Grade 4 rural teachers’ pedagogical approaches of teaching geometric patterns in Sekhukhune East District, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

This study explored the pedagogical approaches employed by Grade 4 teachers in the Sekhukhune East District when teaching geometric patterns, using Shulman’s Pedagogical Reasoning and Action (PRA) framework as an analytical lens for understanding how teachers conceptualise, transform, and enact mathematical content in real classroom settings. Through a qualitative multiple-case study design involving five teachers, the research employed non-participatory and unstructured classroom observations, Video-Stimulated Recall Interviews (VSRIs) and Semi-structured Individual Interviews. One or two episodes per teacher were purposively selected to allow for rich, close-up analysis of the teachers’ pedagogical approaches. These data were examined using a custom set of PRA-aligned recognition rules that captured teachers’ actions in relation to content comprehension, transformation of representations, instructional discourse, formative assessment, reflection, and pedagogical growth. The cross-case findings reveals that despite working in resource-constrained rural classrooms, all five teachers enacted pedagogical approaches that foregrounded the structural features of geometric patterns. Teachers consistently relied on concrete and contextual representations, such as matchsticks, coloured chalks, learners’ bodies, and familiar artefacts to make abstract concepts visible and accessible. They emphasised structural awareness by intentionally directing learners to identify growth rules, examine repeating units, analyse colour or shape changes, and predict future terms. Lessons were characterised by high levels of learner participation through demonstrations, board work, and group-constructed patterns, with teachers using probing, reasoning-eliciting questions to drive conceptual engagement and support generalisation. Formative assessment was embedded throughout teaching processes as teachers responded to learner thinking in real time, used misconceptions as learning opportunities, and encouraged peer validation of correctness. The study contributes methodologically by operationalising PRA through recognition rules that made teachers’ reasoning visible in empirical classroom analysis, particularly in relation to stabilising structure and transforming content. The findings carry implications for practice, suggesting the need for purposeful use of representations, structured questioning, and multilingual mediation; for policy, highlighting the need for resource provision and PRA-aligned professional development; and for future research, calling for expanded studies on pattern pedagogy, language, and longitudinal development of algebraic thinking. The study offers a nuanced understanding of how rural Grade 4 teachers navigate the teaching of geometric patterns and shows that meaningful, cognitively rich mathematics teaching can be enacted even in challenging contexts.