MAPPING THE THEORETICAL TERRAIN AND LITERATURE REVIEW
2.2.2 Review of scripts
2.2.2.1 The policy canopy in South Africa
2.2.2.1.1 Platform for reform
Since 1994 there has been a “redesigning of the policy landscape” in South Africa in an effort to achieve a broad political shift from apartheid to a post-apartheid society (Jansen, 2000, p.
9). The apartheid system of education was plagued with inequalities, sexism, racism and autocracy, and characterised by rote learning, obedience, and a deliberate inculcation of misinformation and ethnic prejudices about Black South Africans, i.e. Africans, Indians and
‘Coloureds’ (Asmal & Wilmot, 2001). The new policies aimed to redress the huge backlog created in the apartheid era in terms of human resources development, reduction of poverty, improving literacy levels, job creation and competing in a global economy through the provision of quality education (DoE, 1998).
The Skills Development Act (DoL, 1998), the White Paper on Science and Technology (DoE, 1998) and the Human Resources Development Strategy: A Nation at Work (DoL and DoE, 2001) were introduced. Close networks were forged between the DoL, DoE and DST (Valley, 1998), which aimed to address the national imperatives of human resources development, improving literacy levels, broadening access into science and mathematics, overcoming the skills shortage, reduction of poverty, job creation and competing in a global economy (Valley, 1998).
The Skills Development Act refers to the people of South Africa as the country’s most important asset (DoL, 1988), and to South Africa’s past poor performance and ranking in respect of skills development and the systematic exclusion of Black South Africans from access to structured education and training programmes (DoL, 1998). It argues that nothing short of a skills revolution is required to overcome the imbalances created by apartheid education (DoL, 1998), and recommends that a new system in education with new incentives, learning programmes, institutions and personnel is required (DoL, 1998). It posits that improving individual educational attributes will lead to economic growth, especially in the field of science and technology. The White Paper on Science and Technology asserts that science and technology is vital for: human resources and economic, social and cultural development.
The newly formulated skills policies, the NBSD and the human resources development strategy of the post-apartheid government reflect tensions and contradictions in their goals.
On the one hand they hope to compete in a global economy, while on the other they aim to attend to redress and equity. These two goals lie at the opposite end of a continuum.
Uncertainty exists about the relationship between economic growth, equity and redress (Baptiste, 2001). The high skills, high knowledge approach to economic growth clashes with the goals of equity and redress (Baptiste, 2001). Beneath the high level of agreement between the DoE and the DoL about the integration of education and training policies lurks continuous tension about the details of this integration in practice (Baptiste, 2001).
The policies reflect the State’s commitment to economic growth at the expense of access, redress and poverty alleviation for citizens long deprived of education, but little attention is paid to the implementation process (Jansen, 2000). This trend in government policies creates greater polarisation between rich and poor citizens, rural and urban communities and previously advantaged (White) and disadvantaged (African, Indian and Coloured) schools (Jansen, 2000).
It is difficult to combine social transformative goals with competing in a global economy.
This will invariably led to injustices, and equity and redress will take a back seat. The
education reform process is supposed to be a vehicle for restructuring South African society along democratic principles; the State’s vision is a victim of globalisation (Baptiste, 2001).
2.2.2.1.2 Initiation of reform
The refashioning of the education landscape that began in 1994 focused on the primary and junior secondary phases, and served as a scaffold for senior secondary phase policy formulation (Chisholm, 2004). During this cathartic process, teachers - who were trained in a racially stratified teacher education system (i.e. separate training colleges for African, Indian, coloured, and white), with different classroom practice and racially segregated DoEs - were unified under one administrative body in each province to embark on a journey of redress (Carrim, 2001; Chisholm, 2004; Jansen & Christie, 1999; Onwu & Stoffel, 2005). According to these scholars, the unification of all teachers under one administrative body meant that the multiplicity of teacher identities is ignored and that issues are dealt with in a generalised and homogenised way (Carrim, 2001). These studies remind us that once a teacher’s pedagogical style has become entrenched; it has a resilience that is independent of change in government, curriculum policy reform or teacher training.
2.2.2.1.3. Structures of reform
There are nine provincial DoEs in South Africa that are accountable to the National DoE. The national DoE is responsible for policy formulation, and the provincial DoEs are responsible for policy mediation and implementation, service delivery and monitoring of education districts. According to Jansen (1999) and Onwu and Stoffels (2005), all major decisions pertaining to education are undertaken at national level, and the provincial DoEs are expected to heed the call of the national DoE. This divide has created vertical and horizontal incoherence between policy formulation, its mediation and implementation (Jansen, 1999).
This disjuncture infers that having the same policy on paper does not mean that all provinces and their schools experience the same policy in use (Jansen, 1999; Carrim, 2001, Chisholm, 2004). The implication is that the capacity to implement policies is a missing element in the State’s armory (Jansen, 2000).
There needs to be continuing dialogue between policy vision and practice if Government has serious intentions of changing the practice of education on the ground (Jansen, 2000). It
appears as though Government is preoccupied with setting policy visions in the political domain, rather than in the realm of practice (Jansen, 2000). Studies conducted by scholars such as Kraak (2000) and Chisholm (2004) alert us to the resources (human, physical, financial) needed for curriculum implementation.
