CHAPTER FOUR
4.11 Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS)
CAPS have been introduced to strengthen the national curriculum statement (NCS) in order to impove the quality of teaching and learning in schools. It is a revision of the current national statement. With the introduction of caps every subject in each grade will have a single, comprehensive and concise policy document that will provide details on what teachers need to teach and assess on a grade by grade and subject by
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subject basis. This curriculum review has the aim of lessening the administrative load on teachers, and ensuring that there is clear guidance and consistency for teachers when teaching.
With CAPS each teacher will know what to teach, when to teach and how to do assessments.
The following changes are included:
The terminology learning outcomes and assessment standards has gone and will be replaced with content and skills
CAPS Foundation Phase (Grades R, 1, 2, 3) Numeracy will be called Mathematics and Literacy will be called Language
CAPS Senior Phase school based assessment counts for 40% and end of year examinations will be 60%
CAPS for Grade 10, 11 and12 content has been re-organized for several of the subjects and exam structure has changed in some of the subjects.
The interactions between these components of curriculum, makes implementing the various curriculum changes in South Africa a daunting and a challenging task, for the teachers who implement the curriculum in the classroom. A discussion on the curriculum changes in South Africa has been undertaken for the purpose of understanding the teacher‟s experiences in implementing curriculum change.
From the above discussion concerning curriculum change in South Africa, it has become clear that the educator is the key factor in implementing curriculum change.
Because teachers are ultimately responsible for the actual implementation of any curriculum innovation in the classroom, the literature review will focus on educator related factors such as teacher‟s beliefs, attitudes and their perceptions of curriculum implementation. This will be discussed in the next section.
136 4.12 Teacher Related Factors
The implementation of any curriculum is however dependent on the teachers who will implement it, how teachers make sense of the curriculum, what they oppose, what they regard as assisting them, makes a difference. As Fullan (2001) points out attempting to introduce curriculum reform without thinking through the implications for teachers and their classroom practice is likely to collide with very different understandings and result in insecurity and instability in the system. The success of a curriculum initiative is largely dependent on what teachers think about the intended changes. Teachers are considered to have a critical role for the actualization of the ideas in the new curriculum. Therefore, no matter what the curriculum suggests, it is the teacher who makes the ultimate decisions about what is going on in the classrooms. Teacher‟s potential to learn and adapt to innovations can lead to learners‟
learning and acquaintance with the innovations in the classrooms. In that sense, teachers are seen as both the ends and the means of curriculum reform movements (Cohen & Hill, 2001). Hence, any curriculum change should pay attention to what teachers know and believe. Educational change is a complex process, in which teachers hold strong beliefs about the quality and process of innovation. Curriculum implementation may only occur through sufferance as many teachers are suspicious of reforms (Handal & Herrington, 2003). It is not surprising then that many teachers enact the curriculum in the class, relying on their own beliefs than on current trends in pedagogy. These beliefs, conservative as they may be, have their own rationality in the practical and daily nature of the teaching profession, and in the compelling influence of educational systems from which these teachers are paradoxically the social product. The literature under review of teachers‟ pedagogical beliefs reveal the extreme complexity of bringing about educational change (Handal & Herrington, 2003).
According to Sahlberg (2006) the two aspects are using change knowledge in curriculum implementation and selecting appropriate implementation methods to help teachers to succeed. Change knowledge in education means gaining an insight of the process of curriculum change and the key drivers that make for successful curriculum implementation into practice. The key drivers of curriculum implementation are the teachers. The personal meaning of change for teachers is intrinsic to successful
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implementation as they are the conduits of reform. Spillane (2000) contends that change is a negotiated and an interpretative process. It is also not a simple process of translating the published curriculum into classroom practice. In this study, the subjective views held by the teachers as decision-makers are elicited and analyzed.
As receivers, interpreters and actors with regard to the implementation of the road safety education programme, the educator‟s beliefs, attitudes and perceptions, are important data.
Nieuwenhuis (2008) critiques the idea that organizational change is a mechanistic process. He further argues that it has a deeper personal dimension that is often overlooked and ignored. Too often it is assumed that organisations particularly bureaucratic state institutions, achieve technical compliance when it comes to the introduction of new policies and regulations, without really engaging with the underlying assumptions, attitudes and beliefs of staff that must implement these new policies.
