Changing Curriculum: studies on outcomes-based education in South Africa (My New World)

Changing Curriculum Studies on Outcomes-based Education in South Africa

EDITORS

JONATHAN JANSEN

PAM CHRISTIE

Juta & C o Ltd

First Published 1999 O Juta & Co, Ltd 1999 P 0 Box 14373, Kenwyn 7790

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. In terms of the Copyright Act 98 of 1978, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 0 7021 5063 0

Typesetting by THEDESI(:NHOUSE Cover design by Warren Nelson Editing by Carol Balchin

Printed and bound in South Africa by Creda Communications, Cape Town

Preface T h e myth persists that scholarly work is a hermit-like activity in which bespectacled individuals lock themselves away in dimly lit rooms to emerge after long periods of time with the finished work. I doubt that this was ever true in the history of academic writing and it certainly does not reflect the origins and production of Changing Curriculum: S t d e s on Outcomes-based Education in South Africa. It is for this reason that I acknowledge with gratitude the enormous contributions of the many different people who have made this work possible.

I begin where most prefaces end. My sincere thanks to Shakila Thakurpersad, Programme Administrator in the Centre for Education Research, Evaluation and Policy (CEREP), where the original ideas for critical engagement with outcomes-based education was first hatched. Shakila is one of the most patient and critical readers of texts in production and played a very important role in editing chapters from different computer disks, communicating editorial decisions with authors, harassing authors to send the next version of their chapters, and keeping the project on course. Thank you, Shakila Within the Faculty of Education at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), I have been privilegecl to work with several colleagues who are developing into world-class scholars. Their critical instincts, analytical strengths and social commitment lie behind the emergence of this writing project. It was here that the idea first surfaced to convene a. national conference o n outconles-based education at ULW shortly after the state announced the :Jvent of this new curriculum to be introduced into all schools in January 1998. In retrospect, that conference launched some of the most sophisticated analyses and in-depth criticism of ORE by teachers, policy ;tnalysts, researchers, education officials and our senior students. And the ideas and inventions from that conference inspired this book, Changing Cumiculum. 1would therefore like to thank Enver Motala and Renuka Vithal for bringing the idea of such a conference to the attention of colleagues. And I thank Michael Sarnuel, Betty Govinden, Sbu Rayene, Rubby Dhunpath, Mafika Cele, Bususuwe (Peggy) Msimango, Naclira Manickchund, Reshma Sookraj for the critical engagement which inspired Inany of our writings on ORE and to plan for this book.

I should also thank Garry Rosenberg, editor and publisher at Juta's, for his insightful and challenging contributions to the ideas in the early version of the manuscript and his craftful shaping of the final version of the book. It is rare in the publishing world to find a person who is not only a n outstanding tnanager, hut also a very competent intellectual who ably engages authors and editors within their own fields of inquiry. I will remain gratefill to his influence well beyond the confines of the monograph. 1 thank my co-editor, Professor Patn Christie, with whom I share Inany curriculum battles from our joint chairpersonship of the NEPI (National Education Policy

Investigation) Curriculum Committee, searching for curriculum policy specifications for the democratic movement in the early 1990s. I am delighted that we could continue the partnership through this writing project. Pam's meticulous editing of the draft manuscripts and her engagement with the developing ideas behind Changing Cumiculum significantly enhanced the focus and quality of the final product. And I thank the contributing authors. Changing Cumiculum has been very fortunate to draw on some of South Africa's most distinguished education scholars. Drawn from different university campuses, non-governmental organisations, government departments, schools and research centres, each one of these contributors has been thorough and inventive in the ways in which they have prepared their individual contributions; and they have allowed a critical engagement with their developing ideas in ways that enriched the entire project - authors and friends, the same people. Finally, I would like to thank my family, my wife Grace and children Mikhail and SaraJane, for allowing me so much time in the late evening and early morning to enable this book to be completed. For my part, I dedicate this book to my beautiful and talented daughter, Sara-Jane, who entered Grade I in the year of OBE implementation. For her sake, and for the sake of all South Africa's children, I hope that OBE succeeds. Jonathan D Jansen University of Durban-Westville

