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Background: The study on which this article is based investigated the Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching (MKfT) that a well experienced Grade 2 teacher utilized when teaching counting.Aim: In this paper we share excerpts from one of the lessons of this Grade 2 teacher, which we analyzed to illuminate the various domains of MKfT and their interconnectedness in the teaching of counting.Setting: The research was conducted in a former Model C school in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.Method: Using a case study methodology, 15 Grade 2 mathematics lessons were observed, video recorded and transcribed. Two formal interviews based on two selected video-recorded lessons were conducted to understand this teacher’s practice. The data were analysed using Deborah Ball and colleagues’ MKfT framework.Results: The study found that Foundation Phase mathematics teaching requires the knowledge and tactful employment of all six knowledge domains as described in the work of Ball and colleagues. The Knowledge of Content and Teaching (KCT) domain, was found to be essential in teaching counting in Grade 2. The other five domains supported and informed the KCT domain.Conclusion: We suggest from the insights gained here that research examining the MKfT that competent teachers draw on in teaching Foundation Phase mathematics could assist in developing curricula for in-service and pre-service teacher education programs.

Background: Learner performance in literacy in the primary education sector is in a state of crisis in South Africa. Whilst many more learners have physical access to education post-1994, the quality of education remains polarised along socio-economic lines. This article sets out to engage with current literature on literacy interventions implemented in South Africa in order to develop an understanding of the key features of interventions, which affect positive change.Aim: This review provides an overview of the scope and type of primary school-level literacy interventions embarked upon in the last 15 years in South Africa. An analysis of some of the key findings on the impact of these interventions is provided.Method: A systematic review was conducted using the key words ‘literacy intervention’ and ‘reading intervention’. The selection of articles was further refined with a specific focus on primary school interventions in South Africa.Results: The review focuses on specific literacy interventions where ‘intervention’ is defined as active and purposeful engagement to improve decoding, vocabulary, fluency and/or comprehension of primary school learners. This article reviews the documented literacy interventions and draws out some of the key features of successful interventions. It also makes broader reflective comments about what this exercise reveals about the state of literacy interventions in South Africa.Conclusion: Interventions have generally been ad hoc and uncoordinated and have not wrought systemic change. Moving forward in a coordinated manner must be based amongst other things on learning from interventions that have been reviewed here.

Research that focuses on teacher identity is gaining traction as researchers argue that teachers mediate more than mathematical knowledge and skills in the classroom. This research tends to be underpinned by a social constructionist orientation, which foregrounds epistemology over ontology. This orientation is limiting for research that wishes to understand the base conditions that enable or constrain the expression (i.e. both communication and action) of teacher identity in teaching primary mathematics. The paper suggests that this requires research that explores the interaction between structure, culture and agency in the expression of teacher identity in teaching mathematics in primary school. The study argues that a social realist orientation is of value to research on teacher identity. From this perspective, teacher identity is defined as the manner in which teachers express their roles as teachers. As the paper is primarily theoretical, the exemplification is limited to two primary school teachers' expression of only one role namely effective communicator of mathematics. It demonstrates what social realism enables, that is, not illuminated in research underpinned by a social constructionist orientation. The argument made in this paper elucidates how social realism supports a deep analysis of the structural and agential conditions that enable and constrain teacher identities.