This study investigates factors that motivated the first year undergraduate student teachers for choosing teaching as a career and also explores their perceptions about the teaching profession in Namibia. The study consists of 80 First year student teachers, 40 from Hifikepunye Pohamba campus, and 40 from Khomasdal campus. Quantitative approach was used to identify some of the factors that motivated students to choose teaching as a career. Factor Influencing Teaching choices scale (FIT scale: Watt & Richardson, 2007) was used to investigate the student teachers’ motivation and perception of teaching as a career. Analysis of the data reveals that most of the participants value making social contribution and shaping children’s future. Moreover, factors such as university admission requirements, gender, stereotype of different grade level specialization, finance and the general socio-cultural image of teaching as a career in Namibia, among others, shaped the participants’ motivations and perceptions.

Majority of Namibian learners are not native speakers of English, that is, they barely speak English in their homes. Yet English is the medium of instruction in many Namibian schools. Many Namibian learners therefore face the double challenge of acquiring the English as the language of teaching and learning (Medium of Instruction) and at the same time developing the appropriate reading and writing proficiency needed to meet the requirements of the curriculum. This situation has created numerous teaching and learning problems which ultimately contribute to poor literacy levels among many Namibian learners.This paper focuses on language acquisition and literacy. It explores factors that contributes to effective English language acquisition as well as investigate and evaluate how the school context supports English language acquisition of the Upper Primary learners at an urban school in Namibia. Since the study targeted young learners, it has covered their reading skills, reading tools and resources such as the library and classroom which provides a rich learning environment. A qualitative interpretive approach was used to explore the factors that contribute to effective learners English second language acquisition. The theoretical framework was informed by Krashens conception of acquisition (1981; 1982). Data collection methods consisted of questionnaires and interviews were used. The findings indicated that the provision of well-structured classroom activities containing comprehensible input structures a bit beyond the learners current level and a low affective filter to allow them to acquire the second language easily. Moreover, error-based activities help learners to test hypothesis, revise and modify them and in the process develop good language awareness skills that help them to acquire and learn the language consciously. This paper suggests that a good supporting environment for reading, which is scaffold by enough assistance by the teachers and peers helps learners develop good language acquisition and learning skills.

The purpose of this study was to investigate academic literacy development lecturers’ conceptualisations of academic literacy and resultant pedagogical practices in academic development courses at three different Higher Education Institutional types in Namibia. The research sites were a Traditional University, a University of Technology and a Comprehensive University. The focus was to understand the extent to which the academics’ conceptions of academic literacy and the resultant pedagogical practices in the academic development courses at these three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) facilitate epistemological access into students’ chosen fields of study. Bernstein’s Pedagogical theory (1990), Genre theory (1996) and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (1978) were used as the study’s theoretical lenses and analytical framework. An interpretative paradigm and a qualitative case study design were employed as the research approach. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and documentary evidence were used to generate data. Research findings revealed a common (mis)conception of the nature of academic literacy, the resultant inadequate learning support offered to students in the selected academic literacy development courses, and a clear divorcing of academic literacy interventions from the students’ ‘home’ or mainstream disciplines at the three HEIs. The participants understood academic literacy from an autonomous position as a set of generic skills which could be taught outside of mainstream classes. Moreover, findings revealed that this understanding impacted on the design and assessments of all the academic literacy courses across the three universities under study. The study calls for a context sensitive model through which academic literacy acquisition can be scaffolded to meet the discipline-specific epistemological needs of the students.

Although English is the dominant language of learning and teaching (LoLT) in many Namibian schools, the current Namibian Language in Education Policy (LiEP) prescribes that the Junior Primary Phase (Grades 0 to 3) learners in government schools should be taught in their first language (L1), and only later from Grade 4 onwards they can switch to English as LoLT. In training teachers, however, teacher training institutions such as the University of Namibia (UNAM) only use English as LoLT to train all the teachers, including those who will teach in the Junior Primary Phase. This becomes a challenge especially for content subject teachers who are trained in English and are expected to teach in a mother tongue other than English when they are formally employed in schools. This paper employed a qualitative interpretive approach to explore the challenges experienced by the selected Grade 2 Mathematics teachers who were trained at UNAM, regarding teaching Mathematics in the mother tongue. Data collection methods consisted of questionnaires and interviews with six Grade 2 Mathematics teachers who all graduated from UNAM. The data were analyzed inductively using the thematic content analysis approach. The key findings include that the preparation of Junior primary mathematics teachers was constrained by the mismatch between the language used to train them at UNAM and the language they are expected to use as a medium of instruction for actual teaching in schools, and the lack of prescribed materials for teaching Mathematics in the mother tongue. This study responds to the gap in mother tongue literacy teacher preparation and contributes to knowledge on how junior primary teachers should be prepared to teach all the subjects in the mother tongue as per the Namibian language policy.