Constructivism-led Assistive Technology: An Experiment At .
South African Journal of Childhood EducationISSN: (Online) 2223-7682, (Print) 2223-7674Page 1 of 12Review ArticleConstructivism-led assistive technology: An experimentat a Namibian special primary schoolAuthors:Loide K.S. Abiatal1Grant R. Howard1Affiliations:1School of Computing, Collegeof Science, Engineering andTechnology (CSET), Universityof South Africa, Pretoria,South AfricaBackground: The study focused on children with hearing disabilities, which was significant asalmost 9 million children in sub-Saharan Africa, including Namibia, had hearing disabilities.The problem was the lack of prior research on the effects of assistive technology (AT) inprimary education for the Deaf in Namibia, for guiding Namibian special primary schools andeducators.Aim: The aim was to investigate the effects of Constructivism-led AT on the teaching andlearning of learners who were deaf, in a mathematics class at a rural special primary school.Corresponding author:Grant Howard,howargr@unisa.ac.zaSetting: The study involved Grade three children who were deaf. Grade 3 is where childrenlearn to build and understand foundational and basic mathematical concepts, such as counting,which they require for subsequent mathematics learning and practice.Dates:Received: 12 July 2019Accepted: 16 Apr. 2020Published: 20 July 2020Methods: The study was a mixed-methods study comprising a quantitative experiment andqualitative interviews.How to cite this article:Abiatal, L.K.S. & Howard, G.R.,2020, ‘Constructivism-ledassistive technology: Anexperiment at a Namibianspecial primary school’,South African Journal ofChildhood Education 10(1),a794. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/sajce.v10i1.794Copyright: 2020. The Authors.Licensee: AOSIS. This workis licensed under theCreative CommonsAttribution License.Results: The findings suggested that the Constructivism-led AT may have had a positive effecton the children’s multiplication and division achievement, but not on their addition andsubtraction achievement. The teachers were positive about the Constructivism-led AT andindicated that it supported collaborating, cooperating, exploring, self-assessing, learning fromerrors, seeking knowledge independently, self-regulating, self-reflecting, metacognitivethinking and being self-aware.Conclusion: For school management and teachers of children who are deaf, the study offeredan intervention for potentially improving teaching and their learners’ mathematicsachievement. In addition, the study provided valuable evidence for policymakers aboutintegrating technology for effective learning environments.Keywords: assistive technology; AT; Constructivism; deaf; field experiment; Grade 3;interviews; mathematics; Namibia; primary education; special education; teaching andlearning.IntroductionSocial valueIt has been reported that people with disabilities face many challenges (Indongo & Mufune 2015),including those related to social identity and education (Groce 2004). Ethically, children withdisabilities should have the same access to education as those without disabilities (Brodin 2010)and, practically, they should have the same access to education to support themselves and tocontribute to society in adulthood.The study concerned children with hearing disabilities, which was a significant disabilityas deafness or partial deafness affected about 5% of the global population in 2018 or about460 million people, with 34 million of these being children (WHO 2018). Out of these children,almost 9 million were in sub-Saharan Africa, including Namibia (WHO 2012).Read online:Scan this QRcode with yoursmart phone ormobile deviceto read online.Learners who are deaf experience challenges such as growing up in a family that is not proficientin Sign Language (Anglin-Jaffe 2013; Luckner, Bruce & Ferrell 2016), which is a language withgrammatical rules and structure used by the Deaf and based on visual signs and gestures.In addition, having to learn from conventional textbooks can be difficult because reading skillsare developed subsequent to Sign Language skills, resulting in decreased reading proficiencyhttp://www.sajce.co.zaOpen Access
Page 2 of 12(Verlinden, Zwitserlood & Frowein 2005). These challengeshave been reported to foster cognitive deficits that haveresulted in impaired academic achievement (Humphrieset al. 2016; Luckner et al. 2016). For instance, in a report basedon data from 1974 to 2003 states that learners who are deafand hard-of-hearing typically lag behind their hearing peersin academic achievement (Qi & Mitchell 2012).Assistive technology (AT) is defined as an approach withgreat potential for addressing the many challengesexperienced by people with various disabilities. Assistivetechnology is defined as any artefact that is used to improvethe functional capabilities, quality of life, autonomy andsocial inclusion of people with disabilities and these artefactscan be anything from cardboard communication cards tocomputer software (ATIA n.d.). Assistive technologies havebeen widely used by