Lessons learnt from teachers’ perspectives on mobile learning in South Africa with cultural and linguistic constraints

Abstract

South Africa’s classrooms are characterised by a wide variety of cultural and linguistic differences, providing teachers with educational challenges, particularly in mathematics and science subjects. In response, various mobile learning systems have been developed and piloted in the North West and Gauteng Provinces of South Africa. A framework has been proposed to support the development of similar technologies to be used in multilingual contexts. This paper evaluates teachers’ perspectives on this framework using interviews with eight teachers from a mixture of urban and rural schools in various locations across the two provinces. The results of the study reflect the important roles that language and culture play in the technology needed to support learning in linguistically diverse schools. They highlight the challenges that teachers in schools face in diversely linguistic classrooms and how technology can be used to enhance such classrooms.

Keywords: mobile learning; schools; Setswana; South Africa; teachers