An Insight into a School's Readiness to Implement a CAPS Related Indigenous Knowledge Curriculum for Meteorological Sciences

Alvin Daniel Riffel

doi:10.13189/ujer.2015.031117

Abstract

This paper looks at those aspects of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) that are socially and culturally relevant in South Africa for teaching meteorological science concepts in a grade 9 geography class room using dialogical argumentation as an instructional model (DAIM). Focusing on the Western Cape Province, and using a quasi-experimental research design model, the study employed both quantitative and qualitative (mixed methods) to collect data in a public secondary school in Cape Town, in the Western Cape Province. The study employed a dialogical instructional model (DAIM) with an experimental group of learners exposed to the DAIM intervention, and recorded differences like: responses to the DAIM method of teaching/learning; learner performance (scores in the post MLT test); depth of learners' understanding about weather/meteorological concepts; their perceptions/ attitudes towards Geography - between this group and a control group which had no intervention. Learners from the two groups were exposed to a meteorological literacy test (MLT) evaluation before and after the DAIM intervention. The results from the two groups were then compared and analysed according to the two theoretical frameworks that underpin the study namely: Toulmin's Argumentation Pattern - TAP (46) and Contiguity Argumentation Theory - CAT (23).

Highlights

The main issue surrounding the implementation of Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) [5] has been the inclusion of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) into the main school science curriculum
This study investigates the perceptions of high school learners' in their particular social context as well as their cultural beliefs about, and their attitudes towards, indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), and the relationship of these systems to meteorological knowledge and education, including weather predictions and their cultural-religious associations and values
The main aim of the present study is to investigate what kind of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in South Africa, in the Western Cape is socially and culturally relevant in teaching meteorological science concepts to a group of Grade 9 learners in a specific socio-economic and cultural context using a dialogical argumentation-based instructional model (DIAM) in a CAPS related classroom

Summary

Introduction

The main issue surrounding the implementation of Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) [5] has been the inclusion of IKS into the main school science curriculum. The authors of the newly drafted CAPS (2011) document from the Department of Basic Education in South Africa have included IKS in the curriculum and in the assessment policies and practices as one of the ways of enhancing learners' understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) and developing their ability to make a positive connection with those aspects of cultural knowledge that support IKS Both the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) [6] and the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) [5] suggest the need to relate knowledge in the Natural and Social Sciences to IK as a way of closing the gap between the knowledge learners acquire and develop at home and what they learn at school, as well as a way to develop a holistic understanding of their bio-physical and socio-cultural environment. Peacock [27] and Terwel [37] advocate for linking classroom knowledge to children's everyday experiences, and Goodenough [12] for accommodation of multiple intelligences and learning styles [36]

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