Curriculum In South Africa Research Articles

The Advocacy for Africanity as Justice Against Epistemicide

ABSTRACTWith continued calls for the Africanisation of the University curricula in South Africa, it has become urgent that the subject of Africanity be placed centrally in this discourse. This suggests that we engage the colonial and apartheid baggage that essentially contributed to African epistemicide. One of the objectives of colonialism was the goal of conquering Africa and relegating her people to the status of being sub-humans. In doing that, it needed to present Africa and her people as “dark” and “backward” respectively. Thus, African Weltanschauungen were dismissed and her peoples deemed to have no culture and no conception of god. Yet, the names of the gods of the African peoples were deliberately translated to refer to the god of western Christianity and this confused the Africans. Western Christian theology no doubt played a pivotal role in ensuring that the goal of total and comprehensive conquest by Western colonialism would be attained. This article argues that any attempt at countering the extent of African epistemicide must be accompanied by a degree of deliberate political will, and must reckon with the fact that the university in Africa, thus far, is but a transmission belt of Western epistemologies, which reaffirm the myth that European existence is qualitatively superior to any other forms of being-human-in-the-world.

Children’s development, capability approaches and postdevelopmental child: The birth to four curriculum in South Africa

This article explores how three well-known conceptual frameworks view child development and how they assume particular figurations of the child in the context of the South African National Curriculum Framework for Children from Birth to Four. This new curriculum is based on a children’s rights framework. The capability approaches offer important insights for children’s rights advocates, but, like psychosocial theories of child development, assumes a ‘becoming-adult view of child’, which poses a serious threat to children’s right to genuine participation. They also share the exclusive focus on understanding development as located ontologically in the individualised human. In contrast, critical posthumanism queers humanist understandings of child development and reconfigures subjectivity through a radical philosophical decentring of the human. The relevance of this shift for postdevelopmental child in the context of the new South African early years curriculum is threaded throughout the article. A posthuman reconfiguration of child subjectivity moves theory and practice from a focus on assessing the capabilities of individual children in sociocultural contexts to the tracing of material and discursive entanglements that render children capable. This onto-epistemic shift leads to the conclusion that the National Curriculum Framework for Children from Birth to Four requires a fourth theme (with guiding principles), which would express a multispecies relationality and an ethics of care for the human as well as the nonhuman.

Health students’ experiences of the process of interprofessional education: a pilot project

ABSTRACT The need for interprofessional education (IPE) in health science disciplines is a current global trend. However, despite international support and demand, IPE is still new to many health professions curricula in South Africa. Furthermore, while ample existing academic literature addresses commonly encountered barriers to IPE, there is still a need to investigate the dynamics and challenges associated with the process of implementing IPE at universities. IPE is not yet part of the formal curriculum at a faculty of health sciences at a South African Higher Education Institute, so a pilot project was conducted to investigate the experiences of an IPE process by students from different health professions toward informing the planning and implementation of IPE in the formal curriculum. To this effect, a multi-layered IPE project was piloted across pharmacy, nursing, social work, psychology, dietetics, and human movement sciences within this Faculty of Health Sciences. The aim of this research was to determine the dynamics between the different health professions by exploring and describing the students’ experiences of the IPE process. Theoretical case studies were presented to third-year students, who were grouped into interprofessional teams from the six different health professions at the Higher Education Institute’s health sciences faculty. Data were gathered from reflective journals over a five-week period and a questionnaire was administered at the end of the project. Data were analysed and evaluated based on the interprofessional learning domains listed in the IPE framework of the World Health Organization. All participating health professions students felt positive about the project and agreed that it provided them with valuable IPE experiences. However, their long-term participation and commitment presented difficulty in an already demanding curriculum. The interprofessional dynamics were influenced by the relevance of the scenarios presented in the case studies to the different professions, the students’ personalities and their previous experiences. Although the nursing students took initial leadership, contributions from the other professions became more prominent as the case studies unfolded. The findings indicated that the inclusion of different health professions in an interprofessional team should be guided by the specific scenarios incorporated to simulate interprofessional cooperation. The availability of the students and their scope of practice at third-year level should also be taken into account.

