The use of Mitzel model to enhance grade 12 learner's understanding of demand and supply in agricultural sciences at Sekhukhune South District, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

The comprehension of demand and supply in Agricultural Sciences remains a challenge across schools in South Africa, and enhancing this comprehension depends on an educator’s choice of teaching methods. Learners’ understanding on demand and supply plays an important role in the performance of Agricultural Sciences as a subject. This is because knowledge about demand and supply does not only improve performances but also equips learners with relevant skills that they can use in starting agricultural businesses if they do not further their studies after high school. Against this background, the current study sought to explore the use of Mitzel model to enhance Grade 12 learners' understanding of demand and supply in Agricultural Sciences. This was done through the adoption of the Mitzel model as a theoretical framework to guide the study, and a mixed method with a concurrent research design. Furthermore, two sampling strategies were adopted for different purposes, purposive sampling was used to identify participants who were relevant for this study and random sampling was used to select 120 Grade 12 Agricultural Sciences learners from two secondary schools in the Sekhukhune South District of Limpopo, in the Glen-Cowie Circuit. For the quantitative method, pre-test and post-test were used as data collection tools and for qualitative, document analysis, observations and focused group interviews were used. Moreover, the narrative analysis and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 29.0 were used to analyse the collected data. The study found that learners who were taught using the Mitzel model, had significantly improved results when compared to those who were taught through the lecture method. This was because the Mitzel model encourages teacher-learner, learner-learner, and learner-content interactions while a lecture method promotes passive participation of learners. Therefore, the current study revealed that the Mitzel model is effective when teaching demand and supply in Agricultural economics and this supports the hypothesis of the study. This study recommends that the Department of Basic Education should provide workshops for teachers to learn about this model so that learners’ performance can be improved.