Teaching and Learning Methods of Information Technology in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) is taught in all South African secondary schools. IT has four learning outcomes: E-Communication, Social and Ethical Issues, Hardware and Systems Software, and Programming and Software Development. Programming and Software Development enjoy the highest weight as an outcome of IT, and it is believed to be the main cause of the difficulty of the learning process of IT and related concepts. The number of Grade 9 learners willing to offer IT as a compulsory subject in their coursework. On the other hand, the Grade 10 learners are decreasing, and the number of learners pursuing IT until Grade 12 where its application is declining in every school in South Africa annually. This research aims to investigate the methods and techniques that enhance the teaching and learning process of Information Technology at a selected high school focusing on Grade 12 learners in South Africa Kwa-Zulu Natal. Although this work investigated many teaching and learning methods, it has come to be known that the hybrid system or the method is the best to adopt and apply in the teaching and learning of IT in high schools, especially in the relevant target high school. For this purpose, fifteen (15) IT teachers as the participants were sampled through sequential sampling techniques, where a group of teachers of IT have been selected non-randomly. The open-ended informal interview guide has been designed and face-to-face in-depth interviews have been conducted with respondents. The thematic context analysis has been adopted as a data analysis technique. The findings of the study showed that the hybrid system that combines both teacher-centered and learner-centered teaching approaches was able to enhance the teaching and learning of IT. Moreover, the teacher's and learners' attitudes play an important role in enhancing the learning and teaching methods at high school levels. Furthermore, the interest and exposure of the learners also factor to enhance the learning motivation of learners towards IT and related subjects.