Fundamental to this phenomenon are ideas claiming that managers can be successful at implementing organizational change by coercing, rewarding or talking people into change. One may achieve technical compliance (that is meeting the requirements of the policy) but not substantive change (that is, change in people‟s perceptions, assumptions and beliefs). Change cannot be managed from outside, as classic management theories lead us to believe. Change lies within people, through professional development based upon democratic ideals and basic human rights.
In South Africa teachers are seen as the technicians of education. Teachers are expected to implement educational reforms in a setting of contradictory incentives and rewards. They are accountable to provincial education departments for reform most do not understand well and many do not support. Teachers are also accountable to parents and communities for results on examinations that they do not develop and that thus far do not reflect the intended curriculum changes. Many, however, have become alienated and despirited, unenthusiastically presenting a minimal curriculum and teaching to national examinations with little effective accountability (Samoff, 2008). At a time when national mandates dictate so much of how teachers must work within their classrooms including what and how they teach, they feel that they are
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being controlled, therefore they refuse to accept best practice approaches and subsequently do not keep within the integrity of the approach in promoting its success (Rusch & Perry, 1993). Anxiety due to fear of discomfort can lead to resistance.
People often insist on maintaining familiar patterns of behaviour and the possible need for change make them uncomfortable. Rusch & Perry (1993) state that teachers may become resistance because they fear that their own imperfections may be revealed which cause them to become embarrassed or even feel defensive. Fear of success might also lead o resistance in attitude change. When an educator assumes a position on an educational issue, it is depicted in terms of their attitude (Kennedy &
Kennedy, 1996).
Attitudes have been defined by (Mueller, 1986) as the sum of a person‟s feelings and inclinations and feelings, prejudices and bias, preconceived notions, ideas, fears, and convictions regarding any specific issue. The issue that is concerned with in this research will be the attitude of the teachers to implementing the road safety education programme.
(Joram & Gabriel, 1998) describe, attitudes as screens and filters, which influence all new information concerning teaching and learning. These definitions are related to Rosenberg & Harland‟s (1960) three component model of attitudes because these definitions cover three aspects, namely, behavioural, cognitive and affective.
Although this model was not a more recent model, researchers like, Wood (2000) have continued to use it to conceptualize attitude formation in terms of teaching and learning. Wood (2000) state that the, cognitive component focuses on the idea or thinking upon which the attitude is based. The affective component concerns feelings about the issue and the behavioural component concerns, the action that comes about because of the attitude.
The teacher‟s belief systems regarding the implementation of the road safety education programme is also of concern for this research. According to Thompson (1984, P.112) teacher‟s beliefs seemed to be manifestations of unconsciously held views of expressions of verbal commitments to abstract ideas that may be thought of as part of a general ideology of teaching. They represent implicit assumptions about
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curriculum, schooling, students teaching and learning and act as cognitive and affective filters through which new knowledge and experience is interpreted and enacted (Lovat & Smith, 2003).
Although many studies on teacher‟s beliefs suggest there is a relationship, causality is difficult to explain. Some studies strongly suggest teacher‟s beliefs influence instructional behaviour while in other cases it appears that instructional practice influence teacher‟s belief (Buzeika, 1996). Prawat (1996) has affirmed that teachers can be either conveyances of, or obstacles to change. No matter how much is expected of them to support reform, it is always possible that their views do not coincide with those underpinning the reform and therefore become a major impediment to that reform effort. When teachers consider new task to be trivial and superficial, they tend to mistrust other innovations. If teachers‟ belief systems are compatible with the innovation, then the acceptance of the innovation will occur.
New experiences are always initially reacted to in the context of some (Fullan &
Stiegelbauer, 1991, p. 31) “familiar, reliable construction of reality” in which people must be able to attach personal meaning to the experiences regardless of how meaningful they are to others.
For the context of this study the researcher believes that if the road safety education programme is compatible with the teachers‟ belief system, then the teachers will accept the programme more readily. This is corroborated by Martin (1993) who states that curriculum implementation approaches that do not consider teacher‟s beliefs have a temporary life. However if the teachers do not see the value or the merits of the innovation, then there will be a dilution or corruption of the reform (Handal &
Herrington, 2003, p. 61). Fullan (1991, 2001) suggest that innovations are not neutral in their benefits and there are many reasons other than educational merit that influence the decision to change. Innovations are adopted for symbolic, political or personal reasons. In this case the road safety education programme hopes to ameliorate the scourge of road carnages by inculcating safe and responsible road user behaviour.
