Skills and Strategies to Improve Challenges Faced by Teachers in the Teaching of Euclidean Geometry

The Chapter Seven explores skills and strategies to improve challenges faced by some teachers in the teaching of Euclidean geometry in South African schools. This is a case study design and was conducted in six purposefully selected high schools in the Motheo District Education base on cluster sampling technique. Classroom observations, and focus group interviews were used for data collection. Six high school teachers who teach geometry in grades 7-12 were sampled for the study, one from each grade were observed and interviewed. Content analysis was used for data analysis. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes and patterns. The main findings of the research revealed that training of teachers in collaboration with the Department of Education using mathematical modelling activities as well as relevant skills and strategies has increased both teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of teaching mathematics, and their instructional practices as well as performance in class in teaching of geometry in schools for better understanding of learners. The study also revealed that the majority of teachers who went to technical schools have more developed content knowledge to teach geometry with ease since they engaged in more practically oriented activities during the period of their training due to an area of specialisation with which they were familiar.