Comparing mathematics knowledge of first-year students from three different school curricula

Mathematics forms an integral part in the training of scientists and engineers. In recent history the South African school system has experienced several changes in school curricula. In 1994 the traditional knowledge based curricula were replaced by an outcomes-based curriculum. Owing to implementation problems which resulted in resistance from teachers and the general public, revisions followed of which the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) and Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements had the most direct effect in terms of preparation for tertiary mathematics. We report here on an investigation of the basic mathematical knowledge of three student cohorts representing three curricula, namely the last cohort that received the traditional knowledge-based curriculum, and the first cohorts that received the two outcomes-based curricula. The results indicate that changes in the mathematical content of the curricula did not impact negatively on the basic mathematical knowledge of students enrolled for tertiary mainstream mathematics. The only exception is Euclidean geometry, for which certain topics were transferred to an optional paper in the NCS curriculum.
 Significance:
 
 The introduction of outcomes-based curricula in South Africa initiated a discourse on the preparedness of first-year students for programmes with mainstream mathematics.
 The availability of a homogeneous set of samples and a uniform test provided a unique opportunity to compare the basic mathematical knowledge of first-year natural science and engineering students entering university from three different exit-level school curricula.

A Curriculum of Inclusivity: Towards a “Lived-Body” and “Lived-Experience” Curriculum in South Africa

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s “lived body” theory, we argue for a shift towards a lived-experience and body-specific curriculum in South Africa. Such a curriculum would view learning as a lived, embodied, social and culturally contextualised field. Its central aim would be to draw the learner into a plane of consciousness conducive to being awakened to the act of learning through an attitude of full attention. We specifically use the term “body-specific” to imply, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all curriculum model, one in which lived experience and the “body” form the conceptual basis on which the curriculum is built. Consequently, we reject the orthodox cognitive conception of the curriculum which views learning as a mental exercise oriented towards the acquisition of pre-designed knowledge that is “outer fixed” and “inner constructed”. In contrast, we propose that learning should be outwardly constructed through lived experience and inwardly fixed (embodied) as knowledge develops against the pre-noetic background of the lived world. Underpinning this is the essentially Merleau-Pontian notion that the knowledge we hold originates from (i) our relationships with this world that are embodied in experience, and (ii) our engagements within society and culture. The “inner” and “outer” shift in learning infers a switch from pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-led, supply-driven, hierarchical, peer-reviewed and almost exclusively university-based learning to experience-based, applied, problem-centred, trans-disciplinary, heterogeneous, hybrid, demand-driven learning. In such a curriculum, the role of the teacher would be to focus on how the world arranges itself around the learner and to guide learners to see how the world reveals itself to them through their personal lived experience.

Decolonisation of the curriculum: A case study of the Durban University of Technology in South Africa

The call for the decolonisation of universities and curricula in South Africa was at the centre of the 2015 Fallist protests. The protests, which left a trail of destruction and many universities closed for periods of time, had as one of their positive outcomes the precipitation of a renewed interest in the decolonisation of university education debate. The debate on decolonisation at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa is long overdue, given that the Western model of academic organisation on which it, like most South African universities, is based, remains largely Eurocentric. This paper adds to the debate by discussing what decolonisation might mean to the DUT’s students, staff and the greater community. It explores the importance of decolonisation and how this process can be taken forward at DUT. The purpose is not to prescribe how decolonisation is to be done but to open up ways of (re)thinking university curricula and opportunities for further discussion and action. Keywords: Africa; Africanisation; community; curriculum; decolonisation; indigenisation; internationalisation; staff; student; university

Addressing the gap between school and university in South Africa: exposing grade 11 learners to the integrated and applied nature of science and commerce using geoscience examples

