Abstract
Aiming to support children’s ability to comprehend age-appropriate text in isiZulu, the study investigated the pedagogical approaches implemented by foundation phase teachers to effectively teach initial reading in the early grade classroom, particularly, reading with comprehension. It further discussed the content knowledge essential for teachers to develop the foundational reading skills necessary for children not only to learn how to read but also to read with understanding in preparation for the transition to reading for learning in Grade 4. Therefore, the study captured how reading with comprehension was taught in a particular school and also captured the knowledge and beliefs that teachers held about their practice. Moats (2023) posits that every child has the potential to learn how to read provided that they are taught by teachers who are well informed by the body of research on effective classroom practice such as the Science of reading. My motivation for conducting the study was for my professional growth and my concerns about the lower scores of reading with comprehension in isiZulu reported by (Howie et al., 2017) in the Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS). I was motivated also, to contribute to the body of research aimed at improving early-grade reading abilities in African languages.
The interpretive qualitative research design was used to gather information about the instructional approaches used by foundation phase teachers in their natural environment to capture how reading with comprehension is taught in the early-grade classroom. This was achieved through the use of semi-structured interviews and class observations as data collection methods. I analysed the data collected using an inductive analysis in which I worked with the participants’ words to identify and group together similar phrases to form codes. The codes were further grouped to form categories which later emerged into themes to answer the research question.
The findings of the study indicated that teachers lacked multilingual pedagogies to develop the foundational reading skills in early-grade classrooms. It showed that teachers lacked a comprehensive, systematic and explicit instruction to concurrently develop the components of reading to achieve reading with comprehension. Also, there was no explicit instruction on comprehension strategies to equip children with the skill to engage with texts and monitor reading. To summarise, teachers had limited pedagogical content knowledge necessary to teach initial reading. This was because
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of how teachers were trained in the higher institutions, and because teachers are not yet exposed to the current research bodies of effective classroom practice. I argue that relevant instruction on initial reading can benefit weak readers who are learning to read in isiZulu.