Duncan Mhakure

By Duncan Mhakure

This chapter is part of a larger research project that seeks to investigate sustainable ways of improving group-based tutoring in higher education courses. A growing body of research into teaching and learning in higher education acknowledges that higher education institutions are regarded as bastions of active teaching and learning that encourage students’ deep learning and critical engagement. However, existing research also suggests that there is a lack of active participation by students during learning activities in tutorials; one of the reasons is the poor quality of the interactions between tutors and students during tutorials. Postgraduate students, who make up the majority of tutors, receive little formal training and lack sophisticated instructional skills on how to facilitate tutorials. By using an example, this chapter argues for the use of a research tutorial as a training strategy for tutor professional development (TPD) in an undergraduate Quantitative Literacy (QL) intervention course. The research methodology employed in this study is the lesson study. A research tutorial is a tutorial designed by both tutors and researchers that is used for TPD purposes. Suggestions for future research include focussing on how tutors notice, and attend to, the students’ productive struggles during an undergraduate QL tutorial.

Part of the book: Pedagogy in Basic and Higher Education

By Anthony Sayster and Duncan Mhakure

Using a predetermined framework on students’ productive struggles, the purpose of this study is to explore high school students’ productive struggles during the simplification of rational algebraic expressions in a high school mathematics classroom. This study is foregrounded in the anthropological theory of the didactic, and its central notion of a “praxeology” – a praxeology refers to the study of human action, based on the notion that humans engage in purposeful behavior of which the simplification of rational algebraic expressions is an example. The research methodology comprised a lesson study involving a sample of 28 students, and the productive struggle framework was used for data analysis. Findings show that the productive struggle framework is a useful tool that can be used to analyze students’ thinking processes during the simplification of rational algebraic expressions. Further research is required on the roles that noticing and questioning can play for mathematics teachers to respond to and effectively support the students’ struggles during teaching and learning.

Part of the book: Pedagogy in Basic and Higher Education