https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE The Zambia Interdisciplinary Journal of Education (ZIJE) is an annual journal that accepts local and international scholarly articles in a broad spectrum of disciplines within the field of education, ranging from conceptual, factual, ideological and research articles. The Journal welcomes manuscripts submissions that meet the general criteria of significance and academic excellence. Department of Educational Psychology, Sociology and Special Education, School of Education, University of Zambia en-US Zambia Interdisciplinary Journal of Education ( ZIJE) Online-ISSN 2710-0715 2710-0715 https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE/article/view/617 With the Covid-19 pandemic wreaking havoc globally, the world locked itself down, creating an apparent standstill. Zimbabwe closed all her universities and other learning institutions on 24 March, 2020. However, despite the apparent standstill of certain activities, life itself did not stop. This qualitative study reports on the experiences of 11 Masters in Education (M.Ed. Languages) students at a selected state university on their use of WhatsApp as a pedagogical platform during the Covid-19 lockdown period that coincided with their March to August 2020 semester. A case study was decided as the most useful design. All the 11 students taking the two English modules by one of the researchers were conveniently and purposively selected as the sample but focus was delimitated to only one module. Since there were sensitive ethical issues surrounding a study of this nature, due diligence to ethical considerations was followed. Data were collected through semi-structured WhatsApp interview questions. Questions covered participants’ experiences with the platform, including possible challenges and solutions. Researchers also had the opportunity to analyse some of the WhatsApp chats for the particular group of students. The major findings of the study showed that students acknowledge that despite being a social media platform, WhatsApp could be conveniently used as a learning platform with great opportunities. They identified its potential to enhance active and self-directed learning off-campus, and even in remote areas. They however noted that WhatsApp presented technical, viability and credibility challenges that compromised the platform as one that could promote critical thinking. The positive and negative payoffs from WhatsApp as a pedagogical intervention platform invite further research, not dismissal of the platform as an alternative to teaching/learning platform. The study thus recommends the meaningful combination of WhatsApp platform with other e-learning modes and with on-campus face-to-face learning approaches. Jairos Gonye Jeriphanos Makaye ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2021-09-30 2021-09-30 2 1 1 15 https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE/article/view/619 The purpose of this study was to analyse mentoring practices experienced by student teachers at Evelyn Hone College within the five factor mentoring model for effective teaching during teaching practice. The first objective was to analyse student teachers’ experiences of mentoring practices during teaching practice. The other objective was to determine the differences in student teachers’ experiences of mentoring practices by background variables (gender and programme of study). This study was quantitative in nature and employed a cross-sectional survey design. The study population was 474 third-year student teachers of Evelyn Hone College. A sample of 155 was drawn using stratified random sampling. Data were collected through questionnaires and were analysed using SPSS version 20. Means and standard deviations were used to determine whether the experiences of student teachers were positive or negative. Manny-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to test the hypotheses. The study revealed that student teachers had positive experiences in all the five mentoring factors (personal attributes, system requirements, pedagogical knowledge, modelling and feedback). However, student teachers were found not to have been adequately mentored in specific pedagogical knowledge areas such as classroom management, teaching strategies, and questioning techniques. The findings further indicated that there were no differences between gender of student teachers and experience of mentoring practices. The study also found significant differences between programme of study and two of the five mentoring practices (personal attributes and modelling). The study concluded that student teachers had more positive experiences in personal attributes, modelling and feedback than in pedagogical knowledge and system requirement. The study also concluded that Programme of study is a major factor in student teacher mentoring. It was recommended that there was need to develop expectations of mentor teachers during teaching practice. The expectations should specifically address student teachers’ needs in system requirement and pedagogical knowledge. Milton Munjita Akakandelwa Akakandelwa Oswell Chakulimba ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2021-09-30 2021-09-30 2 1 16 29 https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE/article/view/615 This study aimed at establishing whether there were any particular challenges that faced school administrators and Education Standards Officers (ESOs) in Nyimba district in their Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of selected secondary school teachers’ performance. The objection of the study was to investigate the major challenges to monitoring and evaluation faced by school administrators and Education Standards Officers, if any. This study was conducted within the framework of mixed methodology using an embedded mixed design, the study collected data from 68 participants drawn from six secondary schools and the District Education Board Office in Nyimba. The data were collected using questionnaires and interviews. The findings were that most teachers were faced with the challenges of inadequate teaching and learning materials at their schools, minimal feedback by ESOs, inadequate staffing of ESOs and minimal motivation of teachers. Moreover, some teachers feared to meet standards officers due to inadequate preparation. On the other hand, the district was also faced with inconsistent funding from the government and therefore making timely