Abstract
Although education in South Africa has undergone several changes since 1994, it is still
in a phase of transition and development. Educational policy is continually being
improved upon. With the introduction of the new education policies, there will be a
greater need for trained learning support specialists to observe, test, diagnose and
intervene with an appropriate assessment and programme as early as possible in the
learners’ school career. Structure of Intellect (SOI) is a tool that can be used by these
support specialists, who will be qualified to assess and intervene when learners are
experiencing difficulties with learning. The SOI assessment and programme form a unit
and are interrelated. At the time of this study, the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor,
is advocating that learners should be able to learn in their choice of home language, that
is, any one of the eleven official ones in South Africa. In the meantime, many of the
learners are learning in English as the main language of learning. This poses difficulties
for many learners, who may be experiencing other, but related learning barriers. There is
a need for a programme that will be able to develop the intellectual abilities of learners so
that they can be successful in their learning. The SOI programme, designed in America
and used successfully in many countries, is available for use in South Africa and has the
potential to make a contribution to the educational sphere in this country.
The focus of this study is the possible adaptation of this programme for use with English
second-language learners. The design is one of evaluation research, emphasising process
evaluation, with an overlap into programme monitoring. This research is predominantly
qualitative in nature, with some quantitative information in the form of graphs and
statistics.
From four themes extrapolated from the data, answers to the research question were fully
discussed and were reported in a qualitative approach. The themes of socio-economic
influences, the learning environment, affective influences on the learner, and language
and literacy were all found to be inextricably interwoven in the learners’ lives and affect
them in many ways. Socio-economic influences are particularly relevant to the South
African context, as there is still widespread poverty amongst a large part of the
population. The learning environments in which children develop influence their interest
in and ability to learn. Affective views of learners about themselves have profound
effects on their motivation to learn. Language and literacy are currently at the heart of
many difficulties experienced within the field of education. Erhman (1996:137)
emphasises the importance of emotions and language learning in the following statement:
“Every imaginable feeling accompanies learning, especially learning that is as closely related to
who we are as language learning is.”
Although many challenges face learners in South Africa today, one of the major ones
being learning in a second and sometimes even a third language, findings from this
research reflect that the SOI programme should and can be adapted for use with English
second-language learners in urban South African schools. The study concludes with
recommendations relating to changes to the SOI programme as it relates to vocabulary,
diagrams, and the way in which instructions are given in the South African setting. The
results indicate that there is scope for further research using other SOI materials, which
could be suitably adapted for the South African context.
Mrs. J.V. Fourie