Changing Curriculum: Studies on Outcomes-based Education in South Africa SECTION A

Chapter 1: Setting the Scene: Historiographies of Curriculum Policy in South Africa Jonathan D Jansen

3

SECTION B

Chapter 2:

Competing Education & Training Policy Discourses: A 'Systemic' versus 'Unit Standards' Framework

21

Andre Kraak Chapter 3: Positively Mystical: An Interpretation of South Africa's Outcomes-based National Qualifications Framework Roger Deacon & Ben Parker Chapter 4: Outcomes-based Education Has Different Forms

Cliff Malcolm

SECTION C

Chapter 5: Critical Outcomes: Political Paradoxes Jane Skinner Chapter 6: Outcomes-based Education: Teacher Identity and the Politics of Participation Jean Baxen & Crain Soudien Chapter 7:

131

Why Outcomes-based Education Will Fail: An Elaboration Jonathan D Jansen

145

Chapter 8: The Implementation of OBET in South Africa: Pathway to Success or Recipe for Failure? Haroon Mahomed

157

Chapter 9: Critical Responses to 'Why OBE Will Fail' Mahomed Rasool

171

Chapter 10: Integrating Differences: Implications of an Outcomes+ based National Qualifications Framework for the Roles and Competencies of Teachers Ken Harley & Ben Parker

181

SECTION D INSIDECLASSROOMS Chapter 11: 'A Very Noisy OBE': The Implementation of OBE in Grade 1 Classrooms Jonathan D Jansen

203

Chapter 12: Outcomes-based Education: Issues of Competence and Equity in Curriculum and Assessment Ian Bellis

219

Chapter 13: A Destination Without a Map: Premature Implementation of Curriculum 2005? Emilia Potenza & Mareka Monyokolo Chapter 14: Outcomes-based Assessment: The Need for a Common Vision of What Counts and How to Count It Meg Pahad

SECTION E INSIGHTS, IMPLICATIONS Chapter 15: OBE and Unfolding Policy Trajectories: Lessons to be Learned Pam Christie

247

SECTION A

Introduction, Overview

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CHAPTER 1

Setting the Scene: Historiographies of Curriculum Policy in South Africa JONATHAN D JANSEN UNIVERSITY OF DURBAN-WESTVILLE

The precise date and sequence of events leading to the introduction of outcomesbased education (OBE) into South Africa's education and training system are not clear; what is clear, however, is that since the mid-1990s OBE has triggered the single most important curriculum controversy in the history of South African education. Not since the De Lange Commission Report of the 1980s (Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) 1981),has such a fierce and public debate ensued not only on the modalities of change implied by OBE, but on the very philosophical vision and political claims upon which this model of education is based. It is timely, therefore, to introduce a text on outcomes-based education which takes a step back from the immediate debates and controversies about implementation, and steps outside of the mechanical and uncritical 'how to' monographs emerging from some distance education institutions. By contrast, this book is an attempt to sketch the broader context for outcomes-based education by presenting competing perspectives on OBE; evaluating the different policy claims and assumptions and silences governing OBE; tracing the consequences of OBE for teaching and learning in different educational contexts; and examining the possibilities of OBE for contributing to educational transformation after apartheid.

The historiography of OBE in South Africa is itself a matter of controversy. I wish to present one view, based not only on personal involvement in the process of exploring what was then called curriculum 'policy options' for the extraparliamentary democratic movement, but also on a critical reading of some recent attempts to sketch the trajectory of curriculum policy in South Africa since 1990 (Christie, 1997; Kraak, 1998).