Geoscience Education is not included in the School curriculum in South Africa as a stand-alone subject area. Some concepts are embedded in other subject areas such as Plate Tectonic Theory in Geography and Evolution in Life Sciences. Consequently, most students who do register for a BSc degree at South African Universities do not initially intend to study Geology. Minimum entry requirements for different disciplines in the Faculty of Science at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) mean that most of the Geology I registrations are by students not qualifying for Mathematical or Physical Sciences. Biological Sciences can only accommodate a portion of these students so the remainder of the students end up in Geology because they wish to ob-tain a degree and are “forced to do Geology”. In an attempt to introduce future students to a broader view of Science, and in particular to Geoscience, Wits has started offering certified Short Courses at NQF Level 4 (National Qualification Framework school leaving certificate level). In 2016 Wits ran the Wits Integrated Experience in Science and in 2017, the Wits Integrated Experience in Science and Commerce, short courses. Learners were exposed to the integrated nature of various Science disci-plines and the integrated nature of Science and Commerce through enquiry based, problem solving learning opportunities. The target audience was Grade 11 learners as they have not yet applied to any university and have yet to make subject choices and degree choices. By participating in the short course they are exposed to a variety of disciplines and through investigating real problems, they are exposed to the interdisciplinary nature of these disciplines. In 2016 the learners solved a murder mystery and in 2017, they had to scenario plan for an impending meteorite impact just south of Johannesburg. This scenario planning helped learners to see the relationship between Science disciplines and between Science and Commerce. This is important as the initiative is designed to assist learners in actively choosing their Science and/or Commerce majors and to encourage learners to consider taking innovative major combinations that might cross traditional Faculty boundaries.

‘From History Project to Transdisciplinary Research’: District Six as a case study

This article expounds how a National Research Foundation (NRF) history project evolved into a transdisciplinary study. The article develops a case in favour of transdisciplinary research as a departure from strict discipline-based inquiry. The project involves collaborative research with Master’s students and researchers located at five South African universities. The aim of this article is to evaluate the project as a transdisciplinary case study, intending to focus on its emergence as a history-based discipline, evolving into a transdisciplinary project. It also explores the epistemological value of transdisciplinary research as a knowledge production methodology in the context of the demand for a decolonised curriculum in South Africa. The article is set in the context of a NRF project with a spatiotemporal focus on the District Six forced removals during the colonial-apartheid period. A qualitative instrumental case study design guided the data collection and analyses. Participants’ project proposal texts were used as data. The results show, firstly, that transdisciplinarity is manifested in a wide range of titles and disciplines; secondly, a myriad of conceptual frameworks emerged from the data; and thirdly, a broad spectrum of research approaches emerged, mainly qualitative. Transdisciplinarity focuses on the ‘subject’ and the ‘hidden middle’ as domain where alternative philosophical research orientations are explored. Transdisciplinarity can be regarded as ‘Ubuntu’ research, given the common concern to bring out the ‘voice’ of the subaltern and a rejection of separation of humans into ‘racial’ classifications. As ‘Ubuntu research’, transdisciplinary research rejects an atomistic understanding of reality that excludes the human subject and a separation between human and nature.

Citizenship education and the curriculum ideologies of Natural Sciences and Life Sciences curricula in South Africa

South Africa has had several curriculum reforms since the commencement of a democratic dispensation, which were aimed at redressing the inequalities and injustices of the apartheid regime by introducing citizenship education. In the present research, the researcher investigated the curriculum ideology of two science subjects, Natural Sciences and Life Sciences. Natural Sciences is taught in Grades 7–9 and Life Sciences is taught in Grades 10–12. Document analysis using a previously validated standardised document analysis instrument was used to analyse the curriculum documents of these subjects to determine their curriculum ideology. Results suggest that four ideologies, namely, discipline-centred ideology, service-centred ideology, student-centred ideology and citizenship-centred ideology, are reflected in these subjects, albeit in varying extents. The citizenship-centred ideology, which supports citizenship education, was the least supported. Citizenship education may also not be achieved through these two subjects given the apparent lack of focus on the citizenship-centred ideology.

Decolonising higher education curricula in South Africa: factoring in archives through public programming initiatives

South African higher education curricula are largely Eurocentric, to such an extent that indigenous knowledge is marginalised (Horsthemke in Transform High Educ 2(1)–9, 2017). Consequently, the decolonisation of university curricula has become a necessity. The nationwide ‘FeesMustFall’ student protests in 2015 and 2016 have underlined the need to address this matter urgently. Free quality education and the decolonisation of university curricula were among some of the students’ demands (Le Grange in SAJHE 30(2):1–12, 2016). Fundamentally, decolonising curricula involve a serious investigation of history and the strategising of future actions (Ngulube in Historia 47(2):563–582, 2002). Little is known about the potential role of archives in the process of decolonising higher education curricula in South Africa. Perhaps this can be attributed to a lack of awareness about archives and their significance in South Africa (Sulej in ESARBICA J 33:13–35, 2014). This paper explores the role of archives in the decolonisation of higher education curricula in South Africa. It appears that sub-Saharan scholars rarely consult archives (Onyancha et al. in ESARBICA J 32:67–77, 2013). Therefore, public programming is investigated as a means to get more members of the academic community to use archives as centres of critical inquiry. The relevant literature was consulted and discussed. Unique outreach or public programming initiatives will help the academic community to better understand the significance of archives in the decolonisation process.

