Mosenodi

Editorial

Boineelo P. Lefadola — 2025-12-15

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ACADEMIC WRITING: OPPORTUNITIES AND TENSIONS FROM A FACULTY VIEWPOINT

Boineelo P. Lefadola — 2025-12-15

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education has accelerated rapidly, transforming
how students learn, conduct research, and complete academic tasks. Its application comes with
both significant opportunities and challenges. This commentary therefore aims to contribute to
a better understanding of the potential benefits of AI on education from the faculty’s
perspective, as well as the challenges associated with this transformation. A roadmap for the
successful implementation of AI in educational settings is suggested.

DIFFERENT PATHS TO THE SAME GOAL: LEADERSHIP APPROACHES IN HIGHPERFORMING SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BOTSWANA

Chikezie I. Ugwu — 2025-12-15

Leadership is a critical determinant of organisational performance, particularly within the
education sector where it enhances teaching quality, school culture, and student achievement. This
study examined how leaders in high-performing senior secondary schools in Botswana employ
different leadership approaches to achieve similar goals of excellence. Underpinned by the
constructivist paradigm, the study adopted a phenomenological qualitative design to explore the
lived experiences of 16 school leaders, including school heads, deputy school heads, and heads of
departments, purposively selected from eight consistently high-performing public and private
schools. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed thematically.
Findings revealed that while both public and private school leaders emphasised teamwork and
democratic leadership, contextual factors influenced their approaches. Public school leaders
highlighted parental involvement as a major contributor to their schools’ success, whereas private
school leaders attributed theirs to the availability of human and material resources. Across both
sectors, leaders fostered collaboration, encouraged participation in decision-making, and promoted
a learning-oriented culture where mistakes were addressed through mentoring and coaching. Key
leadership traits identified were respect, honesty, trustworthiness, and vision, developed through
experience, education, and professional development. However, the study also uncovered
significant gaps in leadership training, indicating that many leaders assumed their roles without
adequate preparation. This study concludes that while the paths to success vary, effective
leadership in Botswana’s high-performing schools converges on shared principles of teamwork,
inclusivity, and consistent professional growth. A proposed teamwork-based leadership model is
presented as a framework to guide emerging leaders and inspire performance improvement in less
successful schools.

THE ROLE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN SUPPORTING THE UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA’S HIGH-PERFORMANCE ORGANISATION OBJECTIVES

Kagiso J. Sello — 2025-12-15

This research investigates the strategic significance of foreign language education (FLE) in
promoting the University of Botswana’s (UB) transformation into a high-performance
organisation (HPO). FLE is not only aligned with UB’s institutional goals: enhancing graduate
employability, expanding international engagement, and advancing research excellence, but
also plays a pivotal role in advancing Botswana’s economic diversification and diplomatic
aspirations, as outlined in Vision 2036. This research identified best practices for incorporating
FLE into professional degree programmes through qualitative document analysis and
comparative case studies of international institutions such as the National University of
Singapore, Georgetown University, and Sorbonne Abu Dhabi. Research outcomes have shown
that FLE contributes to intercultural competence and competitiveness on the labour market but
also encounters challenges like institutional resistance and limited resources that need to be
addressed. This research suggests a tailored approach for UB, advocating for policy changes,
interdepartmental language courses, and collaborative alliances to maximise the institutional
influence of FLE. This research bridges the gap between theory and practice, providing
practical insights for semi-peripheral higher education institutions to capitalise on
multilingualism as a means of enhancing academic excellence and increasing global
competitiveness.

INSTRUCTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS IN AN ENGLISH CLASSROOM AT PHATSIMO JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL, TUTUME, BOTSWANA

Oreeditse Ramothonyana — 2025-12-15

Teacher–student instructional interaction (TSII) is essential for evaluating teaching and
learning effectiveness. This qualitative study utilized the Flanders Interaction Analysis
Categories (FIAC) to analyse TSII in a junior secondary English classroom where English is a
second language. Data were collected over four class sessions through classroom observations,
video recordings, and note-taking. Analysis indicates a pronounced dominance of teacher-led
interaction, primarily through lecturing and questioning, with teacher discourse occupying
79.4%, 96.2%, 94.1%, and 73.2% of interactions across sessions one to four meetings,
respectively. These findings reveal a persistent teacher-controlled communicative pattern, with
minimal peer-to-peer exchanges among students, thereby constraining their opportunities for
linguistic advancement and content mastery. The implications call for instructional strategies
that foster more balanced and interactive classroom discourse

EVALUATION OF GRAMMARLY IN DETECTING GRAMMATICAL ERRORS: THE CASE OF ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM THE BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS (BNCWEB CQP – EDITION)

Lyncan Moagi — 2025-12-15

The study evaluated Grammarly in detecting grammatical errors in English Essays from the British
National Corpus (BNCweb CQP – Edition). The Corder (1973) framework of Error Analysis
which consists of four sub-categories of errors which are omission, addition, selection, and
misordering was used to analyze the errors that were detected by Grammarly. The study used a
quantitative method approach. With systematic random sampling, a sample of nine English Essays
from British National Corpus (BNCweb CQP – Edition) was extracted. Corrective Feedback (CF)
and Automated Written Corrective Feedback (AWCF) as concepts of language learning provided
a context for the study. The results showed that selection errors were the most dominant 39%
followed by addition errors with 32%, and the least being omission errors with 29%. Spelling
errors were at 60.5%, followed by article errors with 15.8%, punctuation errors with 7.9%, subject
– verb agreement with 5.3%, while preposition errors, word form errors, pronoun errors, and
number errors were each at 2.6%. There are implications that Grammarly is effective in detecting
errors which could be classified into omission, addition, selection, and misordering, and
grammatical categories, such as spelling, article, preposition, punctuation, word form, subject –
verb agreement, pronoun, and number. As shown by the findings of the study, with the use of
Grammarly, writers would produce error free written texts. Therefore, the study recommends
Grammarly as a tool that should be used to ensure error free writing in different phases of life
where writing texts is involved, such as academia. Even so, further research needs to be carried
out on the effectiveness of Grammarly in detecting grammatical errors in the best interest of
encouraging the improvement of its features.