Page 74 - EDUCON 2022 Book of Abstracts

Methodology: To understand the complex phenomena under study
based on the leading research question, I undertook a small-scale,
ethnographically informed case study approach to examine the nature
of discourse employed by a Grade 4 teacher and his learners (aged 10-
12) in a fourth-grade bilingual Namibian classroom as they engaged in
science classroom discourse. The cultural-historical theory that
informs this paper lends itself to a qualitative research design and
interpretive approach to analysis. Qualitative case study methods were
suitable for this study because I had no control over the behavior of
participants (Stake 1995).
Results: What I can see from the data is that learners were generally
silenced in relation to the classroom talk, in this instance because of
the culturally taboo subject of bodily functions and sexual
reproduction. When faced with a cultural taboo, the teacher reverts to
using English to describe the content under investigation. This is
problematic in this instance because these leaners have only just
begun to be taught in English as a language of instruction. However,
the teacher’s reason for teaching in English appears to be to avoid the
cultural taboo being fully understood in the learners’ home language
thereby avoiding embarrassment.
Conclusions: I conclude that cultural taboos influence the mediation
of scientific concepts in this specific grade 4 classroom. As this is a
case study, I do not seek to generalise to other contexts. I also provide
a caveat when reading these results: the leaners are not native English
speakers and lack familiarity with English as a medium of instruction.
This clearly impedes their access to abstract concepts.
Keywords: cultural taboos, scientific concepts, traditional pedagogy,
learner-centred

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