HOW PREPARED ARE FIRST-YEAR LIFE SCIENCES PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS FOR THE LABORATORY LEARNING ENVIRONMENT? A CASE STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Developing countries have been associated with wide disparities between social classes have often been observed in developing countries such as South Africa. Such social stratification are in many cases caused by governments who adopt ideologies from the well developed countries without reflecting at the context where such ideologies are to be applied. The University of Technology, at which this case study was conducted, typifies the inequality in social classes to which students come from. This study aimed at focusing on student experience in conducting practical work in a laboratory environment. Purpose sampling strategy was chosen with the aim of investigating the effect of prior exposure of first year Life Sciences students to the laboratory environment. Life Sciences in its nature requires students to be acquainted with both content knowledge and practical work knowledge. In identifying preparedness of first year Life Science for university education, it has been observed that these students have manifested signs of socio-economic disparity in execution of practicals done in laboratory environment.The researcher observed manifestations of these differences in laboratory practical activities such as microscopic, taxonomy, measurement skills required as knowledge learnt prior to their enrolment in education. This study was underpinned by Bourdieu’s, scientific capital and cultural capital as well as Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory. Such theories address disciplinary knowledge that endows Life Sciences students with peculiar skills that are compromised by environment where these students were exposed to before coming to the university. The diverse backgrounds of students include the social field and the social space that they occupy that contribute to the environment that is relational to their prior knowledge and skills required to ensure that they succeed in carrying out laboratory tasks given to them at first year level. Results of this study unveiled that there are indeed visible differences in the way that students executed selected Life Sciences practical activities introduced in the Life Sciences laboratory. Such differences showed that some students come from schools where practical activities were not done while some groups of students in the sample for this study were adequately prepared to conduct experiments independently. This study concluded that for the discipline to level the field of knowledge application through practical activities, academics need to be aware of the social dynamics stated earlier in order to explore interventions such as involving students from different social backgrounds to embark in Community of Practice and other remedial activities that would assist students to be at the same level.