service providers and educators, andoften in special education (Boone & Higgins 2007). There arereports of ATs having enhanced and improved the functionalcapabilities of students with various disabilities (Rose et al.2005) and provided them with opportunities forindependence, experience and prospects comparable tolearners without disabilities (Holder-Brown & Parette 1992;Wong & Cohen 2011). In addition, it has been emphasisedthat ATs should be employed as early as possible to improvelearning (Holder-Brown & Parette 1992).This study targeted mathematics education as mathematicsis needed everywhere in the world and all learnersrequire mathematics, including learners who are deaf(Akpan & Beard 2014; Drouhard 2015). Furthermore, asearly as possible, starting from kindergarten, young childrenshould acquire mathematical skills, such as the ability tocount, label and compare columns on graphs (Kritzer 2009).Accordingly, research to develop knowledge about how toimprove the mathematics achievement of young learnerswho are deaf, using ATs, has important social value and wasthe focus of this study.Scientific valueThe principal researcher was a citizen of Namibia and,therefore, conducted the study in the Namibian context(Bruwer & February 2019). Furthermore, Namibia hadcommitted to providing equal education opportunities tolearners with disabilities under the United Nations (UN)Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention onthe Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (Bruwer &February 2019), which included providing support and evenassistive devices to children with disabilities (MoE 2013;Namibia 2004).Generally, it has been reported that the use of informationand communications technologies (ICTs) in rural classroomsis low (Ngololo, Howie & Plomp 2012) and specifically,according to the researcher’s inquiries and generalknowledge, no ATs were being used for learners who weredeaf in primary or even secondary schools throughoutNamibia, which was substantiated in a Namibian Ministry ofhttp://www.sajce.co.zaReview ArticleEducation, Arts and Culture (MoEAC) report (MoEAC 2018).This was the real-world problem identified by the study.Subsequently, the literature was searched and no directlyrelevant research was discovered involving ATs in Namibianprimary or even secondary education for the Deaf, forinforming educational policy and providing guidance to thespecial schools and educators. Nonetheless, many studieswere discovered that had been conducted in other countries,especially developed countries, but these did not relate wellto the substantial and distinctive contextual characteristics inNamibia (MoE 2013), namely resource scarcity, cultural andlanguage differences and varying technology competenciesrelating to teaching and learning (Bruwer & February 2019).Consequently, the study’s research problem was the lack ofprior research on the effects of ATs on mathematics learningin primary education for the Deaf in Namibia and byaddressing this research problem, the study made an originalcontribution to the scientific body of knowledge. Importantly,the study’s selected rural special primary school was basedon its accessibility and contextual characteristics, whichplaced its learners who were deaf at a high risk of lowacademic achievement (MoE 2013).Conceptual frameworkThe literature indicated that ATs have the potential toimprove the education of special needs learners. Nevertheless,there were AT studies that showed positive results (Shepherd& Alpert 2015), negative results (Koester & Mankowski 2014)and even mixed results (Foley & Masingila 2015). Thisdemonstrated to the researchers that AT alone, whilstpromising, was not a panacea for special needs education.Upon further study, it became apparent from the literaturethat an AT should be implemented in conjunction with acomplementary learning theory for the improved chanceof success (Duhaney & Duhaney 2000; Gilakjani, Leong &Ismail 2013).The literature was then searched for potential learningtheories, which presented many. After initial analysis, fourlearning theories, namely Behaviourism (Ertmer & Newby2013), Cognitivism, Constructivism and was not consideredideal for mathematics learning because Behaviourist learningenvironments are typically passive and learners becomeactive only by reacting to stimuli.Cognitivism addressed some criticisms of Behaviourismemphasising the mental structures of learning and gives themind primacy in the creation of meaning (Anderson, Reder& Simon 1997). Nonetheless, Cognitivism has been criticisedfor excluding the creation of meaning through social andindividual experiences, which were important in the study.Similarly, Connectivism, which is a contemporary learningtheory established for learning through networking in adigital environment (Goldie 2016), was not considered thebest fit for the study as it is based on highly networked digitallearning environments and the study’s context could notsupport such an environment.Open Access
