Integrating Technology to Support Learners With Barriers to Learning in the Rural Classroom

Integrating Technology to Support Learners With Barriers to Learning in the Rural Classroom

Marinda Neethling, Susan Greyling, Benita Taylor
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-6940-5.ch009
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Abstract

To reduce extended academic delays and disruptions, in-service teachers (hereafter teachers) enrolled for an online BEd Honours Learner Support programme had to re-think the integration of technology when supporting a learner with a barrier to learning in their classrooms. The teachers, of whom a few are educators in rural schools, had to complete a practical paper-based portfolio as a formative assessment. The portfolio expected the teacher to identify a learner with a learning barrier and develop a support plan over six months. With the schools closed, the portfolio in its original form became a challenge since the teachers could not have face-to-face interaction and interventions with their learners.
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Contextual Framework

The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that 65% of learners entering Foundation Phase today, will work in occupations that do not exist at this moment (Schwab, 2019). Therefore, education in the 21st century should prepare learners for the global world in which different forms of intellectual tasks are done by skilled thinking like creativity and innovation, complex communication systems and tools like Information Communication Technology (ICT) and information literacy skills. All of these then act as the core of intellectual capabilities by which people attain prosperity and economic security individually, as a region, and as a nation (Davis, 2016; Grand-Clement, 2017).

For learners to successfully navigate the new world, it is imperative to possess skills aligned with 21st-century challenges like solving problems, creative thinking, collaboration, critical reflection on their own work as well as on that of their peers and technological fluency. Researchers like Taylor and van der Merwe (2019); Hannaway and Steyn (2017); Mdlongwa (2011, 2012); Laurillard et al. (2009); and Prensky (2001) affirm that technology serves as an important tool for holistic development, which includes the physical, social, emotional, mental and cognitive development of the learner, and when withheld, some abilities can be alienated.

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