Decolonizing and transforming the Geography undergraduate curriculum in South Africa

Decolonization and transformation of the academy are important topics under debate at South African universities, but they also speak to wider issues on education access and funding, employment equity, diversity, and language policy, which are of relevance to national political debates. This paper discusses issues of decolonization and transformation of Geography curricula at different universities in South Africa, and whether issues such as decolonization and transformation are being addressed in these curricula. The University of the Witwatersrand is used as a case study, (1) discussing strategies and progress with respect to decolonization and transformation at the university as a whole; and then (2) presenting evidence for strategies and progress in decolonization and transformation of the Geography curriculum, based on semi-structured interviews with four key stakeholders from the Geography department. These results show the contested meanings, scope and goals of decolonization and transformation at all levels, and that these issues are commonly linked to or conflated with a range of other factors including access to bursaries, employability and institutional culture. In Geography, parallel processes of decolonization and transformation may pose both challenges and opportunities, including highlighting how Geography research, curricula and skills are relevant to the twenty-first century local-to-global worlds.

The missing link: Finding space for gerontology content into university curricula in South Africa

ABSTRACTThe rapid increase in the global elderly population has been widely documented in both demographic and popular literature in recent decades. Population estimates produced by the national statistical service of South Africa in 2017 show that the proportion of elderly (60 years and older) in South Africa is growing fast, reaching 8.1% of the total population in 2017. The country is set to experience a doubling of the population over the age of 65 by the year 2020. Similar to their counterparts in the developed world, tertiary institutions throughout Africa too are faced with the challenge of training professionals capable of understanding and responding to the socioeconomic consequences, social priorities, and complex needs of an increasing aging population. The right set of policies can equip individuals, families, and societies to address the challenges of an aging population. After conducting an extensive literature review, we recommend that policy-makers in South Africa should look into ways that will enable them to meet the many challenges of an aging population in the coming decades. One way to address this issue would be to include gerontology content into the curricula of programs in the humanities and social sciences.

Team-Based Learning Experiences of Fourth-Year Pharmacy Students in a South African University

Objective. To determine fourth-year pharmacy students' learning experiences with team-based learning (TBL) at a South African university. Methods. A survey composed of biographical data and quantitative questions focusing on student learning experiences was sent to students. There were 183 (91.5%) students who completed the survey. Results. Students had a positive experience with TBL and found it valuable and more worthwhile than traditional lecture methods, regardless of their initial negative perception of TBL. Students enjoyed working in multi-cultural, mixed gender teams. Conclusion. TBL is an effective teaching strategy to simulate the reality of health professions where practitioners are required to work in a team. TBL should be offered in more courses in health professions curriculum in South Africa to strengthen and promote efficient health care delivery.

Working toward a socially just curriculum in South Africa: A collaborative autobiographical narrative inquiry

Working toward a socially just curriculum in South Africa: A collaborative autobiographical narrative inquiry

Decolonising preservice teachers' colonialist thoughts in higher education through defamiliarisation as a pedagogy

The social, political, and economic inequalities embedded and reflected in all social life in South Africa continue to shape the higher education landscape of the country. Calls for the higher education curricula in South Africa to be transformed under the guide of decolonisation requires primarily a reform of the colonising spaces in which teaching in higher education takes place. Using a case study at a university of technology that explicates teaching and learning through the use of creative illustrations as a form and means of defamiliarisation, the authors show how spaces can be created to facilitate deliberative engagement and contestation regarding instances of colonisation in higher education and society. The authors conclude that defamiliarisation should be considered a possible pedagogical technique in higher education as a way of deepening students' social, economic, political, and cultural awareness in relation to identity, language, and hierarchies of power amongst students and higher education educators.

