Incorporating Sesotho in teaching Grade 10 History through medium of English using a PALAR approach

Abstract

This study explored relevant multilingual pedagogies in teaching History in Grade 10 that can assist History educators to incorporate Sesotho in the teaching of History through the medium of English. Furthermore, this study attempted to create awareness and capacitate History educators with multilingual pedagogies and the utilisation of these pedagogies in their own classrooms. Mezirow's transformational learning theory was adopted in this study, which seeks to explore solutions to identified problems in professional spaces through critical reflections. Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR) was adopted as a research methodology, which is rooted in the transformative paradigm aiming to promote social justice for the historically marginalised groups and foster emancipatory teaching and learning. Purposive sampling was used to recruit History educators who are Sesotho speakers in Botshabelo, Free State province, who participated and generated data in an action learning group. The findings of this study indicate that there is a need for creating awareness of the relevance of multilingual pedagogies among History educators and that the exploration and usage of multilingual pedagogies, such as translanguaging, code-switching and Ubuntu translanguaging, make teaching History more effective because these strategies tap into the linguistic repertoires of the learners and give them epistemic access to History knowledge.