6.3. Factors associated with the utilisation of the CPT and its impact on curriculum
6.3.2. Enabling factors and challenges emanating from primary data at Umta P2
In this school the semi-structured interview was conducted with the Grade 9 mathematics teacher only. The HOD was unavailable due to cultural activities that took place at the school.
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This session firstly explored teacher’s exposure to JIT workshops that would have aided in making use of the CPT, the extent of CPT usage by evaluating the enabling factors and challenges associated to CPT usage and lastly the influence it had on ensuring curriculum coverage.
Firstly, looking into the response from the teacher on the exposure of JIT, the teacher stated that “I never went for any workshops, I learned about Jika iMfundo from the previous HOD from 2016. Maybe she attended it, she is the one who gave us this Jika iMfundo tracker. This HOD now is new.” The response indicates that in terms of training, it was unclear as to whether the HOD, prior to the current one, had attended the JIT workshops. Since the JIT workshops focused on HODs not teachers and the HOD were meant to train teachers, it seemed that the previous HOD had done that and therefore teachers had the knowledge of JIT. However, it seemed the issue of the transfer of the HOD was causing discontinuity as it seemed the new HOD had not shared with teachers any information about JIT. Since the teacher had been exposed to JIT it meant that the teacher had the knowledge of the CPT. Therefore, in an attempt to understand usage of the CPT, the researcher asked the following question: “How often do you use the Curriculum Planner and Tracker?” The response to this question was: “I use the tracker every day. It helps to track the learners’ performance plus it has question papers at the back and you can take it to revise with the learners.”
The response provided the enabling factors that allowed for the utilisation of the CPT. Even though the current HOD had never engaged with teachers about CPT usage, it appeared that the teacher did have the CPT and had the knowledge of how to use it. For a change there was a teacher who had found value in using the CPT. Although this was the case of one teacher, it showed that there were teachers in Pinetown district using the CPT.
When questioned on any challenges experienced in using the CPT, the response received was as follows: “The tracker is fine, the timeframe, content and everything is the same. The tracker is not too fast but the ATP is too fast.” This response was contradictory to the responses gathered in the 2017 interviews, from Zuzu P1 and Glen P5, in which respondents indicated that the CPT did not consider learner pace. The contradictory part of this response was that of saying the ATP is too fast, when the ATP provided broad themes of CAPS content and the CPT was simply an unpacking of the CAPS document by breaking it down on a daily basis. Perhaps
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the teacher meant to say that the ATP was too packed as had been the comments about CAPS itself by Pournara et al. (2015)
Most certainly the main enabling factor experienced at Umta P2 was that the CPT catered for easy tracking of learner performance by engaging with the tracking of the curriculum. In addition, the availability of question papers at the back of the CPT provided some revision exercises to assist teachers in their remedial programmes. In terms of challenges being experienced, that teacher noted that there were no challenges as: “the tracker is fine…”
However, some challenges can be picked up from analysing the initial responses regarding LTSM (Learning and Teaching Support Material) usage. “I am using Sasol Inzalo and Premier.
But Premier is also in Jika iMfundo so its fine with that one but Sasol Inzalo its not there”
“…must include Sasol Inzalo, the rest is fine.”
That teacher used the Sasol Inzalo textbook, not the other textbooks listed by the Department of Basic Education (DBE). It was claimed that the CPT only tracked activities from DBE listed books which is why the teacher then made incomplete use of the CPT. As a result, the CPT would only be filled in for the parts that corresponded to the teacher’s use of the Premier textbook. That meant that on days when using activities from the Sasol Inzalo textbook, those activities from Sasol Inzalo would not be reflected in the CPT. However, the CPT is not meant to be a tick box exercise but was meant to track and manage curriculum. Therefore, as long as it was evident that the specified topic had been covered in that term, the curriculum would have been considered to have been completed.
The teacher’s comments regarding the Sasol Inzalo textbook not being on the list of approved DBE LTSMs, made it appear as though the CPT did not cater for Sasol Inzalo textbooks and that that was the reason behind why the teacher could not use the CPT. However, there are inconsistencies in this teacher’s comments, where in fact the CPT does have the Sasol Inzalo textbook listed in the approved list of LTSMs as indicated in Figure 6.3. It appeared that the teacher is unaware that the CPT does cater for the Sasol Inzalo Mathematics textbooks and this contradiction could be an indication that the teacher’s ignorance of the fact is due to not using the CPT.
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Fig. 6.3. Extract from CPT Grade 9 Mathematics indicating approved LTSMs In response to whether the teacher engaged in reflective practice, the teacher stated that she only looked at reflecting on her successes and failures sometimes: “…reflections sometimes, when lessons don’t work, I must go back.” The above comments suggest that reflections were not daily practice while in the CPT this was emphasised as the daily practice because it was through reflection that teachers and HODs would develop professional conversations. The challenge that seemed persistent even in the surveys and evident in other schools which could be a restraining force, was the late delivery of the CPT itself. This was indicated when the teacher asked: “Why didn’t we receive Jika iMfundo tracker this year?” That meant that the untimely arrival of the CPT be a factor in the low rate of utilisation. At the same time, if teachers had not received the CPT that year, the claims made about completing it becomes questionable.
Having evaluated some of the enabling factors and challenges that arose from this discussion, it was also important to uncover the role of the CPT towards curriculum coverage. Though the teacher claimed that the CPT had helped to cover more of the curriculum that year, there was no evidence that could be provided to support that claim, especially in light of the many contradicting statements made by the teacher. Furthermore, the CPT was not completely filled in, especially when it comes to activities given to learners. This was due to the claim by the teacher that Sasol Inzalo workbooks are not included in the CPT. However, Figure 6.3 indicates that this was not the case. The use of Sasol Inzalo books being preferred was also mentioned in secondary data for Umta P2. It could be possible that the failure to see that the Sasol Inzalo workbook was now included in the CPT was plain ignorance from the teacher. Although the CPT was being used the influence the CPT had on curriculum coverage could not be verified
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as the teacher could not provide learners’ exercise books and assessment marks to show if there had been any improvement in the learner performance.