SECTION A

It is important to recognise the significance of 1990 as a critical turning point in the curriculum debates inside South Africa. Until that time, South African education was characterised by a uniform and predictable curriculum policy environment.The apartheid state managed a centralised curriculum policy system, which was variously described as racist, Eurocentred, sexist, authoritarian, prescriptive, unchanging, context blind and discriminatory. There could be some debate about these characterisations, in retrospect, as being too simplistic. However, the most important part of this curriculum policy system was that while core curricula were regularly devised for all schools based on a 'school subjects' approach, these curricula were introduced into schools with vastly different resource environments and, accordingly, produced vastly different consequences in these different race-based resource contexts. While there may have been muted attempts to introduce 'alternative curricula' (and the accounts of both alternative education and People's Education have been remarkably exaggerated in terms of their effects), the curriculum of the apartheid state was the dominant and exclusive medium for education in the schools sector. The year 1990 is significant because of the changes in the political landscape both inside South Africa and in the southern African region. In South Africa, following unprecedented political and economic pressures from the liberation movements and the international community, the apartheid state was coerced into releasing key political prisoners (including Nelson Mandela) and unbanning political organisations. In the region, the end of the Cold War had recast ideological and political alignment in, for example,Angola and Namibia, facilitating the emergence of a post-apartheid capitalist state (Chisholm, 1994). The curriculum significance of the political moment defined by 1990 was that within South Africa competing social movements and political actors vehemently began to stake their curriculum positions in anticipation of what now seemed inevitable-the emergence of South Africa's first democratic state following national, non-racial elections. The National Education Coa-dinating Committee (NECC), itself a nominal alliance of progressive education and labour stakeholders, initiated the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI) to develop education 'policy options' for the broad democratic movement, in effect the African National Congress and its allies. One of the key research groups in this NECC initiative was the Curriculum Group which produced an important foundational document upon which much (though by no means all) of existing (1998) curriculum policy is based (National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI), 1992).What NEPI did was to provide a broad values framework for thinking about democratic education policy after apartheid; this framework emphasised non-racism, non-sexism, democracy, equality and redress as the platform for post-apartheid education policy. In addition to this values framework, NEPI outlined some key operational areas for

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JONATHAN D JANSEN

future policy attention, including early childhood education, adult education, teacher education and educational governance and finance. The most relevant observation from the NEPI work, completed in 1992/93, was that there was no reference whatsoever to OBE in these documents and only broad suggestions about a co-ordinated system of education and training. The private sector, on the other hand, initiated the Private Sector Education Council (PRISEC) which, predictably, placed within the public debate a series of proposals calling for more vocational and entrepreneurial education rather than formal academic education, given the demands of the economy. The same ideas were expressed in the influential Education Policy and Systems Change Unit (EDUPOL) of the Urban Foundation, a large venture of businesses and corporations, which placed on the public agenda a prominent role for business in education reform and also outlined a key set of operational areas for state attention in the future, two such areas being educational governance and teacher education. Again, there was no reference in these documents to outcomes-based education or its variants. The foreign-funded (led by the United States Agency for International L)eveloprnent, or USAID) nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) themselves produced a wide range of curriculum alternatives mainly within adult education, early childhood education (as it was then called), matriculation preparation programmes, academic development curricula within universities, and a few private or independent schools. Of course, these disparate but critically needed 'curricula' had little irrmpact or1 the formal education system where the overwhelming majority of schoolchildren were located. Also, the philosophies and approaches embedded in this dispersion of N O education programmes were so diverse (from radical, progressive approaches to mainstream, delivery programmes) that any coherence is difficult to describe; it can, however, he safely claimed that there was not a single OBE-specific approach in this broad range of NGO curricula. There was one possible exception, though, expressed through the adult education curricula developed by the Independent Exarrrinations Boarcl (IEB) that began to reflect the competencies expressed in the National Training Strate~yInitiative: (see later) documents and the COSATU proposals; a singular achievement of the IEB at the tirime was to begin to innovate and experiment with assessment strategies which could give meaning t o a system based on demonstrable competencies in adult learning. The apartheid state itselfjoinetl this rush for curriculum position first by publishing the Educutim Renew(~lStrate0 in two versions and then, crucially,a specific curriculum I\/Zo~kljirrSouth Afir.a. Its core proposals position dubbed CUMSA or A Nm) (,umm(;ulum were a rationalisation of the inordinately large nllmber of' school syllabuses, the development of core learning areas, and a stronger vocational education emphasis in the school curriculum. Urrpalatable as it nmay seem to some, there appears in CUMSA the beginning of some of the curriculilrn refornms initiated afier the 1994 elections, such as syllabus reduction, learning area specifications ant1 the linkage

