Supporting Student Cognition Of Scientific Knowledge Through Multilingual E-learning Pedagogy

Chapter 15 Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 256 use of electronic mail, the Internet, the Internet and can either be synchronous or asynchronous. Through a sociolinguistic lens embedded in the funds of knowledge and Freire’s Critical Pedagogy, this qualitative study sought to explore the role language plays in the e-learning of 20 undergraduate science students at a university in South Africa. The e-learning lessons were delivered through videos, animations and narrated slides in English with subtitles in isiZulu and Sesotho languages. Data were collected through focus group interviews held via Microsoft Teams. The study presents positive cognitive and sociocultural benefits of multilingual pedagogy in e-learning and recommends its adoption in HE. Introduction New technologies have the potential to support education and provide opportunities for effective learning in ways that have not been possible before. Information and communication technology integration in education has the potential to be influential in bringing about changes in ways of teaching. However, this potential may not easily be realised unless educators tailormake their curriculum to cater for all students. Several factors have resulted in increased intra- and inter-state movement of people culminating in overcrowded multilingual communities. Education has not been spared as this mobility has resulted in bloated classrooms, placing a huge strain on available resources such as laptops, thus compromising the quality of education. Institutions of education have also witnessed an increase in the enrolment of students with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In the year 2020, the situation was worsened by the emergence of COVID-19, an infectious disease spread through human-to-human transmission. The education sector was not spared effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as it led to immediate suspension of traditional contact classes in a bid to stop the wide spread of the virus disrupting educational activities of over 400 million students worldwide, threatening their future education rights (UNESCO 2020). This left institutions with only one option: online teaching and learning. This means instructional practices that were previously conducted through f2f pedagogy in traditional classrooms switched to online (Allo 2020). This led to many institutions circumfusing the concept of e-learning through E-campuses. South Africa already had the White Paper on e-Education (DBE 2004) with the primary goal to transform education through the integration of ICT. To achieve this, the need to prepare teachers for ICT integration cannot be overlooked as they are the major players in this equation. Thus, teachers’ training, both at the pre and post-service levels, is critical. The other hindrances being the scarcity of technological devices, especially in underprivileged communities as well as the language used on online applications. The language of instruction in the country is mostly English, which has repeatedly been identified as a contributing factor to students’ academic underachievement Chapter 15 257 (Probyn 2019). Using qualitative data, this chapter explores the efficacy of multilingual e-learning pedagogy in HE. E-learning in higher education: A global résumé The evolving digital technologies coupled with an increasing interest in computerised delivery of HE courses have resulted in e-learning through electronic mail, the Internet, the Internet and multimedia. E-learning is a learning system that facilitates teaching and learning to locations away from the traditional classroom with the help of electronic resources such as computers, mobile phones and tablets. The educator and students can make use of video, audio, multimedia communications, or some combination of these in the learning process. E-learning applications and processes that can be used for instructional purposes include web-based learning, computerbased learning, virtual education opportunities and digital collaboration. The educator can deliver the educational content through the Internet, intranet or extranet, as audio or visual tapes, as narrated slides, satellite television and CD-ROM (Wani 2013). The student accesses the content at their own convenient time and place (Charamba 2021b). Through e-learning, the transfer of skills and knowledge is enabled through technology. Because of its convenience, e-learning plays a vital role in education during the COVID-19 lockdown and has the potential to change the HE landscape. A study by two Stanford University professors in California in the 1960s reports on positive academic benefits of using technology for instructional purposes. The two used computers in the teaching of Mathematics and reading to elementary school students and suggest a remarkable improvement in their understanding of mathematical concepts and reading comprehension (Gray 2011). In the study, students were taught synchronously and asynchronously. Some of the lessons were in real time, with the lecturers presenting live lessons through computers. With asynchronous lessons, the lecturers prerecorded their lessons and uploaded them on learning sites for the students. The students would then access the lessons and other learning resources at their own time. Results from William D. Graziadei’s online computer-delivered lectures, tutorials and assessments report on improved student engagement and performance. Here, the lessons were completely asynchronous. The lecturer prerecorded the lessons and uploaded them onto the university’s learning portal. Students accessed the learning materials, went through them and answered any activities accompanying the different lessons. The researcher suggests a substantial improvement in student performance as a result of e-learning pedagogy (Graziadei et al. 1997). Graziadei posits that e-learning resources are easy for students to use and maintain the learning resources because they will be stored on a device, unlike in print form. Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 258 The other advantage is their portability allowing students to move around with the learning materials in their hands or pockets. The study also suggests that the improvement in academic performance was because of the permanent availability of learning resources on sites accessible to the students. This gave students the opportunity to visit and revisit the materials as many times as they wished. This way, the student literally has the whole library in their hands. They are also replicable, scalable, having a high probability of success with long-term cost-effectiveness and enable the educator to deliver content in various forms including animations (Wani 2013). One web-based learning media software that displays many animations and cartoon character is PowToon. With this software, one can add background sound, music and even recording sound for specific purposes to their presentation (Frisnoiry, Darari Refisis 2019). One of the greatest advantages of e-learning is that it helps students with and without disabilities develop their social skills through audio-visual instruction through the use of videos, games and team-based activities without having them feel awkward among other students (Mamattah 2016). However, some of these applications have a very limited range of avatars, which are not representative of racial, linguistic and cultural diversity. Such issues of critical literacy and representation must be taken into account when one is developing their e-learning curriculum, as they qualify the usefulness of such applications. Also, not all educators are tech-savvy and training or retraining of such educators can cost money that several governments, especially in developing countries, do not have. The successful integration of ICT into the learning environment largely depends on the ability of educators to structure the curriculum in new ways, to merge technology appropriately with inclusive pedagogy, develop socially active classrooms and encourage cooperative interaction and collaborative learning. A study by Frisnoiry and colleagues reports on improved academic performance among Mathematics Learning Method students at an Indonesian university. Based on their study, they argue that e-learning enables students to access learning materials anytime and anywhere. Students are also motivated as they receive materials in different forms such as animations, videos and journal articles (Frisnoiry et al. 2019). Students have the opportunity to repeatedly revisit the learning materials as many times as they want (Seago, Koellner Jacobs 2018). The permanent availability of online study materials emerged the most common advantage of e-learning in a study conducted by Vitora, Mislinawati and Nurmasyitah (2018). The participants attributed their improved academic performance to revisiting the course materials until they understood the concepts. In traditional contact classrooms, the student will have to rely on the educator’s explanations, printed materials availed and the notes they would have taken during class. Chapter 15 259 Direja (2017) reports on the effectiveness of e-learning in a Communication Science Undergraduate Study Program. The study suggests improved computer and communication skills among the undergraduate students who participated in the study. There was also an improvement in the students’ literacy levels and a reduction in the course dropout rate. E-learning provides education round the clock to a large number of students, unlike the traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms that limit student numbers because of limited capacity. In a way, it eliminates the barriers of time and distance, allowing the student to take responsibility for their own learning schedule. Through e-learning, universities can adopt either a synchronous or an asynchronous model to teaching and learning (Charamba 2021a). The asynchronous model is so flexible that the educator and student do not communicate in real time with each other for various reasons. The educator posts the instructional content to be accessed by the student at their convenient time. These can take the form of videos, texts, or narrated Microsoft PowerPoint slides. In such cases the educator-student dialogue mostly takes place on discussion fora or through e-mails. The synchronous learning model caters for scheduled real-time verbal or nonverbal dialogue between the educator and the student through audio and visual media such as texting, video conferencing and virtual classrooms (Seago et al. 2018). Given its numerous advantages, HEIs need to leverage e-learning to improve the teaching and learning experiences of all students across the curriculum. Educators and students can meet in virtual classrooms with the provision of learning materials being carried out online. E-learning provides a platform to shift from the days when education was socially-oriented, students expected to carry bags full of learning resources, attending lectures in specified rooms and sit in designated ways and positions, during specific times. However, Dowling, Godfrey and Gyles (2003) argue that e-learning can only improve the quality of education if students have proficiency in the language through which