Teacher‟s beliefs and attitudes could change incrementally over time if they are persuaded about the merits and the value of the change or as they respond to the
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plethora of information that becomes available to them. Fullan (2001) asserts that it is very unlikely that teachers can modify their teaching practices without modifying their beliefs and attitudes. Change can also be cosmetic, that is a teacher can be using new resources, or modify teaching practices, without accepting internally the beliefs and principles underlying the reform (Fullan, 1993). Subsequently, meaningful reform escapes the typical teacher in favour of superficial episodic reform.
Curriculum change in the last several decades relied on the simplistic assumptions that teachers will in a mechanical way alter their behaviour patterns because of prescriptions that were supposedly good for them and their students (Handal &
Herrington, 2003). It is asserted (ibid) that curriculum approaches to curriculum implementation need to rely on more realistic assumptions about teachers‟ beliefs, recognizing that it is difficult to change teaching styles because changing practices demands a process of unlearning and learning again. It also needs to be recognized that change for teachers may cause feelings of discomfort that may be intimidating and unpleasant for them (Martin, 1993).
Teachers may not have a choice between change and non-change (Richardson &
Placier, 2002), but do have a choice where their responses are concerned.
Implementation in the classroom is also left to their discretion. Furthermore, we have moved away from the „one solution‟ concept of change. Deep and lasting change requires consideration of a multitude of aspects and interests and should be viewed as an ongoing and local process (ibid, 938).
It is reasonable to speculate then that a teachers‟ belief will influence practice in the classroom. Richardson & Placier (2002) argue that belief-change and practice-change are interactive and the process of teacher-change may start with either. Fullan (2001) raised a similar argument that the process of change in behaviour and beliefs is reciprocal and ongoing. Belief-change influence how a teacher will perform in the classroom and changes in practice will provide the teacher with the necessary experiences to develop new thinking and understanding.
Even though teachers are willing to change their own pedagogical beliefs, they will still have to contend with the conflicting beliefs of other stakeholders in the school situation. Contextual factors in school and the classroom have a significant impact on
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changing teachers‟ knowledge and beliefs. Complex classroom life involves a range of activities with different purposes. These activities may either occur simultaneously or haphazardly, but they will demand the teacher‟s immediate attention. In order for the teacher to manage this complexity, different coping strategies will have to be employed. These strategies may not necessarily concur with their beliefs.
The high rate of failure of educational innovations (Fullan, 1993) has drawn attention to teacher‟s beliefs, attitudes and assumptions as a significant mediator in curriculum implementation. It is the teacher who perceives and defines a teaching situation that makes judgments and decisions and subsequently acts on a particular situation. From a curriculum perspective, Van den Akker (2003) refers to the perceived curriculum and states that the teacher‟s perception of educational innovations and curriculum reform initiatives are significant factors for researchers when studying implementation processes.
Understanding teachers‟, perceptions, attitudes and beliefs is important for successful implementation. In other words, the personal willingness of teachers to adopt and integrate innovations into their classroom practice is essential for the success of the innovation (Vanderlinde & Braak, 2011).
In the context of this study, the implementation of the road safety education programme will depend fundamentally on the individual teacher‟s system of beliefs and on the teacher‟s perception of the road safety education programme and its value.
Teaching reforms cannot take place unless teacher‟s deeply held beliefs about road safety education changes. Furthermore, these changes in beliefs are associated with increased reflection and autonomy. The practice of teaching road safety education will depend on the teacher‟s mental contents, particularly the system of beliefs concerning road safety and its teaching and learning. The social context of the teaching situation, particularly the constraints and opportunities it provides, and also the teacher‟s level of thought processes and reflection. According to Ernest (1989), teacher‟s beliefs have a powerful impact on teaching. During practice, two factors affect these beliefs: the constraints and opportunities of the social context of teaching, and the level of the teacher‟s thoughts. Higher level thought enables the teacher to reflect on the gap between beliefs and practice, and to narrow the gap
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This judgement does not adequately capture the complexity of the teacher‟s role in ensuring the outcomes. Implementing a new curriculum in school is never easy, because there is a gap between intended and implemented curriculum. Closing this gap requires that two essential aspects of curriculum change are given appropriate importance and appreciation. Ivor Goodson (1991) says, as cited in DoE (2009), “it is a supreme example of the invention of tradition”. It is only the intended curriculum that has the chance to be interpreted and survive. He explains further by saying that
“clear parameters to practice are socially constructed at the pre-active level”. It is these parameters and how they are constituted in the National Curriculum Statement that was of interest to the review team.