SECTION

A

INTRODUCTION.OVERVIEW

of education to economic development through an emphasis on science and technology education. The OBE-related idea that 'less is more' in terms of curriculum content organisation may even have started to surface within CUMSA. But again, there is no specific reference to an outcomes-based education system at this time. But it is now clear, in retrospect, that the most important curriculum actor at the time was the National Training Board, and here lie the roots of what only later came to be called outcomes-based education. The early National Training Board lost legitimacy among the unions, given its failure to consult. The later National Training Board secured the full participation and leadership of COSATU and produced perhaps the most significant policy document of the time, the National Training Strategy Initiative (NTSI),which provided the foundation for curriculum and assessment thinking within South Africa. While the primary focus of this strategy was on labour and the training sector, its proposals for an integrated approach to education and training bound the education sector, including schools, into this framework of thinking. The subsequent National QualificationsFramework therefore implied the linkage of education qualifications to training qualifications in an integrated system. At about the same time as the emergence of the NTSI, there were lively discussions within COSATU about competency-based education (CBE) as the instrument through which to provide and accredit training in the labour sector. The arguments were persuasive, both on moral and practical grounds. Morally, the traditional deadend, ad hoc training of labour did not provide any progression and mobility; the non-recognition of work experience meant that any subsequent training assumed a blank slate as far as trainees were concerned and effectively dismissed any possibilities for building on what learners already know. And, pra'ctically, the emphasis on demonstrating competencies as the basis for assessment and progression made very good sense, given the kind of work environment in which trainees operate. At this point, there was a rich intercourse of ideas between leading thinkers in COSATU (such as Adrienne Bird and Gail Elliot) and their labour counterparts in Australia; frequent travel between these two countries witnessed an exceptionally high level of exchange of frameworks,proposals and experiences as South Africa gradually moved towards an integrated system based on specified competencies. In these early stages, much of the intellectual content for these ideas was provided by Pam Christie, an education lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, who completed her doctoral studies in Australia and provided coherent curriculum accounts which translated the Australian experience into the South African. What is striking about this period, however, is that the debate on the integrated system and competencies was largely confined to and conducted within the labour movement and its expanding relationship with business. There was at the time very

C H A P T E R JONATHAN

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D JANSEN

little integration or interrogation of educational ideas into this labour-driven debate, at least from those working within schools. The first democratic national elections of 1994 saw the establishment of two different political divisions and their departmental bureaucracies: the Ministry of Education on the one hand, and the Ministry of Labour on the other. To the dismay of some of the integrationists, these two separate authorities undermined possibilities for 'an integrated approach to education and training' especially since the debates within the Department of Labour (the bureaucratic arm of the political unit, the Ministry of Labour) had progressed quite considerably as a consequence of its developmental work within COSATU and the NTB. To make matters worse, the Ministry of Education was almost immediately under siege after the 1994 elections as a result of weak and indecisive leadership, deteriorating conditions within schools, and unrelenting demands from education stakeholders for 'transformation' from universities, colleges, technikons, schools and elsewhere (Jansen, 1998). In short, the underdevelopment of integration and competency propositions within the schools sector, the fragmentation of bureaucratic organisation with respect to integration, and the distraction of education development within the Ministry of Education because of crisis conditions in its schools and universities, did not augur well for the development of curriculum policy in schools. Indeed, the first national curriculum initiative was limited to a political intervention in the form of a highly superficial sanitation of apartheid syllabuses as a response to a serious legitimacy crisis in the aftermath of the elections (Jansen, 1998).This was followed by the introduction of a policy called continuous assessment in schools, but again without any teacher preparation and with minimal guidelines as to how this could be achieved. Nevertheless, with the passing of time the Ministry of Education produced a series of White Papels on Education, the most important being the Mi&P a p on Education and 7i.aining of 1995, itself a highly contested document in it5 earlier version, but which reflected the key ideas of integration and competency as elements of a systemwide education restructuring ambition. Much later, a series of' curriculum policy docurnents in the South African tradition of 'discussion documents' was published through the national Department of Education. These documents also elaborated the integrationist and competency discourses,but with little reference to outcomes based education. Then, without warning, in late 1996, a key document emerged spelling out the proposal for outcomes-based education. This proposal has several striking characteristics.

