NRF Women's Month 2026: Dr Makwalete Johanna Malatji

Every research journey starts with a question. This Women’s Month, the NRF celebrates women driven by curiosity — researchers whose questions, ideas and determination are expanding our understanding of the world around us. From exploring the unknown to deepening our existing knowledge, curiosity remains at the heart of discovery. We thank all participants for sharing their stories with us.

Dr Makwalete Johanna Malatji is a Senior Lecturer in Curriculum and Instructional Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA), specialising in Foundation Phase and Intermediate Phase literacy, technology integration in education, and engaged scholarship in rural schooling contexts. She is currently supported by the NRF-FREF Black Academics Advancement Programme (BAAP) as well as an NRF Knowledge Interchange and Collaboration (KIC) grant.

How has your affiliation with the NRF impacted your studies/career?

My relationship with the NRF has been one of the most defining features of my research career, and I am deeply grateful for the support that has made my work possible. My earliest engagement with the NRF came through the NRF PhD Completion Grant in 2020, which supported the final stages of my doctoral research in Primary Education at the University of Fort Hare. That grant gave me the time and focus I needed to complete my PhD and launch myself into the world of academic research with a clear sense of purpose.

More recently, in 2026, I was awarded the National Research Foundation-FirstRand Empowerment Foundation Black Academics Advancement Programme (BAAP) Post-PhD Track grant. The award funded my current project, “The Use of ICT to Improve EFAL Reading in Primary Schools in the Dimamo Circuit, Limpopo Province.” This funding has enabled me to train teachers on how to integrate technology into English First Additional Language (EFAL) reading instruction in deeply rural schools. I believe the training has the potential to change the trajectory of thousands of young learners’ literacy development.

In addition, I received an NRF Knowledge Interchange and Collaboration (KIC) grant in 2026 to support the project “Integrating Technology to Promote Reading in Rural Primary Schools in Limpopo”. I am also currently in the process of applying for NRF rating, which represents the next milestone in my journey as an emerging scholar.

The impact of these grants has been profound, not only in terms of what the funding has allowed me to do practically, but in terms of what it has meant for my confidence and sense of legitimacy as a researcher. Being supported by the NRF has affirmed that the questions I am asking about rural children who cannot read, about teachers who are doing their best with very little, about what it means to bring technology into a classroom with 60 learners and no reliable Wi-Fi. Questions that matter.

The funding has allowed me to go back to the communities where I once taught as a primary school teacher, now as a researcher, and to work alongside teachers as a genuine partner rather than an outside expert. That, to me, is the most meaningful impact of all.

What is your research focus or area of expertise?

My research is driven by Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results, which consistently show that South African learners cannot read for meaning. Thus, I thought, “What can we actually do about it in real classrooms where teachers work every day?”

South Africa’s reading crisis is well-documented and heartbreaking. According to the 2021 PIRLS results, 81% of South African Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning. This means that more than eight out of every ten learners who should be reading independently; reading to learn about the world; reading for pleasure, and reading for their future are falling further and further behind. In rural Limpopo, where I grew up and where I have spent much of my career, this crisis is particularly acute.

My research addresses this crisis by exploring how technology, specifically low-cost, accessible digital tools like WhatsApp, YouTube, speakers, and smartphones, can be used by teachers to improve reading instruction in rural Grade 4 EFAL classrooms. What makes my approach distinctive is that I do not parachute in with solutions designed elsewhere and expect teachers to implement them. Instead, I work alongside teachers as co-creators of knowledge, listening to their experiences, understanding their constraints, and helping them find ways to use what they already must teach more effectively. We call this approach “engaged scholarship,” and it is at the heart of everything I do.

My current NRF-funded projects are training teachers in the Dimamo and Kgakotlou circuits of Limpopo to integrate technology into their reading lessons – and the early results are extraordinary.

Teachers are recording story read-alouds on their phones and replaying them across their overcrowded classes. They are using YouTube videos to show children what a spotted sparrow looks like before asking them to read about one. They are connecting Bluetooth speakers to their cell phones so that even learners at the back of a class of sixty can hear the story clearly. These are small but transformative shifts, and they are happening right now in rural classrooms that the world rarely hears about.

What sparked your curiosity about your field of research, and what continues to keep you curious?

My curiosity about literacy and education was not sparked in a library or a lecture hall. It was sparked in a classroom – a real, overcrowded, under-resourced primary school classroom in Limpopo, where I taught for almost eight years before entering higher education.

I grew up in Polokwane and completed my teaching degree at the University of Limpopo. When I began teaching at Maribe Primary School in 2010, I was immediately confronted with a reality that no textbook had fully prepared me for: my learners could not read. Not because they were not intelligent. Not because they were not trying. But because the conditions in which they were learning – the overcrowded classrooms, the lack of books, the gap between the language of instruction and the languages they spoke at home – were stacked against them. I watched learners move from Grade 3 to Grade 4 without the reading skills they needed to access the curriculum.

That experience planted a seed of urgent curiosity in me that has never stopped growing. When I pursued my MED and then my PhD, studying Educational Foundations and Primary Education, I kept returning to the same question: “What do these children need, and how can teachers, who work in genuinely difficult conditions, give it to them?” My research today is a direct continuation of that question, and the faces of my former learners are never far from my mind when I am designing a study, writing up findings, or sitting with a group of rural teachers in a workshop.

What continues to keep me curious is the resourcefulness and dedication of the teachers I work with. Every time I go into a rural school, I am reminded that the solution to South Africa’s reading crisis is not going to come from a policy document or an imported programme. It is going to come from teachers who know their learners, know their communities, and are willing to try new things with whatever they have. My job is to support, document, and amplify what those teachers already know. That keeps me endlessly curious and endlessly motivated.

What is one thing you wish more people understood about your field of research?

I wish more people understood that the reading crisis in South Africa is not a story about children who cannot learn. It is a story about systems that have not yet adequately supported the teachers who serve our most marginalised communities.

When people hear that 81% of South African Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, the instinctive response is often to look for someone to blame: the children, the parents, the teachers. But when you spend time sitting in a rural classroom with 60 learners, one teacher, one textbook, and no reliable electricity, you understand very quickly that the challenge is not a lack of will or ability. It is a structural challenge, and it requires structural responses.

Technology is often presented as a magic solution to education challenges, but the reality is far more complex. Handing a school a projector or a tablet does not change anything if teachers have not been supported to understand how to use it pedagogically. If there is no electricity to charge it, or if the Wi-Fi cuts out every time the wind changes, the use of those resources becomes less.

What my research shows is that meaningful technology integration for reading is possible even in the most resource-constrained settings. However, it requires patient, contextually sensitive, and teacher-centred professional development. It requires listening before prescribing. And it requires treating rural teachers as the professionals they are, not as the problem to be fixed.

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