Page 3 of 12In contrast, Constructivism advocates that learners constructknowledge and meaning based on their interpretedexperiences of the world. In a Constructivist classroom, theteacher is a facilitator and learners actively constructknowledge by participating and interpreting ideas fromsocial and individual experiences and prior knowledge,which is deemed to have positive effects on learning andacademic attitude (Semerci & Batdi 2015). Constructivismhas been seen as a necessity in special education (Cobb 1994)and the integration of Constructivism in mathematicslearning has been reported by several researchers to havefacilitated learning, group work, active participation,problem-solving and critical thinking (Briede 2016; Major &Mangope 2012). Therefore, Constructivism was judged toprovide the appropriate conceptual framework for guidingthe use of the AT in the study.Aim and objectivesThe research objective was to investigate the effects ofConstructivism-led AT on the teaching and learning oflearners who were deaf, in a mathematics class at a ruralspecial primary school. Accordingly, the study’s researchquestions were: What was the effect of the Constructivism-led ATon the mathematics achievement of the learners? What were the teachers’ perceptions of the Constructivismled AT?Research methods and designStudy designThe study was based on the philosophical position ofpragmatism, an epistemology where knowledge is acquiredthrough research strategies and methods most appropriate toanswer the research questions and address the researchproblem (Creswell 2009). Pragmatism justified the use ofmixed methods comprising an experiment (Sekaran & Bougie2013) which used quantitative data to measure themathematics achievement of the learners, and an interviewsurvey (Myers 2013) using qualitative data to understand theperceptions of the teachers.SettingThe study involved Grade 3 children who were deaf; thisgrade was selected because it is a grade where children learnto build and understand foundational and basic mathematicalconcepts such as counting, which they require for subsequentmathematics theory and practice (Rudasill, Gallagher &White 2010). In addition, Grade 3 was perceived by theresearcher and teachers at the school to be the lowest gradelevel appropriate for conducting the experiment and forunderstanding the instructions and communication relatingto the purposes of the study.The children were taught written English and Namibian SignLanguage (NSL) at the school. The special school was a smallhttp://www.sajce.co.zaReview Articleschool with low numbers of students in each grade. Grade 3had eight learners in 2018. This corresponded to the smallpopulation of learners who were in rural Deaf schools inNamibia (Hunter 2017). In addition, using small numbers forAT experiments in education is not unprecedented and hasprovided valuable insights and contributions to the field. Forexample, a study that tested an AT application for learnerswith dyslexia used only seven primary school students(Fälth & Svensson 2015) and a study that tested mobile phoneusability used 18 participants (Liu et al. 2010).Often in experiments there is a trade-off between internal andexternal validity (Sekaran & Bougie 2013). Internal validity isabout establishing cause-and-effect relationships whereasexternal validity is about establishing whether or not anydiscovered cause-and-effect relationships apply equally toother settings and scenarios. This study aimed for internalvalidity to address its research problem.The particular AT used in the study was selected following anin-depth review and selection process. Initially, the researcherscrutinised the academic literature for mathematics softwareapplications or ATs used in similar research contexts and thensearched the general internet for applicable mathematicssoftware applications. Both methods of searching resulted ina list of 10 software applications, namely Signing MathDictionary, Math Signer, GeePerS*Math, Master Maths, MathWhiz, Microsoft Mathematics, AdaptiveMind Math,RekenTest, Math Blaster and Geometer’s Sketchpad.Each software application was evaluated for its suitability tothe resource-constrained rural Namibian primary schoolenvironment and its adaptability to a Constructivist classroom(Murphy 1997). This meant that the software application hadto preferably be freely available, not require internetconnectivity or high-specification computing devices, useNSL or written English (Murphy 1997).After evaluating each software application, the followingwere not selected: Signing Math Dictionary because it offeredsigning in American Sign Language (ASL) and Signed English(SE) only; Signing Math Dictionary because it was a dictionarywith limited examples of mathematics terms and did not haveany exercise features; Math Signer because the authors andcontacts on the application’s website could not be reached togain access to the application; GeePerS*Math because itoffered signing in ASL only and was not available to test viathe Android app store as advertised; Master Maths, MathWhiz, AdaptedMind Math and Math Blaster because thesewere not freely available and had features similar to the otherapplications; Microsoft Mathematics because it was moreapplicable to higher-level grades such as Grades 8–12; and theGeometer’s Sketchpad because it offered mostly geometrybased tutorials.RekenTest (RT) (Runhaar 2016) was the software selected forthe study, for its suitability to the resource-constrained ruralNamibian primary school environment and its adaptabilityto a Constructivist classroom (Murphy 1997). Some of the keyOpen Access