+ 7 k e sudden emergence of the proposal, bnngang ordinary teachers into contact with

n curriculum discourse completely foreign to their understanding and practices. It was not uncommon, in the aftermath of the 1996 documents, t o hear teachers exclaim that they were not consulted in the course of developing

SECTION

A

I N T R O D U C TOIVOEN R V. I E W

the OBE approach. This was in part a consequence of the suddenness of OBE's emergence in policy documentation. It is true, of course, that once the OBE idea was promulgated, selections of teachers were involved through special committees at national and provincial levels in working out the practical implications in terms of, for example, programme design. But it is true to say that teachers had no involvement in the conceptualisation of OBE or in decisions about its adoption, for reasons explained earlier in relation to the emergence of the competency debates in the labour arena.

+ The lack of conceptual connection between the proposal for OBE and the early integration and competency debates. This explains the fact that there is almost no reference to the implications of OBE in schools within the regulatory frameworks established under the National Qualifications Framework. The gradual development of OBE concepts in schools therefore proceeded in isolation of these broader frameworks, adding to the confusion about the meaning of these different frameworks and approaches in so far as they laid claim to an integrated approach to education and training.

+ The deuelqbment of a n OBEfor schools which appeared dGtinctfiom dGcussions of OBE in the workplace or; as became clearer later;j b n OBE in highm education contexts. The OBE discussion in schools developed a separate language from OBE in workplace training; OBE in higher education was discussed in direct relation to the unit standards debate, the latter absent from the schools framework for OBE; and OBE in the workplace was discussed more in relation to equivalencies and outcome assessments at different NQF levels than in relation to unit standards per se. This divergence of OBE meanings is related to its insular development within different education and training sectors, and reflects on the poor management (politically and bureaucratically) of education policy in this critical transition period.

+ The heavy reliance on Spadyean OBE as thejustiJicatmyJi-ameuorkf w an outcomes

a#voach in South Afica, a fiamauork very d i f f m t f i m the Australian one, as eloquently demonstrated by CliffMalcolm in this volume.' However, as the debates and development of South African OBE continued, a constant run of experts from other countries passed through Magster Building (the current headquarters of the national Department of Education in Pretoria) and provincial education department offices, a£Eirming and assisting in the development of OBE. The main foreign experts came from Scotland,Australia, New Zealand (which has had a qualifications framework debate rather than OBE),England and the United States of America. Nevertheless, the Spady version of OBE continued to dominate the localised discourses about the 1

William Spady is regarded, at least by the Americans, as the 'father'of outcomes-based education and has certainly been the most prolific of the protagonists of this approach.

meaning and claims associated with outcomes-based education. What remains striking, though, is the lack of originality and context in the espousal of South African OBE ideas, with almost word-for-word translations from William Spady's writings, including his rather meaningless distinctions between traditional OBE, transitional OBE and transfonnational OBE. In addition, it is also worth noting the non-referencing of the Australian debates on outcomes-based education within the national Departnlerlt of Education, despite the heavy influence of this context on the NQF and competencies debate.

+ The shift in lanLpagefrom 'competencies' to 'outcomes :a movv widely inleqpreted as a n attempt

to escape the mwe o&)ious hehaviourism implied i n Sompetmries ' in favour of the more educationally acceptable 'outcomes' l(~nguage.This shift in language suggested that not much thought had gone into the rnove from CBE (a union-derived language for the workplace linked firmly to the NQF) to OBE (an American invention for schools without any connections to qualifications frameworks). It does explain, however, the policy divergence described earlier as the meanings of these concepts evolved differently within different education and training subsectors. The introduction of a new, contfikx and voluminous tmin,olocgto de.~cr-ibeORE;. It is perhaps one of the most striking features of South African ORE that it has possibly generated the most extensive vocabulary to accompany a c~lrriculumreform initiative in the twentieth century. More than 100 new words were introduced onto the curriculum landscape, thereby constituting perhaps the single most inlportant threat to the success of OBE as a curriculum innovation. The reasons for the emergence ofthis language complexity are not clear; what was clear from the beginning was the fact that teachers were now Faced with an intimidating new discourse even as they started to irnplernent this important policy tvithin their classrooms.