educational materials are delivered. However, these studies overlooked some of the most important conditions for effective e-learning. Not every student can afford technological devices to use for their e-lessons especially in the underprivileged communities. In these communities, devices such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones are scarce. In families where these are found, they are normally shared among several members of the family or families, making it difficult for the student to use them to the fullest. Another factor, also, is that technology is not politically or culturally neutral. E-learning applications and services are provided by large multinational corporations, which are ruled by neoliberal ideologies that prioritise profit and are also profoundly colonial. So, any engagement with e-learning, particularly for universities in developing countries, must involve careful negotiation of discourses of development and advancing technology and keeping up because those function to colonise and control our educational endeavours. We must Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 260 leverage the affordances of e-learning that will empower our students, while vigorously interrogating and critiquing power imbalances and redesigning e-learning so that it works for us. This includes redesigning e-learning to include students’ linguistic repertoire through multilingual pedagogy. As in any other country, COVID-19 surfaced in South Africa about the engrained neoliberal contouring of the country’s socio-economic landscape including the education sector. The education sector has already been characterised by perverse neoliberal principles, an obsession with competition, a culture of performativity and surveillance. The present study sought to explore the role language plays in the teaching and learning of undergraduate science students and ways in which educators can capitalise on student multilingualism in e-learning at a South African university. When ICT is integrated into lessons, students are supposed to become more engaged in their work as technology provides different opportunities to make it more fun and enjoyable in terms of teaching the same things in different ways. However, as alluded to elsewhere in this chapter, no e-learning applications are in African languages, ignoring the potential positive impact these languages might have on students’ learning. Institutions of education have a need to adopt an information-literacy curriculum and students have a need to develop their ICT and thinking skills and take responsibility for their own learning. Such needs would be met within a ‘language appropriate’ technology-enabled teaching and learning environment that emphasises student self-direction and self-regulation. Theoretical framework: Critical pedagogy and funds of knowledge During his time working with illiterate Brazilian peasants, one of the world’s first philosophers whose work is considered one of the foundational texts of CP by proposing a pedagogy with a new relationship between the educator, students and their experiences and society, Paulo Freire held the experiential conviction that the traditional pedagogy dehumanised students by treating them as empty vessels (Charamba 2021b Freire 2007). In his pedagogical model of CP, he suggests that true transformation and decolonisation in the classroom can only be realised when both the educator and the student acknowledge each other’s different experiences and expertise they bring into the classroom and view them as instructional resources. In the process of conscientização, the acknowledgement and embracing of a student’s linguistic disposition and funds of knowledge they bring into the educational spaces is the first step towards humanisation as it creates equality and fosters meaningful discussion between educator and student (Freire 2007, 2014). The theory of funds of knowledge recognises the potential associated with the knowledge and experiences resultant from students’ active participation Chapter 15 261 in multicultural, multilingual and multigenerational households and community activities (Gonzalez 2005). Students, according to this theory and in consonance with Freire’s CP do not enter the classroom as blank slates (Freire 2007). In this regard, the funds of knowledge theory posits that effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts with regards to language and culture (Charamba 2021b Gonzalez, Moll Amanti 2005). The theory recognises students’ households as ‘repositories of knowledge’, which can be transferred to school contexts and embedded in the students’ funds of knowledge is their diverse linguistic repertoire which should also be incorporated into the classroom situation through multilingual pedagogy (Gonzalez et al. 2005). South African legislative policy endorses dynamic pedagogical strategies that integrate the use of multiple languages for instructional purposes. These commitments and recommendations for multilingualism in HE are made in statutes such as the Higher Education Act (1997), the Language Policy for Higher Education (2002) and the White Paper on Post-Secondary School Education and Training (Department of Higher Education and Training [DHET] 2015 Maringe 2013 Mkhize Ndimande-Hlongwa 2014). Although the country’s language legislation and policy frameworks endorse multilingualism, education in South African HEIs largely still follows a monolingual route whose roots lie in the colonial era and does not value the multilingual nature of these institutions (Charamba Zano 2019). All HEIs in the country have either English or Afrikaans as the language of LT, although the two are the home languages