UNPACKING THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHYSICS-EXAMINATION QUESTIONS ACCORDING TO BLOOMS’ REVISED TAXONOMY

The quality and standard of South African examination questions for the grade 12 examination have become an important issue for the South African education system. So far, the focus of empirical research has been on factors that lead to poor performance in the Physical sciences as well as the alignment of the grade 12 Physical Sciences examination with the core curriculum in South Africa. On the contrary, this research paper focuses on a different aspect: the weaknesses and the strengths of the Physics examination questions. It addresses the question of how the Physics examination questions cover higher and lower order level questions in the Bloom’s revised taxonomy. To answer this question, the Physics examination questions of the year 2014 and 2015 were analysed using Bloom’s revised taxonomy of learning objectives. The examination questions were codified and the frequencies and percentages of occurrence of different learning objectives were calculated. The results show that third level cognitive skills were more prevalent than other ones. Furthermore, examiners asked questions that require application and few questions requiring the recall of knowledge. Keywords: physics examination, revised Bloom’s taxonomy, quality of education.

Environmental education in teacher education: a viewpoint exploring options in South Africa

Environmental knowledge is often regarded as difficult to define and position in education in general and in teacher education in particular. This presents challenges for both knowledge production and for curriculum development for teacher education programmes. While many ‘traditional’ disciplines have well-defined knowledge bases developed over time, environmental education does not, and is also less easy to integrate into teacher education programmes.In this paper, the policy framework for teacher education in South Africa is explored so as to develop ideas for knowledge selection and inclusion in environmental education for professional (teacher) education in South Africa. The works of Short (2002) on mission/practical knowledge and of Ball, Sleep, Boerst and Bass (2009) on high-leverage practices in teacher education curricula are used as ways of doing in order to enable environmental education. It is contended that these processes can provide ideas to exploit the generative spaces that exist in national policy for inclusion of contextualised, issue-based knowledge for curriculum organisation and of practice-based processes in order that environmental issues and sustainability goals may be included in teacher education curricula in South Africa.

Communities of practice as a tool for continuing professional development of technology teachers’ professional knowledge

With the introduction of a new school curriculum in South Africa in 1998, Technology as a school subject was introduced for the first time. Implementation by the National Department of Education took place over a very short time frame allowing very little time for adequate training of technology teachers by the provincial departments of education. Teachers were expected to implement technology in schools without being adequately trained. They needed to develop their professional knowledge which comprises school knowledge, subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. This could mainly be done through continuing professional teacher development (CPTD). To address the lack of CPTD opportunities and to develop these teachers’ professional knowledge, the Unit for Technology Education at a university in South Africa established a Community of Practice (CoP) as a strategy to develop teachers’ professional knowledge in Civil Technology. However, after a number of CoP workshops, and although these CoPs have been designed to serve as a tool for CPTD, we do not know to what extent it succeeds in developing teachers’ professional knowledge. The purpose of this article is to determine to what extent the CoP succeeded in developing teachers’ professional knowledge. A qualitative study was conducted. Data were collected through the observation of the teachers during the CoPs, open-ended questionnaires and field notes taken during workshop discussions. The main findings were that the teachers gained discipline knowledge and acquired instructional methodology (pedagogy) from which learners may benefit. The presentation and organisation of the CoP influenced the learning of the teachers.

Teaching theology at African public universities as decolonisation through education and contextualisation

This article is an attempt to provide a systematic and integrative picture of the main contributions presented at the colloquium which addressed the current state of theological education, proposals for the basic values to be laid as foundation for a new theological curriculum and concrete attempts to build such a curriculum in South Africa, the African continent and especially at the University of Pretoria with a particular stress on decolonisation as contextualisation. In dealing with these aspects, the article focuses on whether or not theology as an academic field has a future in university and society by implementing a concrete programme of decolonisation which is adapted – by means of education – to the specifics of various local contexts including those in Africa. If the answer to this question is positive – and the colloquium contributors, as well as the authors, of this article do believe to be so – then one must find out how theology should be done in the university, how theology should work in society and what (kind of) theology should be taught in the university so that its impact in society is continuously transformative and permanently relevant to human life and human existence in Africa and throughout the world.

Creating critical conversations on higher education curricula in South Africa

This excellent publication, Engaging Higher Education Curricula, could not have come at a more opportune time. As South African tertiary institutions grapple with more than a year’s worth of student protests, frequent campus closures and extreme measures to ensure that examinations continue, the conceptual understandings of higher education curricula are expanding. This publication sets the tone for critical conversations that need to be had within universities in the country now and in the years to come.