7'hzntrodunrtion of somdhing tnl& (Ximculum 2005 which 7uas ilivntzrrs tlint they understand and can apply Ihe des~redoulcnmPs wrrhln a cenaln colitrxt -

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Unit standards:

Nationally aqreed statements of specllic outcomes and the~rassociated performance or assessment crlterla toqether w ~ t hadmlnlstratwe and othpr necessary ~ n f o m a t ~ oUnlt n standards are the smallest measure of a prescr~bedp~rformanceassessment

Credits:

They are the recognition that a learner has achieved a unit standard. Credits may b~! acc~rm~rlated until conditions have been met for the award of a oualificat~on.

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-

-

NCIF levels:

1

They are the positions on the NOF where national unit standards are registered and qr~alificationsawarded. They are arranged to siqnal increas~ngc o m p l e ~ i win learning and to fac~l~tate rneanlnqf~rlproqresslon routes nlnnq career and learnlnq pathways

Contexts and fields:

Fields siqnify areas of learning used as an organisinq mechanism for the NOF. SAQA has registered 12 such fields: Agr~cultureand Nature Conservation; Culture and Arts; Br~s~ness. Commerce and Management Strrd~cs;Comrnunlcat~onStudres and Lang~rages: Educat~on,Tra~ningand Development: Mani~factr~r~nq. Engineering and Technoloqy. H~rmanand Soc~alStud~es:Law, Mllttary Sclence and S e c ~ ~ rHealth ~ v : Scr~nces; ~ n d Socral Services; Physical. Mathematrcal, Compclter and Lift. Sciences: Senl~ces:and Physrcal Plannlng and Constrrrct~on

:

A qrralification:

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--

--

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-

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A planned cornb~natlonof learn~ngoutcomes whrch has a d ~ f ~ n epurpose d and whlch 17 Intended to provlde qoal~fylnqlearners wrth a p p l ~ ~c do m p ~ t ~ and n c ~a hasrs for fllrthpr learning

THE EXPANDED DEFlhllTlON Glnbalisation and the n ~ e r for ! expanded underplnninq knowledge:

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I

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As n consegtrence of globalrsation, workers requre broadened skills that go beyonil Ilie

narrow task d~n~ensions of ro~rt~nlsed work. Workers now need to he rnultiskillerl and adaptable In the face of change; they need to understand and participat~In ilje rnanaqement of work roles and production systems, takrnq responslhiliv for conringencies, quality control, innovat~onand flexihlc responses to new prorl~rctdemands - - - corrroetencres w h ~ c hare ~rnpossibleto develop In narrow compctcncy-trarnlng wstems -

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~

The iceberg metaphor:

This symbolises the Importance of seeing performed competency Ithe tip of the Ice. berg) as being underpinned by a much larger foundation of knowledqe and u n d ~ r srandinq Ithe submerged slructlrre of the leeberg)

Critical cross-field o~ltcornes:

These are cross-curr~cula,broad outcomes that focus on the capacity to apply knowledge, skills and attrtudes In an ~ntegratedway Included are problem-solving skrlls; teamsh~p;self-responsibility; collect~ngand analysing ~nformatronsk~lls;comrnunlcatron sk~lls,technological and ~ n v ~ r o n m e n tIrteracy; al develop~nqmacro vlsron; learn~ng sk~lls,crt~zenshrp,cr~ltrrraland aesthetic understandinq; ~mplnyment-seek~ng skrlls: and entreoreneursh~n

- -

Rtlles of combination:

They set o~rthow many credits from various categories and fields - fundamental, cnrr or speclalised courses - must be accumulated In order to award a part~cularqual~ficatton

lnteqntive assessment:

A form of assessment whlch permits the learner to demonstrate applied competence and whrch uses a ranqe ol formatrvc and summarive assessment methods sucti as portfol~os,simr~lations.In situ workolace assessments, wrltten and oral examination.

