Abstract:

Practical work is encouraged in most sciences curricula globally, even in South Africa, with the curriculum emphasizing its significance in teaching Life Sciences. Some specialized equipment is needed for practical work to be included in Life Sciences. Many schools do not have these resources, which is a challenge in South Africa, and teachers need to use every opportunity to identify cheaper alternative ways to improve their practice. This necessitates the improvisation approaches to mitigate the challenges of lack of instructional material at schools, which hinders using the inquiry method and cooperative learning in Life Sciences. Although improvised material may not sufficiently replace actual laboratory equipment, it will keep the system going while the appropriate materials are arranged. The use of easily accessible indigenous resources is significant in unpacking topics in Life Sciences and they ensure local relevance. This paper explored how teachers implement improvisation to address indigenous knowledge in Life Sciences. Lev Vygotsky's social constructivism underpins the paper as a theoretical framework and the emphasis is that culture affects and shapes cognitive development because the environment in which children grow up influences their thinking. It is concluded that strategies that can help improve the use of practical works in Life Science include inexpensive improvising materials from the community and incorporating indigenous knowledge in the teaching of sciences. This way, much basic science equipment that will make Life Sciences teaching lively, interesting, and meaningful can be improvised. We recommend that Government should encourage Life Sciences teachers to attend workshops and conferences to improve their knowledge in handling the production and utilization of instructional materials.

Keywords:

Improvisation, Life Sciences, practical work, indigenous knowledge, Instructional materials.