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Background: Formative assessment, as an integral component of teaching, has recently gained prominence in educational environments globally. Poor performances in mathematics by learners in early grades, and its negative effect on later learning, have been an ongoing concern in South African schools. Several former studies tend to generalise the pedagogical reasons for learners’ underperformance in Foundation Phase teaching.Aim: This case study of selected Grade 3 teachers examined how the teachers integrated formative assessment into their pedagogy, with the purpose of gaining insight into teachers’ understanding of the developmental aspects of learning in mathematics.Setting: This study was conducted at four schools in a selected district in the Gauteng Province.Methods: Data were mainly collected through focus group interviews and observations of at least three classroom sessions for each teacher of mathematics, thereby gaining an overview of their formative assessment practices.Results: This article reports on the two strongest themes to have emerged from the case study, which were teachers’ tokenistic use of ‘Assessment for Learning’ strategies and teachers’ awareness of learning processes and curriculum requirements.Conclusion: The study’s main conclusion was that teachers are likely to practise formative assessment more intuitively if they had a sound knowledge of children’s mathematical cognition and conceptual development. This study pointed out that formative assessment is a co-constructed activity involving the teacher, the learner and peers rather than a teacher-directed activity. The study recommends how continuous professional learning initiatives can design initiatives that integrate research-based knowledge of children’s learning of early grades mathematics.

This article reports on Grade 2 teachers’ perceptions of formative assessment in explaining the phenomenon of the underutilisation of formative assessment practices in mathematics teaching. A qualitative and interpretative case study investigated two Grade 2 teachers’ enactment of formative assessment in priority schools in Gauteng. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations of lessons. The basic principles of qualitative content analysis were applied during data analysis and guided by the formative assessment theoretical framework proposed by Black and Wiliam (2009). The study revealed that teachers’ enactment of formative assessment was limited by their vague understanding of formative assessment and the tensions between formative assessment and curriculum compliance. The study’s central claim is that teachers may know about formative assessment, but if they do not understand how children learn and engage in mathematics learning, then they are unlikely to enact it correctly. While teachers who attended the in-service training programme were able to use some of the strategies as singular tools, they were still unable to implement the combined strategies that constitute the formative assessment pedagogy. Hence, the formative assessment practices of teachers bore limited possible returns on investment to improve learning outcomes in mathematics. The unique contribution of this study is its potential to inform teacher development, policy and practice as it yielded important insights while reinforcing and amplifying existing knowledge.

With the rapid growth of technology and educational innovations, e-tutoring is gaining widespread recognition among researchers and educators in an open distance learning (ODL) environment. Given the expanding interest and demand for e-tutoring, coupled with the growing concern that there are no significant differences in learning outcomes between face-to-face instruction and online teaching, it has become imperative to investigate the pedagogical practices of e-tutors. It is against this background that the study was conducted to investigate e-tutors’ practices in the facilitation of learning in an ODL environment. This study followed a qualitative research approach using a case-study design, which included six e-tutors from a selected module in an undergraduate programme in the Department of Early Childhood Education. Data was collected through open-ended questionnaires and document analysis of discussion forum postings from the e-tutor sites. The study showed that the pedagogical strategies used by e-tutors are not fully aligned to the principles of ODL instruction and this compromised the quality of teaching and learning. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for the professional development of both academics and e-tutors.Â