Pedagogies of play to develop intermediate phase mathematics teachers’ metacognitive awareness

Abstract

This generic qualitative study with elements of phenomenology aimed to explore and describe intermediate phase mathematics teachers’ lived experiences based on the transfer of pedagogy of play (PoP) (referring to puppetry) and the professional development of their metacognitive awareness before, during and after a professional development intervention. The unique research design allowed for the development of an intervention where participants voluntarily engaged in two half-day workshops. The first workshop was an orientation workshop where participants worked collaboratively with the facilitators (myself and my supervisor), to establish what Pedagogy of Play is and how puppetry is nested therein and what metacognitive awareness entails. Although Pedagogy of Play includes various approaches (such as board games and computer games), puppetry was chosen as pedagogical tool, because of a scarcity of research in the Afrikaans and English language of learning and teaching, in the context of mathematics education. Metacognition was modelled and participants were afforded the opportunity to practice and implement metacognitive strategies through reflection. The second workshop followed an adapted lesson study approach where participants planned lessons, wrote puppetry scripts for these lessons and mathematised the content, making mathematics meaningful and accessible to the learners’ specific school context. The intervention scaffolded and enhanced participants’ metacognitive awareness and Self-Directed Learning (SDL).This study stems from an interpretivist paradigm, allowing for a theoretical framework nested in social constructivism. The theoretical framework allowed for the integration of two research lenses to be implemented when analysing the data and interpreting the results namely (i) third-generation cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and, (ii) the Rogan and Grayson Model. Findings in this study concluded that PoP can be seen as a useful pedagogical tool, allowing the intermediate phase mathematics learner to communicate increasingly more about content; fostering a positive classroom environment; allowing for a creative space; fostering and potentially enhancing cooperation and group integration and influencing learner attitudes, hence making mathematics fun, meaningful and accessible to all learners.