Page 4 of 12features of RT were that it was designed to adapt itself to aspecific student based on a student’s individual learning; itwas developed for both learners and teachers; it enabledlearners to practice, analyse and test their arithmetic skills; itoffered problems ranging from the easy to difficult; and itallowed learners to see a progress report after each session. Inaddition, RT had the potential to foster a learner-centredapproach by allowing learners to investigate mathematicsconcepts through exploration and discovery. RekenTest wasdesigned for easy use by young children and straightforwardadministration by older children and adults. It therefore didnot require any formal training or specialised computingskills. Its interface was simple to use, which motivated andencouraged learners to study the mathematics conceptsindependently and at their own pace. Furthermore, RTprovided arithmetic problems for primary school grades thatmatched well with the curriculum content of the Grade 3junior primary phase syllabus in Namibia.Importantly, RT was not marketed and did not claim to bedesigned as an AT for the Deaf or Constructivist software andby itself cannot be regarded as Constructivist software.However, as the study used RT to improve the functionalcapabilities of the learners who were deaf, RT in the study isan AT by definition. In addition, the study viewed RT as aninstructional tool like other instructional tools at a teacher’sdisposal, such as a blackboard, textbook, projector or abacus,and an instructional tool can be used in many ways by ateacher depending on that teacher’s approach. Similarly, RTcan be used in many ways in a classroom. The literatureindicated that there was an increased chance of success if anAT is implemented in conjunction with a complementarylearning theory (Duhaney & Duhaney 2000; Gilakjani et al.2013). Accordingly, the study embedded RT in a Constructivistclassroom or learning environment and used RT specificallyin terms of Constructivist principles (Murphy 1997) in anexperiment to measure Constructivism-led AT.Study population and sampling strategyThere were eight learners in Grade 3 in 2018, all boys. Theirspecific ages were not requested as the researcher did notinteract with the learners directly, but on observation theyall appeared to be within the 9 to 10 year age range. Inaddition, their presence in the Grade 3 class providedconfirmation that their competencies were at Grade 3 leveland the study focused on whether or not there would be animprovement in their current academic achievementregardless of age. None of the learners had ever used acomputer before the experiment and, consequently, they allstarted from a comparable position of no experience withcomputers, laptops or RT. Therefore, the first lesson of eachphase of the experiment was used to guide the learners fromopening the laptops to starting RT and navigating throughits different settings until they were comfortable using RT ontheir own.Random assignment was used to allocate the Grade 3 learnersinto either the experimental/treatment group or the controlhttp://www.sajce.co.zaReview Articlegroup. Randomised experiments are regarded as an effectivemethod for assessing an intervention between two groups ineducational research (Campbell, Cook & Shadish 2002;Sekaran & Bougie 2013). Random assignment ensured thateach learner had an equal chance of being assigned to eithergroup; any confounding variables were distributed equallyamongst the groups and threats to the internal validity of thestudy were mitigated (Sekaran & Bougie 2013). Randomassignment ensured that both groups were comparable.In addition, three teachers who taught at the special schoolwere involved in the study and they were referred to a MT01,MT02 and to MT03, where MT refers to mathematics teacher.These teachers were selected because they were employed atthe school and recommended by the principal of the schoolas being competent and familiar with teaching the Grade 3sin the school. MT01 was a Grade 3 mathematics teacher withhearing, MT02 was a Grade 1 mathematics teacher who wasdeaf and MT03 was a Grade 2 mathematics teacher withhearing; and all three teachers were proficient in NSL. Whilstonly two teachers were required to teach the experimentaland control group classes, MT02 was included to gai
problem-solving and critical thinking (Briede 2016; Major & Mangope 2012). Therefore, Constructivism was judged to provide the appropriate conceptual framework for guiding the use of the AT in the study. Aim and objectives. The research objective was to investigate the effects
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