Abstract
Reading literacy skills form part of the basic functioning within society (Hermida, 2009; Zuze and Reddy, 2013). Within the boundaries of South Africa’s formal school settings Grade 3 is the exit stage of the Foundation Phase. Additionally, Grade 3 is meant to signify that a learner has the necessary reading skills to move from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’. As the low levels of reading literacy continues to be a cause for concern nationally and globally (Spaull, 2013; Taylor and Spaull, 2022), South Africa’s Department of Basic Education (DBE) has established reading literacy support strategies in the form of programmes and materials to combat this epidemic.
This study explored the reading literacy support programmes and materials from the perspectives of 15 Grade 3 teachers in Gauteng who were responsible for implementing these programmes and using these materials within different contexts within South African English home language classrooms. Furthermore, it evaluated the potential of these support programmes and materials to contribute to learners’ development in reading literacy skills, how teachers made use of the support programmes and materials and how the implementation of these support programmes and materials affected the teachers and their classrooms.
The generic qualitative research design approach to this study satisfies the inquiry into understanding people’s perspectives and experiences. The study used semi-structured individual interviews and semi-structured focus group interviews with Grade 3 teachers for data collection purposes, which aligned with the research question by allowing participants to share their views and experiences on the matter. This provided insight into South African classrooms and the experiences of teachers. In addition, the research project focused on the use and effectiveness of the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE’s) reading literacy support programmes and materials from the perspectives of teachers.
It was evident from the study that participating Grade 3 teachers had varying experiences and perspectives on reading literacy support programmes and materials,
iv
with some expressing positive views indicating that DBE reading literacy support programmes and materials are beneficial to teacher, learners and the teaching and learning process whilst others expressed negative perspectives hereof sighting that in their view the initiatives were not useful and did not serve its intended purposes. As a result, this affected the teachers’ implementation of DBE programmes and materials where teachers expressed differing opinions on the use thereof. Finally, the findings related to the effectiveness of the programmes and materials for improvement of learners reading literacy skills were varied amongst the views of the teachers.