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SECTION

B

Alignment with the NQF Another key feature of OBET is that it is aligned with the goals of the NQF and posits mechanisms for structuring learning programmes in the form of unit standards (the smallest measure of a prescribed performance objective) and course credits. All of these components additively lead to the formation of qualifications which are defined at specific levels and in specific fields of study along the NQF ladder.

OBET's radical rhetoric The rapid ascendancy and popularity of outcomes-based ET in South Africa and other countries may be ascribed to its skilful packaging in the radical language of other educational discourses - liberal progressive ideals about comprehensive schooling in the Australian case, and People's Education in the South African context. The radical rhetoric of People's Education provides an essential legitimacy to what -in Sedunary's (1996)view -is otherwise a highly technicist and ultimately conservative assessment technology. Sedunary (1996: 381), writing about the Australian experience, argues that the common ground shared between these two seemingly opposed discourses has in fact to do with their shared hostility to elite schoolingsystems based on antiquated divisions between academic and vocational schooling tracks: Underlying the new vocationalism's concern to combine theory and practice or intellect and application is an impatience with the traditional distinction between mental and manual labour which the academic cuniculum marked and reproduced in the original structures of Australian post-primary schooling and which it has continued to symbolise. Whereas radical education implicitly contended that the distinction between mental and manual labour as institutionalisedin schooling means an undesirable (class-based)social allocation of people to privileged or subordinate stations in life, the new vocationalism regards the distinction as functionally obsolete, given the new directions in the nature and structure of work. It is this departure in thinking from a historical given that is at the heart of the more forwardlooking radicalism of the new vocationalism.

Notwithstanding this paradoxical convergence, Sedunary points out that these two discourses - the radical education tradition and outcomes-based 'new vocationalism' -are simultaneously contradictory because each emphasises the attainment of a high-skill, high-participation ET system for very different ends: empowering the individual-citizen with critical and 'interpretive intellect' versus linking 'instrumental intellect' to the needs of a rapidly changing economy (Sedunary, 1996: 383). Sedunary also argues that this accommodation between supposedly opposing discursive frameworks is a reflection of the state's successful incorporation of past radical discourses within its own structures -primarily through the employment

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A N D R EK R A A K

of new progressive personnel within the state and through the writing of newly interpreted policy texts - which then give legitimacy to what is essentially a technicist and conservative assessment technology. Sedunary's observations are directly relevant to the South African context. The radical rhetoric borrowed from People's Education constructs a very sophisticated mask of deception in the public domain. This is because much of the public criticism of the ANC's Curriculum 2005 proposals has little to do with objections to unit standards methodology, but more to do with factors external to the pedagogical model under consideration -for example, concerns about the ANC government's ability to deliver a new system. Almost no informed debate has yet taken place in the public domain on the desirability of an outcomes-based ET system premised on unit standards. This is primarily because its continuities with the radical rhetoric of People's Education has made outcomes-based ET a more palatable intervention for the vast majority of lay policy analysts. The next section will briefly examine some of the discursive borrowings from People's Education which have powerfully framed the way in which OBET is currently marketed and interpreted in South Africa.

At the heart of South Africa's outcomes-based ET discourse is an emphasis on putting the learners first. This learnercentred approach has entailed a paradigm shift in the approach to learning and teaching, away from the traditional syllabusoriented, content-based transmission model of teaching and learning to one based on outcomes. Treating learners as 'empty vessels which have to be filled with knowledge', and regarding learners as passive recipients or rote learners deprives many learners of adequate opportunities to realise their full potential (national Department of Education, 1997a: 30). Table 2.6, taken from the document, Curriculum 2005, diagrammatically interprets this paradigm shift. Credit accumulation and tralzsfer schemes (CATS)

The progressiveness of competency and outcomes approaches is also derived through their association with flexible modular approaches to curriculum which allow learners the opportunity over time to accumulate credits across a range of education and training providers. Three key characteristics of credit accumulation and transfer schemes (CATS) can be identified.

