Beginner teachers’ experiences of transdisciplinary demands of a school curriculum

Yolandi Woest

doi:10.4102/td.v14i2.488

Abstract

This article focuses on the experiences of beginner teachers of the transdisciplinary demands evident in school curricula. A detailed inductive thematic analysis of open-ended interviews with ten beginner teachers from socially diverse South African schools provided rich data on their experiences of these demands. Rapid changes in the South African school curriculum since 1994 are discussed against the backdrop of participants’ real lived experience during their first three years of teaching and are posed as main reason for transdisciplinary demands on beginner teachers. Despite the socio-economic differences between schools, all participants experienced the same cognitive and emotional dissonance during their first years of teaching. All participants’ related experiences of heightened levels of confusion, fear of failure to meet demands of school management teams, frustration of not being able to effectively teach subjects for which they had been trained and concern about the influence of their lack of knowledge in unfamiliar subjects on learners. Drawing on the concept of an ‘ideal’ transdisciplinary approach, this article explores the ways in which transdisciplinary demands within the transitional space of the state of the South African educational system compound challenges faced by beginner teachers. Recommendations for tertiary teacher training programmes are briefly suggested in the conclusion.

Highlights

This article focuses on transdisciplinary demands encountered by beginner teachers during the first years of their teaching career
I divided the findings into two groups, the first dealing with the initial experiences at the beginning of the teaching career in real lived school environments as opposed to expectations formed during tertiary training and secondly, the experiences of ways in which transdisciplinary demands are dealt with in school contexts
This article discussed the experiences of transdisciplinary demands of school curriculum of ten beginner teachers teaching in South African schools

Summary

Introduction

This article focuses on transdisciplinary demands encountered by beginner teachers during the first years of their teaching career. Even for experienced teachers, these changes implied increased workload and new challenges to stay abreast of the curriculum demands More so, it had a significant influence on the experiences of the participants included in this article, as they were faced with change, transition and the inevitable uncertainty brought therewith, during their first years of teaching. Within a qualitative methodological paradigm (Creswell 2007), I maintained an interpretivist epistemological stance which allowed for true meaning to be discovered (Neuman 1997) and meaning-making of the worlds of individuals (Cohen, Manion & Morrison 2011) In this case, I tried to make sense of beginner teachers’ lived experiences of transdisciplinary demands of school curricula during their first years as teachers. This article focuses on one such theme, namely, participants’ experiences of transdisciplinary demands of the curriculum encountered in the schools where they were employed

Presentation and discussion of main findings

Conclusion