ABSTRACT
South African education is presently characterized by large numbers of students who, judging from the poor results in their first year at university as well as in the school-leaving examination, are not equipped to meet the academic requirements of first-year university courses. This is especially true in science-related disciplines. During the last 7 years, a growing interdisciplinary research group at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a black university in South Africa, has been attempting:
1. To understand the constructions which students from a third world context bring to the study of various disciplines;
The Constructivist perspective is now widely accepted by researchers in science education (Linn, 1986). It is abundantly clear that people bring to their study of any discipline many concepts which they have derived from their interaction with the world. Efforts to design special instruction that considers such preconceptions have been reported by Trowbridge and McDermott (1981), and Hewson (1981).
