BY Nkosazana Ngwadla
National Research Foundation awards Wits Professor Jill Adler for advancing maths teaching, research, and empowering maths educators in post-democratic SA.
The annual National Research Foundation (NRF) Awards, which honour prolific scientists behind some of the outstanding research done at South Africa’s higher education institutions, took place in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, on 31 August 2023.
NRF CEO Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo, said, “The NRF Awards embody the NRF’s overall mandate for the support and advancement of research and human capacity; our development of the country’s National Research Facilities; the fostering of public awareness and engagement with science; and our commitment to the promotion of the national science system for national development.”
In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Research Excellence Award for Early Career/Emerging Researcher (Life Sciences) also went to Wits University, with Dr Ekene Emmanuel Nweke being recognised for his research in pancreatic and gallbladder cancer.
The NRF Lifetime Achiever Award recognises an individual who has demonstrably made extraordinary contributions to the development of science in and for South Africa over an extended period. These contributions must be of international standard and impact.
The Lifetime Achiever awardee, Wits Professor of Mathematics Education, Jill Adler, said, “At a personal level, receiving recognition of work done over many years, is enormous – indeed overwhelming. More broadly, the award represents an acknowledgment, by the NRF who funded so much of my work, of the significance of inter-linking research and development in the teaching and learning of mathematics.”
The Lifetime Achiever award comes with a R50 000 grant, which Adler says will enable her to continue and enhance her current work on language-responsive-mathematics-teaching, which she says is so critical in the South African context and gaining more and more interest world-wide.
Professor Jill Adler is an NRF A1-rated researcher, indicating that she is recognised by all reviewers as a leading scholar in her field internationally for the high quality and broad impact (beyond a narrow field of specialisation) of her research outputs
She completed a BSc in Mathematics and Psychology at Wits in 1972 and a Secondary Teacher’s Diploma at the University of Cape Town in 1973, after which she taught for three years.
In 1977 she joined the SACHED Trust, an educational NGO concerned with enriching the quality of education of those disadvantaged in apartheid South Africa. Adler’s work here, over a decade, enabled her to further her social justice advocacy by improving mathematics education by developing and evaluating distance education courses.
She was studying her MEd at Wits at this time and graduated cum laude in 1985 before joining academia in 1987. She lectured in the Department of Professional Studies at the Johannesburg College of Education before moving to the Wits Education Department where she worked variously as a Lecturer, Head of Department, Professor and, from 2010 to 2019, as SARChI Chair of Mathematics Education.
Seminal research for educators to teach maths in multilingual classrooms
Adler’s PhD, completed in 1996, looked at the dynamics of teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms, specifically examining secondary teachers’ knowledge in this context. This was later published as a book.
This seminal research in early democratic SA, along with a range of papers in peer-reviewed journals, has had a lasting impact on the broader field of mathematics education, providing valuable insights for educators and policymakers.
Her theoretical and practice-based innovations, which have paved the way for new and transformative approaches in mathematics education, address two fundamental research problems: the complexities and challenges of teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms; and the enhancement of professional education for mathematics teachers, particularly in democratic South Africa in the 1990s.
Adler took proactive steps to establish a range of transformative higher education programmes to address the deficits of apartheid teacher training on mathematics educators. She designed programmes that empowered the research community, including a doctoral programme, all of which fostered a rich and dynamic research environment for scholars and students to explore and advance mathematics education.
In 2005, Adler established the renowned Marang Centre for Mathematics and Science Education at Wits, which became a hub for advanced studies and innovative research and empowering educators.
As the DSI-NRF SARChI Research and Development Chair in Mathematics Education at Wits from 2010 to 2019, Adler directed a large professional development project, reaching over 200 secondary mathematics teachers and many learners across 80 schools in Gauteng.
On receipt of her award last night, Adler said, “The NRF has been a bedrock of my research post my PhD, through multiple research grants over many years, supporting empirical work, graduate students, as well as opportunities for international conference participation.”
Image and source: Wits