of a combined 24% of the country’s total population (Statistics South Africa 2019). Purpose of the study Current discourses about education amid the COVID-19 pandemic are marred with an obsession by institutions to try and save the academic year, with ICT integration in education being the only viable option. In view of this, it is imperative to investigate how educators can integrate multilingual pedagogy in e-learning. Besides being required to have the appropriate ICT knowledge and skills and be able to integrate ICT appropriately in teaching, educators should also devise ways that encourage maximum efficacy of ICT integration into their lessons. In this study, the provision of e-learning to multilingual students has been examined through a sociolinguistic lens embedded in the funds of knowledge and Freire’s CP. The study examines the role language plays in the teaching and learning of an undergraduate science course at a university in Johannesburg. The lectures on mechanics and Newton’s laws of motion were taught through e-learning consistent with health care standards established to restrain the escalation of COVID-19 in the country. The language of instruction Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 262 at the university is English. In accordance with the theories cited elsewhere in this chapter, deficient proficiency in the instructional language can become a consequential hindrance to good academic performance in science education, especially as many language minority students keep grappling to meet the academic demands of the scientific texts (Charamba 2019b). Students’ performance ‘in this and other related courses has not been encouraging at all mostly because of the language used during the lessons and in their texts’ (Mojalefa, Male student, aged 23 Interview 20 May 2020). Research questions The study sought to answer the following questions: 1. How does the use of multiple languages in e-learning affect science students’ academic performance? 2. How can educators incorporate students’ multilingualism in e-learning? Embedding multilingual pedagogies into e-learning A body of research in science education suggests that low proficiency in the language of instruction is one of the major causes of low academic performance among students whose home language and language of instruction differ (e.g. see Charamba et al. 2019 De Costa 2019 Probyn 2019 Zhang et al. 2020). Further research also demonstrates that the use of more than one language in the same lesson has positive academic, social and emotional effects (e.g. see García 2019 Iversen 2020 Li 2018 Lin 2019). In the present study, lectures were delivered through videos, animations and narrated slides in English (the university’s language of instruction). The e-learning material also had subtitles in isiZulu and Sesotho languages. The two African languages were chosen because, according to student demographics, 90% of the 20 participants spoke isiZulu or Sesotho as their home language. The other 10% were English home language speakers. For example, in Excerpt 1: English voice note: Let us begin by seeing what a force does to an object Sesotho subtitle: A re qaleng ka ho bona hore na matla a itseng a etsa eng ho ntho e itseng isiZulu subtitle: Ake siqale ngokubona lokho amandla athile akwenzayo kokuthile English voice note: Force makes an object move Sesotho subtitle: Matla a etsa hore ntho e sisinyehe isiZulu subtitle: Amandla abangela ukuba into ihambe English voice note: Force can stop a moving object Sesotho subtitle: Matla a ka emisa ntho e tsamayang isiZulu subtitle: Amandla angamisa into enyakazayo (ehambayo) Chapter 15 263 The students were also provided with text study materials written in the three languages (English, Sesotho and isiZulu). For example, in Excerpt 2: English: Apply Sesotho: Sebedisa isiZulu: Sebenzisa English: Mass Sesotho: boima isiZulu: isisindo English: Speed Sesotho: Motsamao isiZulu: Isivinini In cases where there was no direct translation from English to the two African languages, the scientific terms were explained in the closest possible words, for example, in Excerpt 3: English: Vector Sesotho: ke ntho e nang le tselale boholo kappa bonyane isiZulu: yinto enokuningi noma okungenani okuthile kuyo At the end of the course the students were given a multilingual assessment written in the three languages used throughout, for example: Excerpt 4: English: Which ONE of the following formulas is a product of one of Newton’s laws? Sesotho: Ke efe ea mekhoa e latelang e hlahisitsoeng ke melao ea Newton isiZulu: Yiphi kwamanye amafomula alandelayo angumkhiqizo wemithetho kaNewton 1. V = GM R 2 2. S t = + ν at 1 2 0 2 3. y – y1 = m(x – x1 ) 4. ρ = q / v Method Data-collection The study was qualitative in nature and data were collected through interviewing the undergraduate students in the researcher’s e-tutorial group. The group had 20 students who all volunteered to partake in the study. Of the Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 264 20, 12 were isiZulu home language speakers, six Sesotho, and two were native English language speakers. All ethical considerations were observed, and students chose pseudonyms with which to be called during the study. The focus group interviews were conducted through Microsoft Teams. Besides the advantage that the platform is zero-rated, Microsoft Teams also gives the option to record and transcribe proceedings while the meeting is in progress, thus ensuring data is not lost. The data were analysed using a combination of both inductive and deductive approaches (Bryman 2015). We extracted deductive codes from the scholarly writings we reviewed and these included: e-learning, meaningmaking, multilingualism