CHAPTER ONE AN OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH
1.3 THE SOUTH AFRICAN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT LANDSCAPE POST 1994: A BRIEF OVERVIEW
1.3.4 A brief note on Curriculum 2005 (C2005)
As mentioned above, the advent of a new democracy in South Africa in 1994 presented many challenges to the new democratic government. A serious and urgent challenge was to set out a new philosophy of education for South Africa. This philosophy necessarily had to be based on the principles of equity and democracy where the" ... goal of education and training policy (should be) to enable a democratic, free, just and peaceful society ... " so as to achieve the political vision of the new democratic government (Department of Education 1995 :22)
One of the first curriculum reform initiatives of the new state was to streamline the various differences in the curriculum that existed in the different education departments.
This was followed by the removal of archaic content, racially offensive, and other discriminatory elements from the curriculum (Jansen 1997). However, the major curriculum innovation to affect schools was the introduction of C2005. Harley and Wedekind (2004: 195) note that school curriculum change "in the form of Curriculum 2005 (C2005) was of a scale arguably unparalleled in the history of curriculum change"
in South Africa. The first version of the post apartheid National Curriculum Statement was released in March 1997. Itprovided a framework for Early Childhood Development (ECD), General Education and Training (GET), Further Education and Training (FET), and Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET). The plan was to progressively phase in the new curriculum starting from Grade 1 in 1998 and Grade 7 in 1999 with the hope that it would be fully implemented across all grades by the year 2005. The GET band was the first band for which detailed curriculum documents were presented in 1997.
Harley and Wedekind summarise the three design features of C2005 as follows:
Firstly, it was outcomes-based, and this feature was positioned so centrally that outcomes-based education (OBE) became synonymous with C2005. An integrated knowledge system was the second design feature. School 'subjects' were jettisoned, and eight 'learning areas' introduced for Grades I to 9. The third dimension of curriculum reform was the promotion of learner-centred pedagogy (Harley and Wedekind 2004:197).
These features were manifested in the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNeS), which presented the curriculum framework for the General Education and Training (GET) band. The RNCS defines outcomes-based education as "a process and
achievement-oriented, activity based and learner-centred education process ... " (DoE 2002:58). Outcomes are the results at the end of the learning process in outcomes-based education and are expected to shape the learning process. OBE as a design feature of C200S had its roots in the training sector. Jansen notes that outcomes-based education was conspicuously absent from early discussions on curriculum reform and therefore
came as a 'surprise' to many academics and curriculum policy experts in South Africa (Jansen 1999).
The second feature, namely, an integrated knowledge system, advocates an integrated approach to teaching 'subjects' that existed in the previous curriculum. Previously insular subjects were re-organised into eight broad, integrated Learning Areas, namely:
Languages, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and Culture, Life Orientation, Economic and Management Sciences and Technology. Inan integrated curriculum, boundaries between disciplines are broken down. Teachers are expected to create conditions for learners to make connections between knowledge domains.
Each Learning Area Statement identifies the main Learning Outcomes to be achieved by the end of Grade 9. Italso specifies the Assessment Standards that will enable the learning outcomes to be achieved. "The achievement of an optimal relationship between integration across Learning Areas ... and conceptual progression from grade to grade are central to this curriculum" (DoE 2002:2). While the vision of integration has merit, Taylor warns that key ideas and concepts within a discipline could be neglected (Taylor 1999). Furthermore, effective integration requires competence in sequencing, pacing and grading of tasks, an area that proves to be challenging for teachers even within
conventional subject boundaries (Brodie, Lelliot and Davies 2002; Taylor and Vinjevold 1999).
Thirdly, learner-centred practices must necessarily entail non-threatening relations of trust and respect between teachers and learners engaged in a negotiated curriculum that is responsive to the needs of learners. Pedagogical approaches that involve establishing links between learners' current meanings and new knowledge are required. "(The) substanceof learner-centred teaching involves the selection and sequencing of tasks in relation to learners' current knowledge and providing for required conceptual
development in the subject area ... (and,) '" (i)n order to achieve the substance ofleamer- centred teaching, certainfarms of classroom organisation and activity are ... used".
(Brodie, Lelliot and Davies 2002: lOO). While learner-centred teaching is viewed as an
entrenched design feature of C2005, classroom-based research on teachers' practice indicates that teaching remains largely teacher-centred. This is despite teachers' enthusiastic acceptance of the new curriculum and their perceptions that they were working within its principles (DoE 2000; Jansen 1999; Taylor and Vinjevold 1999).
Teachers were able to articulate the essential features ofC2005, namely, that of teacher as facilitator, the use of group work and other learner-centred activities, but their actual practice indicated that teachers "had embraced the form rather than the spirit and content of the ideas" (DoE 2000:78). However, Brodie, Lelliot and Davies argue that it may be inappropriate to make such generalisations about teachers' assumption of learner-centred practices. Teachers' contexts, biographies and knowledge influence the extent to which they take up new ideas: " ... teacher characteristics, such as prior qualifications, reflective competence, grade level, subject knowledge and confidence, access to resources and support structures in their schools, are all implicated in their take-up of learner-centred practices" (Brodie, Lelliot and Davies 2002: 114). Teachers are likely to vary in the extent to which they embrace the form and substance oflearner-centred practices.
Itmust be noted that although learner-centredness is coupled with OBE in C2005, seeds of this principle were fertilised by 'alternative curricula' in the form of the Freirean- influenced People's Education movement of the 1980s. Other distinctive features of People's Education that began to germinate in the new curriculum were equal access for all, critical thinking, bridging the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge, teachers as curriculum developers, group work, community participation, and continuous assessment.
C2005 and OBE have been subjected to intense (and often hostile) critique from various stakeholders (including curriculum experts, sociologists and philosophers of education, teachers, and trade unions) so much so, that the then Minister of Education instituted a Review Committee with the brief to review the curriculum. The eventual result was the release of Revised National Curriculum Statement in 2002.