An investigation of grade 7 pupils' understanding of non christian religions in religious education in 2 selected Serenje district primary schools
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Date
2017
Authors
Ndhlovu, Duba
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Zambia
Abstract
The study investigated grade 7 pupils’ understanding of non-Christian religions in selected
primary schools in Serenje District. The study began by highlighting how the current pluralistic
Zambian Religious Education has come about in order to implement and achieve objectives in
the Education policy documents and also in the Constitution of Zambia.
The study was conducted in Serenje District at two primary schools. One school was situated in
the District Administrative centre, hereby stated as Abesu school while the other school was
situated in the outskirt of the District, hereby stated as Balulu School.
The study used the qualitative approach and case study research design in order to effectively
achieve the research objectives and provide descriptive findings. In data collection, individual
interviews, focus group discussions, short one-word answer exercise and lesson observation were
used. The instruments for data collection were semi structured interview guides, focus group
discussion guides and filling in the gaps questions. The target population was all the grade 7
pupils in Serenje District primary schools. Simple random sampling was used where all pupils
of a grade seven class in a selected school were drawn as respondents.
The study was backed with Goldman’s theory of religious thinking and Jean Piaget’s theory on
child’s cognitive development. Grade 7 pupils being of ages between eleven and thirteen years
were in their concrete stage of development and as such learners were only capable to make
sense of concrete information. Similarly, the social environment surrounding primary schools
created either a positive or a negative re-enforcement to the knowledge learners obtained in their
classroom.
The findings of the study were that pupils at grade 7 in primary schools in Serenje District of
Zambia, had limited, distorted and weird understanding of non-Christian religions. Findings
proved that the general outcomes for Religious Education were not being achieved. It was
therefore recommended that production of appropriate teaching and learning aids in form of
charts, videos, models, film slides, pictures and posters to support learning needs have be
maximised. Additionally, Religious Education books should adequately be supplied in rural
primary schools and they should contain as much information about religions in picture form.
Description
Thesis
Keywords
Religious education--Education policy--Zambia , Religious education--Primary school--Zambia