Teachers’ Knowledge, Identification and Remediation of Writing Problems in Botswana’s Government-Aided Primary Schools

Abstract

This paper surveyed 53 experienced teachers from 33 government-aided primary schools in Botswana for their knowledge of the writing problems of their pupils and how they remediated them. The teachers identified inability to shape words, spelling errors, omission of letters, letter/word reversals and illegible handwriting as the writing problems that are prevalent and persistent. The survey also revealed that teachers do not know how to remediate the problems because of lack of/inadequate training on how to do so. The need to workshop teachers on how to diagnose and remediate writing problems, train special needs teachers to work alongside regular teachers, reduce teacher-pupil ratios and conduct periodic health checks on pupils in order to identify and isolate medical problems were suggested as some of the ways of tackling writing and other learning problems in the primary school.

Key words: Botswana, identification, primary schools, remediation, teachers’ knowledge, writing problems.