October 24, 2023
The English book “Tracking Changes in South African reading Literacy Achievement: A developing country perspective”, edited by Surette van Staden of the Institute for Teacher Training and School Research and her colleague Celeste Combrinck, focuses on South Africa as a country development in dealing with the complexities of learning to read and measuring trends in reading performance.
The book, with a foreword by Dr. Hans Wagemaker presents additional data analysis, perspectives and contextualization of South African participation in the PIRLS educational study and draws attention to the diverse population of students in South Africa who participated in three rounds of PIRLS between 2006 and 2016. It aims to familiarize readers with the complexity of South Africa’s education system (or systems) and provides relevant background information. In this context, one chapter presents South Africa’s participation in PIRLS in the context of the other participating countries, focusing on the content to be evaluated and the changes in survey design made over the cycles.
The book reflects on PIRLS data collected over ten years in South Africa and the lessons and insights drawn from it. The additional secondary data analysis presented here aims to provide additional insights into the existing body of knowledge and is presented in chapters covering the following topics:
- PIRLS assessment frameworks and how they have evolved over time; South African educational requirements and curriculum expectations.
- Growth trend between PIRLS 2011 and PIRLS 2016 and reflections on the meaning of “progress” as suggested by the PIRLS results.
- Implications for teacher education in relation to development, curricular expectations, and multilingual classrooms from a two-country perspective.
- What it means to achieve the low international benchmark and how these results impact students’ reading proficiency and mastery of comprehension in all 11 national languages.
- The challenges in cross-country comparisons, from the perspective of developed and developing countries, and the difficulties in creating rating scales when teachers’ responses to questionnaires do not adequately capture classroom processes.
- The development of African languages and their implementation in the field of reading in a benevolent political environment.
Reviewing the PIRLS provides an opportunity to reflect on whether the objectives and intentions have led to improvements, expected results and successes, or whether they simply reflect the status quo. It also allows a vision of the future. The final chapter concludes that PIRLS results provide an updated view of the state of the system after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, continued interpretation and application of PIRLS results will also strengthen opportunities to support key stakeholders – teachers and students.
Information about the book:
Tracking changes in reading literacy performance in South Africa
A developing context perspective
Surette van Staden and Celeste Combrinck (eds.)
Brilliant 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-68541-3
Price: €49.50 (in box)