inspections in distant schools almost impossible. My recommendations for addressing the challenges that emerged from the findings included continuous professional trainings where Education Standards Officers and teachers in Zambia are inducted on professional ethics, shared vision, timely school visits by standards officers, the incorporation of ICTs into monitoring and evaluation, awarding of hard working teachers, recruitment of additional standards officers and the undertaking of cluster monitoring and evaluation teachers in schools. Viliza Silwamba Harrison Daka ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2021-09-30 2021-09-30 2 1 30 40 https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE/article/view/684 This paper seeks to compare the effects of orthographic depth on 4th graders’ writing skills among Nyanja-English bilinguals in Zambia. The paper was premised on the assumption that orthographic depth would considerably affect writing development in similar ways as reading acquisition, and it was, therefore, envisaged that the dynamics observed in reading would be replicated in writing. To evaluate this hypothesis, Nyanja and English writing samples of six 4th graders were analysed to determine differences in writing mechanics and intelligibility in the scripts using a sequential mixed-methods case study design. Results show a significantly high word account in the English scripts, while the Nyanja scripts had more word variety. Additionally, English scripts were generally longer and had more syntactically complex sentences, while Nyanja samples had more word variety. It was difficult to differentiate intelligibility because participants failed to follow the basic convention of the main idea-supporting sentence paragraphing in both languages. The other major difference in the scripts was related to word spellings as most irregular English words were phonetically spelled. Majority of the Nyanja spelling errors were mostly over-generalisations of the English conventions. Basically, the study reveals that orthographic transparency, as shown in the acquisition of reading skills, exerts some influence on the development of writing skills as well. In conclusion, it was noted that despite being orthographically opaque and more challenging to master, pupils still have a slight advantage in English writing over Nyanja because of the availability of practice material, although oral vocabulary helps in generating more variety in the latter. Bestern Kaani ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2021-12-10 2021-12-10 2 1 41 56 https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE/article/view/685 The study sought to investigate how students considered the orientation received in terms of its relevance to their social and academic adjustment at the selected public university. A sample size of 130 was used which comprised 128 students and two Deans from Schools of Education and Humanities and Social Sciences. The study was guided by the Student Departure Theory which focusses on three stages students pass through (separation, transition and incorporation) from home to a new learning institution. The cconcurrent transformative design was used. By using the concurrent transformative design, quantitative methods were embedded within a qualitative design. The qualitative and quantitative data were collected at the same time during one data collection phase and priority was placed on the qualitative methods and data. The quantitative data was embedded to support the qualitative data. Questionnaire, interview and focused group discussion guides were used to collect the data. Microsoft Word Excel was used to analyse quantitative data while thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. It was found that 57% of the students viewed the orientation received as relevant to their social adjustment while 43% had contrary views. Notably, 111 of the 128 students either missed or partially attended the orientation. From a transformative view point, it is therefore, recommended that all first year full time students must attend orientation programme. Muloongo Mudenda Daniel Ndhlovu ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2021-12-10 2021-12-10 2 1 57 70 https://mines.unza.zm/index.php/ZIJE/article/view/686 The purpose of the study was to find out the teaching strategies for visual impairment and their benefits . A case study research design was used in this study. To collect and analyse data, a qualitative research approach was used. Learners with visual impairments and special education teachers who work with them were the target population. The sample size was 35 respondents. Data was gathered through the use of questionnaires and interviews. The descriptive statistics were generated using the Excel 2013 software in the form of frequency tables and percentages. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data from the interviews. The study reported that teachers use individual education plan, inclusive education, audio device, recording of lessons, adaptation of lessons, materials written in high contrast and use of magnifiers in teaching of learners with visual impairment. The visual impairment teaching strategies provides a diversified learning among learners as they also encourage participatory learning. It is important to make mention that the participatory teaching strategy is used used in any physical setting, interpreting and fun. Therefore, helping to involve the VI learners in the subjects. It helps learners to learn about themselves. Through the participatory learning, the VI learners are able to analyse their own situation, rather than have it analysed by others. In other words, participatory learning helps the VI learners build self confidence. These teaching strategies help learners learn on their own. This makes it possible for the VI learners not to easily forget the learnt concepts. It therefore makes learning permanent among the VI learners. Visually impaired learners rely on self-exploration to learn about the world. The amount of information that learners can access with visual impairments is limited in this manner. Overall, these modalities cannot successfully compensate for visual inputs; they are only present to mitigate the effects of vision loss on learning , visually impaired students rely on self-exploration to learn about the world. Nephat Kasebusha Martin Banda ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2021-12-10 2021-12-10 2 1 71 82