Studies conducted by Samuel (2000) and Jansen (2000, 1999) reflect that the many efforts to alter the school curriculum within post-apartheid South Africa have relegated the responsibility of curriculum transformation to teachers. Furthermore, they maintain that the State has no clear understanding of the constraints and situatedness of teachers’ daily practice. Samuel (2000) argues that context frames not only what is desirable, but also what is possible. The studies by Jansen and Samuel confirm that there are many surprising sets of agencies that need to be disentangled to ensure the smooth transition from policy formulation to policy implementation. At a theoretical level these studies confirm that actors are never alone when they act, and that their action is dislocated by many factors.
This raises very pertinent questions that apply to the teachers involved in this study. How can teachers teach a curriculum that they have never learnt, in ways they have never experienced?
Put differently, this means that prominence is given to policy formulation rather than policy implementation. Policy formulation and implementation impact on teachers’ classroom practice and their pedagogical identity.
2.2.2.1.4 Vacillations in curriculum policy reform
In post-apartheid South Africa, once policies are formulated, unsuspecting teachers are dispatched on a voyage of faith to implement these policies at schools (Malcolm, 1999). In a short period of 14 years, four new curricula were introduced by different Ministers of Education (South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), 2004). Immediately after the 1994 elections the existing curriculum was purged of racial, sexist and outdated content.
This was followed by C2005 (Curriculum 2005) in 1999. In 2000, C2005 was reviewed and revised into the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS). Then the RNCS was revised and this eventually led to the formulation of the NCS-FET Policy that was introduced in the Further Education and Training (FET) phase in 2003 (Chisholm, 2005).
According to Harley and Wedekind (2004), these numerous curricula reforms indicate that there has been a very short time between the finalisation of the curriculum and its implementation. As a result of the time constraints, the national DoE instructed the provincial DoEs to provide a one-shot training session for practicing teachers using a cascade model.
2.2.2.1.5 Resultant dilemmas of curriculum policy reform
Studies conducted by Jansen and Christie (1999) and Chisholm and Narsee (2005) indicate that the introduction of a new curriculum heralds new responsibilities for teachers. This ultimately leads to an intensification of the teachers’ workload. The above studies indicate the controversies and tensions teachers deal with due to curriculum reform. These scholars reveal that action does not depend on the performance of a single actor - there are many agencies that act when we act. Whenever a new curriculum is introduced, teachers are de-skilled and re-skilled.
According to Apple (1992), re-skilling contributes to anxiety about teachers’ inability to implement the curriculum properly. Teachers question their “old” classroom practice and compare it to what is expected of them in the new curriculum. This creates a feeling of uncertainty and uneasiness among teachers about their knowledge and the classroom routine they have developed over a number of years. By engaging in the implementation of a new curriculum teachers are involved in many activities, such as teaching, planning new lessons, studying the curriculum documents, assessing learners’ work, administration pertaining to the new curriculum and school requirements, counselling learners, extra-curricular work, and meetings (Hargreaves, 1992). These activities reflect the laborious process of teaching, and indicate the impact that curriculum reform has on teacher workload.
During curriculum policy reform teachers were expected to engage in curriculum development. Rather than following a prescriptive syllabus, teachers had to make decisions about what to teach and how to teach it. In South Africa teachers were expected to espouse the principles of Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) in their teaching.
2.2.2.1.6 OBE underpins FET curriculum policy reform in South Africa
OBE forms the foundation of the curriculum in South Africa (DoE, 1999). According to Malcolm (1999), Fakier and Wagheid (2004) there are three models for OBE, viz. traditional, transitional and transformative OBE. Traditional OBE is similar to the old approach to education, where the focus is on mastery of content (Malcolm, 1999). Fakier and Waghid (2004) are of the view that transitional OBE de-emphasises subject matter tests and factual recall as indicators of learners’ success, and emphasises higher-order competencies.
Transformational OBE is espoused by the education policies in South Africa, and aims to meet Government’s goals in respect of transformation (Malcolm, 1999). It demands radical change in existing structures and operations at schools. It aims to prepare learners for the world of work and life in a rapidly changing society (Malcolm, 1999).
There are 29 learning areas in the FET section, with Life Sciences being one of them (DoE, 2003). Prior to the formulation of the NCS-FET Life Sciences Policy, the DST produced the NBSD. The DST asked the DoE to support biotechnology by including it in the science curriculum at secondary school level and at all teaching institutions (DST, National Biotechnology Strategy for South Africa, 2001). The National DoE then formulated the NCS- FET Life Sciences Policy document with the inclusion of biotechnology into the content. As indicated in Chapter One (sections 1.4. and 1.5), the NBSD foregrounds third-generation biotechnology, while the NCS-FET Life Sciences Policy foregrounds first- and second- generation biotechnology as a means for human resources development.
This means that each of these documents is not reconcilable in respect of the type of biotechnology foregrounded, the SKAV required to practice the type of biotechnology that is foregrounded and their plans for human resources development. Their objectives speak to different arrangements for the use of education as leverage for human resources development.
This discrepancy exemplifies the tensions that pervade interpretation of the national goals and vision. It also has implications for how education can be used as leverage for human resources development. In these two documents lie the seeds of the contradictory nature of the human resource agenda.
The FET phase is located at the intersection of a range of policy and legislative imperatives,
(Gewer, 2001). This sector should comprise a diverse array of education and training provision, both public and private, to deliver the 29 NCS-FET curricula. However, there are only 50 registered FET colleges in South Africa. As a result, the NCS-FET curricula in the various learning areas currently take place in senior secondary schools. In other words, FET sits at the crossroads between general education and training and higher education, as well as providing access to the world of work (Gewer, 2001). In a way, this heralds new roles and responsibilities for schools in South Africa. The role that schools should play in society is contested by many theorists, and is interrogated in the next section.