and epistemological access (Charamba 2019a, 2021a Karlsson, Larsson Jakobsson 2018). An analysis of the interview transcri pts led to the development of inductive codes (McMillan Schumacher 2010). Recurring patterns were identified to construct emergent conceptual categories and themes (Lemke 2012). Findings The COVID-19 pandemic compelled the education sector to embrace ERTL. This mode requires well-established online learning platforms to enable successful delivery of curricula. The urgency exposed some of the challenges of and epistemological access, chief among them being student support in e-learning. After having analysed the qualitative data generated from the interviews the emerging themes are presented and discussed. The interface between proficiency in the language of instruction and academic achievement in undergraduate science education Despite multilingualism being acknowledged and scri pted in current South African legislatures cited elsewhere in this chapter, monolingualism has remained the default educational practice in most universities around the country. All but two South African official languages are actively excluded from HE curricula (Charamba 2019b McKinney Tyler 2019). Multilingual practices have always been observed within the country’s universities, presenting an undisputable case for the use of multilingual communication practices that blur boundaries between different languages (Charamba 2021a). While many studies on multilingual pedagogy in education have critiqued the prevalent monolingual bias, very few frameworks have been developed to account for the ontological, epistemological and methodological framing of these practices with regard to e-learning (Sun Chen 2016). All 20 respondents in the tutorial group indicated they had problems with language in science education. This emanated from the decontextualised Chapter 15 265 nature of the language used as well as the presence of some non-English terms found in the curriculum. In agreement with this notion was Mmabatho, who highlighted that: ‘I am a Sotho and English is my third language so imagine being taught in your third language and expected to excel. It’s not possible. The English I speak during conversations with my friends is different from the one we encounter in the science texts. The English in those texts is too deep and I struggle to understand it. That’s the major reason I don’t do well in science.’ (Mmabatho, female student, 25-years-old) Mmabatho’s response, as well as comparable ones from other participants, confirm Cummins’ claims that there is a correlation between proficiency in the language of instruction and academic performance. Cummins (2008) identifies two levels of language proficiency: basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). The BICS concept represents the language of a natural, informal conversation that the students use on the playground during any informal conversations (Charamba 2019b), such as that referred to by Plaxedes in her response. Cummins refers to this everyday conversational ability as context embedded or contextualised and does not help much in the classroom. To do well in the classroom, a student makes use of the CALP. This is the type of language proficiency needed to read and understand scientific literature, participate in scientific discussions and to provide written responses to science assessments (Cummins 2008). This therefore means students who have not yet developed this much-needed proficiency (CALP) are, according to the students’ responses at a disadvantage in the monolingual educational set-ups. Most students who are taught through a language different from their home language do not have the necessary CALP, resulting in them underperforming academically (García Otheguy 2020). Although some English minority students can converse in the language, the type of language found in their textbooks is more difficult and advanced than the basic one they use in informal conversations. A recent body of research on possible causes of underachievement among university students suggests the mismatch between students’ home language and the language of instruction to be the main cause (e.g. see Hua, Li Jankowicz-Pytel 2020 Iversen 2020 Olivares-Orellana 2020 Vallejo Dooly 2020 Zhang et al. 2020). In the present study, responses from undergraduate students confirmed how language presents them with difficulties in understanding scientific concepts and answering questions because of the complexity of the language of instruction used. These students are faced with the double challenge of acquiring scientific knowledge and skills through a language they have low proficiency (Charamba 2021b Cummins 2008). The interview responses of the present study are also partly confirmed in my previous studies and in some other studies conducted globally (e.g. see Charamba 2019a, 2019b Charamba Zano 2019 Charamba et al. 2019 Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 266 Karlsson et al. 2018 McKinney Tyler 2019 Monteagudo Muniain 2019 Msimanga, Denley Gumede 2017 Song 2019). Multilingual pedagogy as a scaffold for teaching and learning of science through e-learning 90% of students in the study are taught in a language different from their home language. The critiquing of monolingual pedagogies and the emergence of perpetual academic underachievement of minority science students has resulted in researchers paying attention to multilingual education (Li 2018), that is, the acknowledgement and inclusion of multilingual students’ entire linguistic repertoire in the classroom. Interview responses from all students suggest that multilingual pedagogy offers science students increased possibilities for scientific knowledge comprehension. Several students stated the use of more than one language motivated them and: ‘[F]or the first time I enjoyed my science lessons because of the use of Sesotho translations. My English is not good at all hence I don’t understand most of the work taught through English. Yes, I do speak the language but it’s informally not the educational language. The Sesotho translations made me understand everything and I even got a good grade for the end of course assessment task.’ (Nomphilo, female student, 23-years-old) Expanding on Nomphilo’s response, Claris said: ‘[T]here is no way I will fail any assessment on this topic. There’s no reason at all because was I taught in my language. Those handouts also written in isiZulu just made my day. This was the best thing to come out of the year 2020. This made everything easy for me. Being taught in English only is a problem.’ (Claris, female student, 22-years-old) Multilingual pedagogy: ‘[G]ave me the support I really needed. It’s not easy to study on your own with no one to explain to you. Actually this is the way we explain concepts to each other as students, we use our home languages.’ (Mojalefa, male student, 23-years-old) Here Mojalefa refers directly to and points out one disadvantage of learning. The students bring out one of the disadvantages of flexible anywhere-anytime online learning, in that the student is isolated from class discussions and from support from peers and the teacher. The only support the student can receive is the provision of multilingual resources as these tap into the students’ linguistic repertoire. According to Mojalefa, students always re-explain concepts to each other in their home languages. The students’ responses suggest that lessons and learning materials in languages students fully understand facilitate effective learning. The present study suggests that for instructional effectiveness, e-lessons and learning materials should be in more than one language. In situations where the educator is not conversant in the students’ language, they can enlist the Chapter 15 267 services of their colleagues to translate for them. One can also make use of Google Translate. However, when using this site, it is always advisable employ the ‘Back Translation’ option. This verifies the initial translation. Through multilingual e-learning, students understand the concepts well and ‘[T]he way I understood this topic made me feel motivated and look forward to the next one. I normally struggle with answering assessments but it was a different story this time around. At times I submit my work late or don’t submit at all because of challenges presented by the English language.’ (Kayla, female student, 20-years-old) Because it facilitates deeper understanding of scientific concepts, multilingual pedagogy in e-learning also motivates students and, according to students’ responses and data collected from the assessment task, reduces the number of late- and nonsubmissions. At the end of the course, all students submitted their tasks well ahead of the due date. Also, there was a noticeable improvement in student engagement during the e-tutorials. In the majority of monolingual HE science classes students are passive listeners because of the linguistic barrier caused by their low proficiency in the language of instruction (Charamba 2021b) in cases where the language of instruction is different from the students’ home language (McKinney Tyler 2019 Preece 2019). Such discrepancy also depicts the printed academic matter peripheral to the majority of students unless penned in a language they fully understand. Discussion The integration of ICT into education has been receiving considerable attention from various institutions worldwide, making it topical among parents, educators, policy planners and researchers. In South Africa in trying to improve the standard of education, the government enacted an e-education policy that saw the integration of technology in education. As is the case with South Africa, there is a noticeable increase in global initiatives towards improving the quality of education through ICT integration, with an examination of the language of instruction being one of them as this (LoLT) has been identified as a barrier to effective online learning (Allo 2020). In South Africa, the most common LoLT is English. While English has assumed hegemony as the world language, the pronounced controversy on how best to educate non-English speakers in a world dominated by English has been going on since time immemorial as most institutions of education worldwide remain and are increasingly becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse because of globalisation nurtured by improved technological communication and global migration. This evidently contradictory situation has brought about both tensions and new ways of thinking about the e-learning of science students in multilingual contexts. The emergence of multilingual instructional programmes operating Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 268 in various countries across the globe indicates a shift from monolingual pedagogy to embrace the use of multiple languages in education. There is a need for educators and planners to explore ontologies, epistemologies, technologies and cultural banks to arrive at new policy frameworks that will improve the e-learning of multilingual science students. In so doing, countries can come up with open ideological spaces in which the language policy enables the use of multiple languages in e-learning and other educational and social domains. As alluded to elsewhere in this chapter, research suggests that being taught through