmundsdottir is a doctoral student at the University of Oslo, Norway. She gained her bachelor degree in social anthropology from the University of Iceland and took a teacher training certificate and a graduate course in ICT use in education from the same school. After working as a teacher in an upper secondary school for seven years she moved to Norway. Greta completed her Master in philosophy in Comparative and International Education in 2002 from the University of Oslo, Norway. Her Master´s thesis was on the implementation of ICT in Namibian teacher training. Greta worked as the coordinator for NETREED (Network for Research and Evaluation on Education and Development for two years (www.netreed.uio.no) and was taken into the PhD proramme at the University of Oslo in 2004. She recently returned from South Africa after having lived there for 6 months doing her data collection on the digital divide in the Western Cape region. Her paper will look at students’ digital competence with a special focus on the influence mother tongue and the language of learning and teaching has on digital competence for grade 7 students in South Africa.