School leadership is regarded as the cornerstone of the successful provisioning of quality education. This qualitative study draws from principals' accounts of their instructional leadership challenges in rural multigrade schools. The research, situated within an interpretivist paradigm and the theoretical lens of instructional leadership, sought to understand the challenges that principals experience as instructional leaders and how they mitigate the challenges they experience in their rural contexts. Ten purposively selected principals from rural multigrade schools situated in the Vhembe district of Limpopo province participated in the study. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews and were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings show that principals in rural multigrade schools do not participate in induction training to equip them with the knowledge and skill to commence their roles as principals. As a result, they struggle to balance their teaching and management roles. However, fostering teamwork with teachers may be a strategy that could assist principals in managing and successfully executing their duties. Lack of access to technological resources and staffing are serious concerns for the participants in their aim to provide quality education. Active parental involvement supports principals and teacher in their multigrade rural context. This study recommends that principals should undergo training for their role as principals in rural multigrade schools and training on multigrade pedagogies is recommended for both principals and teachers. Understanding challenges that principals in rural multigrade schools experience could help policymakers establish relevant policies that address leadership issues in rural schools.

E-Portfolios of on-line scholars are integral to instructional planning and the design of authentic, engaging, and active tutoring for periodic self/peer-and-instructor formative assessments. In addition, the formative assessment in open distance and e-learning (ODeL) is meant to provide and facilitate contact, support, and structure to the learning experiences of students who are often unfamiliar and alienated by the distance learning experience. Previous research has focused on formative assessment strategies, results, and feedback in distance learning, but little has been studied on how to design suitable formative assessment activities in this format. This article, therefore, presents findings of how lecturers can the design a formative assessment for e-portfolio activities for online learning. Ten lecturer participants were purposively sampled from three colleges within the ODeL university. These semi-structured interviews, together with an e-portfolio checklist formed the basis for the interpretative analysis of how formative assessment activities are designed for the e-portfolios. The lecturers are guided by the student’s learning outcomes and use sequential activities for students to do via the e-portfolio. This, therefore, involves the lecturer’s consideration of graded and non-graded formative assessment activities of individual and group work e-portfolios to provide evidence and make judgments about each student’s progress. This study’s findings emphasize the importance of designing formative assessment activities to help students learn the content and develop their understanding which further deepens their knowledge and acquisition of the module outcomes. The research shows that the benefits of optimal student engagement, performance, and learning are the result of the creative design of formative assessment activities.

The process e-portfolio is a type of e-portfolio that helps students construct knowledge and familiarise themselves with their learning process through self-and peer assessment. Lecturers and students experienced difficulties when using the e-portfolio because Mahara 2019 was not updated. This qualitative research study proposes how lecturers should design e-portfolios for learning through formative assessment activities. Interpretivism was the researcher's standpoint, aiming to interpret how the study participants used e-portfolios for teaching and learning through formative assessment activities. This exploratory case study used semi-structured interviews and an e-portfolio checklist for data collection. It explored the use of the e-portfolio for formative assessment through the experiences of ten purposefully sampled lecturers. The findings suggest that an e-portfolio facilitates teaching and learning in open distance e-learning because it enables online delivery of the content and administering of assessments that afford students' learning of the module content through completing formative assessment activities. The e-portfolio facilitates co-teaching and co-learning because students become knowledge creators and active users instead of passive learners. This study recommends the use of process e-portfolios to facilitate assessment and learning in open-distance e-learning institutions.

Rapid development of information communication technologies (ICTs) has enabled online technology to support flexible teaching and learning approaches in various contexts, including high schools. As a result, e-portfolios used in online and blended learning environments can be effectively implemented in high schools. This study emphasizes the central role of high school managers in integrating educational technology in schools to promote e-portfolios. Using a qualitative research approach and the Technology Adoption Model (TAM), data were collected through an online questionnaire. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the open-ended questions, while descriptive statistics were used for the closed-ended questions. The findings indicate that members of school management can act as catalysts for teachers and learners to integrate technology in the classroom, thereby facilitating and supporting the implementation of this approach in schools. However, the study also found that members of school management are often neglected during training offered during technology implementation. This neglect results in the central role players lacking the necessary understanding and appreciation for the application of educational technology in the classroom. Based on these findings, it is recommended to prioritize awareness, training, and preparation for ICT integration for high school management teams.

Business Studies aim to encourage participation in the formal and informal economic sectors by the youth, either as entrepreneurs, employees, or managers. The content of entrepreneurship in grade 10 business studies content is not adequate and does not encourage entrepreneurship. The study aimed to identify and analyze entrepreneurship teaching approaches to enhance business skills. Qualitative study conducted through document analysis and questionnaires from eight grade 10 business studies teachers, sampled through the purposive sampling. The findings highlighted that teachers have different experiences with the teaching of entrepreneurship. Insufficient time is allocated for teaching entrepreneurship. There is a lack of teaching approaches of teaching entrepreneurship. The teaching of entrepreneurship is dominated by the case study method. The study recommends reviewing time that is allocated for the teaching of entrepreneurship, adjust the entrepreneurship content, adoption of different teaching strategies than rely on the case study as the principal method.

An e-portfolio is a pedagogical tool that integrates educational paradigms such as self-regulated learning, and a competency-based approach. It is primarily used as a summative assessment to document and showcase evidence of the learning and skills acquired by students. Teaching in an open-distance electronic learning environment entails co-constructing knowledge with students through connectivism and information communication tools. Regrettably, online students are more concerned about the grades they get for assessment activities than about learning the content. This researcher adopted an interpretive approach to understand how participants utilize e-portfolios for teaching and learning through formative assessment activities. A qualitative study was conducted by way of a designed e-portfolio checklist and semi-structured interviews. Ten participants formatively assessing their students using e-portfolios were conveniently chosen for semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study suggest that administering formative assessment activities through e-portfolios encourages self-directed learning. The participants designed formative assessment activities for the e-portfolio to facilitate students’ engagement with the content, measure their knowledge and skills, and determine their competency. These lecturers facilitated co-teaching and co-learning through collaborative tasks and online tools such as blogs, social media, YouTube, and discussion forums. This study concludes that the e-portfolio can be used as a teaching methodology to facilitate student engagement and online learning because it is a competency-based and student-centered assessment tool for online modules and courses. It is recommended that lecturers also design practical tasks to improve their content delivery and assessment practices.