a language different from one’s home language has a negative correlation with science academic achievement in cases where only the language of instruction is used for all instructional purposes (McKinney Tyler 2019 Monteagudo Muniain 2019 Song 2019). Such students are expected to learn academic knowledge and skills through a decontextualised school science language which they have often not yet fully mastered. In this regard, having deficient proficiency in the instructional language can become a noticeable hindrance to perform well in e-learning science education (Hua et al. 2020). This can, however, be emended if educators acknowledge and incorporate students’ entire linguistic repertoire through multilingual pedagogy in e-learning (Iversen 2020). A recent body of research suggests that a heteroglossia orientation to education has gained momentum in global, fluid and mobile communicative spaces, as it promotes multilingual students’ academic achievement in the science classroom through enhanced literacy (Allo 2020 Jang 2020 Olivares-Orellana 2020 Vallejo Dooly 2020 Zhang et al. 2020) and this can also be incorporated into e-learning. Recommendations ‘Sir can’t you just reteach us everything using our home languages?’ (Sijabulile, male student, 23-years-old) The Language Policy for Higher Education adopted by the government of South Africa in 2002 recommends multilingualism as a means to ensure equity of access and success in HE, in contrast to past colonial and apartheid education policies that left a legacy of inequality (Jang 2020), exclusion and a trail of continual failure (Krulatz Iversen 2019). Multilingualism is a policy orientation towards the formal recognition of multiple languages and includes all the nonstandard varieties under postmodern notions of heteroglossia, which gives equal standing to all languages and dialects being spoken within a formalised system (García Otheguy 2020). Results from the present study and other recent research on multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy in e-learning offer evidence on the potentials of this pedagogy in improving students’ academic achievement Chapter 15 269 (e.g. see Charamba 2021a Hua et al. 2020 Iversen 2020 Monteagudo Muniain 2019 Olivares-Orellana 2020 Sangrà, Vlachopoulos Cabrer 2012 Scott 2015). The present study, grounded in the conception that both students and educators bring diverse

Abstract14 The emergence of COVID-19, an infectious disease spread through human-tohuman transmission, in the year 2019 resulted in the immediate suspension of traditional contact classes the world over in a bid to contain the wide spread of the virus. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted educational routines leaving educational institutions with only one option: e-learning. E-learning is a technological pedagogy which supports teaching and learning through the 14. Sections of this chapter represents a substantial reworking and amalgamation of the following three publications: Charamba (2019b, 2021a, 2021c). Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge through multilingual e-learning pedagogy Erasmos Charamba Department of Foundation Studies, Faculty of Humanities, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Tarsisio Nyatsanza Independent Researcher, Johannesburg, South Africa How to cite: Charamba, E Nyatsanza, T 2022, ‘Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge through multilingual e-learning pedagogy’, in JP Makonye NS Ndlovu (eds.), Innovations in online teaching and learning: Case studies of teacher educators from South Africa during the COVID-19 era, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 255–269. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK376.15 Chapter 15 Supporting student cognition of scientific knowledge 256 use of electronic mail, the Internet, the Internet and can either be synchronous

linguistic knowledge that can effectively be used as an instructional resource (Charamba 2021a De Costa 2019), recommends the adoption of multilingual pedagogy in e-learning. In this way, not only will educators transform HE, but they will be doing social justice to the students as codified in the country’s legislative frameworks. The approach also offers students much-needed support away from the traditional classroom. The study therefore recommends the use of heteroglossic pedagogies in e-learning of science. Conclusion The participants’ interview responses suggest that multilingual pedagogy in e-learning presents both cognitive and sociocultural advantages: on the one hand, it maximises a deeper understanding of concepts and develops skills in the weaker language by rebalancing the power relations between languages (Vogel García 2017). On the other, it supports home-university cooperation by enabling parental intervention in their learners’ education. The study also demonstrated that the use of African languages in e-learning in today’s HE promotes the interdependence of multilayered language systems by the simultaneous use of multiple languages within the same lesson. To mitigate the possible negative academic effects resultant from students’ low proficiency in the language of instruction used for e-learning, multilingual pedagogy is suggested where the students’ linguistic repertoire is acknowledged and accommodated. This approach, based on the responses from the students and their performance in the assessment task suggests that one language does not exist in isolation from the other and typifies the ‘ubuntuness’ of languages, a notion from the African epistemological orientation of complex continuity found in the injunction: ‘I am because you are you are because we are’ (Madiba 2014).