4 They facilitate movement across all the divisions within ET. 4 They provide a flexible framework in which there can be maximum student choice and exploration, pacing of learning, as well as a degree of specialisation.This entails opening up the curriculum to new groups of students who would previously not have been in formal learning, especially in further and higher education and training.

SECTION

B

I THE LEARNER: --

I

OLD TRANSMISSION MODEL OF LEARNING Passive learners

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ASSESSMENT:

I

NEW OUTCOMES-BASED MODEL OF LEARNING Actwe learners

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Graded Exam-driven Exclusionary

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Continuous assessment; learners are assessed on an on-going basis --

ROLE OF TEACHER:

Teacher-centred, textbook bound

Learner-centred; teacher as facilitator; teacher constantly using group work and team work

CURRICULUM F9AMEWORK:

Syllabus seen as rigid and non-negotiable

Learning programmes seen as guides that allow teachers to be innovative and creative in designing programmes.

Emphasis on what teacher hopes to achieve

Emphasis on outcomes what the learner becomes and understands

Content placed into rigid time frames

Flexible time frames allow learners to work at their own pace

TIME RAMES AND LEARNER PACING:

1

+ They allow for the development of new forms of knowledge which reflect new social developments (media studies, urban studies, performing arts, a n d economic awareness). These developments pose new possibilities for relating the vocational a n d the academic in the curriculum (Spours, 1988: 10). Scott (1995: '74,75) writes of the impact of CATS in higher education: Modulardegree schemes, CATS and outcomes-based assessments embody different values than those which have been dominant in many higher education systems -or, at any rate, their elite segments. In place of sustained academic commitment a stepbystep, and student friendly, approach to higher education is offered. Multiple points of entry and exit are opened without regard to the academic symmetry of the whole. In place of grand organic interpretations of knowledge, a pattern of academic progression is provided in which connections, between topics and levels,

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A N D R EK R A A K

are pragmatically derived rather than cognitively prescribed. And, in place of socially exclusive accounts of disciplinary and professional cultures, a more diff~~se 'college culture' is offered.

Scott argues that CATS makes access easier because it enables a much wider range of indicative factors to be taken into account in considering the eligibility of students rather than simply their success in end-of-year exams. Secondly, CATS reduces the risk and stigma of failure by providing multiple exit points which can be certificated. And, lastly, students are able to 'grow' their own academic interests and, in so doing, are less likely to be trapped in academic fields for which they have limited aptitude. Critical thinking and demowaEic nationhood

Outcomes-based education and training in South Africa also places a strong emphasis on the development of critical thinking skills. Curriculum 2005 (national Department of Education, 1997a:lO) makes this pedagogic objective explicit: Learning programmes should promote learners' ability to think logically and analytically as well as holistically and laterally. This incliides an acknowledgement of the provisional, contested and changing nature of knowledge and of the need to balance independent, individualised thinking with social responsibility and the ability to function as part of a group, community or society.

Radical education discourses are also defined by their appeals to a common nationhood and citizenry in contrast to the social class stratification which traditional schooling typically reinforces. This emphasis is evident in Curriculum 2005 (national Department of Education, 1997a:g) which defines nation-building and non-discrimination as key principles of the new ET system: ET should promote the development of a national identity and an awareness of South Africa's role and responsibility with regard to Africa and the rest of the world.

Learning programmes should, therefore, encourage the development of

+

mutual respect tor diverse religious and value systems, cultural and language traditions; multilingualism and informed choices regarding the language/s of learning; and

+

cooperation, civic responsibility and the ability to participate in all aypects of society.

Participatory governance Curriculum design in OBET (as in radical pedagogic traditions) is to be transparent and participatory, incorporating the efforts of all stakeholders: parents, teachers, education authorities, experts and the learners themselves. The curriculum framework is provisional,with piloting, experimentation and adaptation occurring throughout. Curriculum frameworks will vary from place to place as the process becomes more flexible and responsive to diverse community needs (national Department of Education, 1997a).

SECTION B

MEANINGS, MOTIVATIONS, METHODOLOGIES

Seamless learning

The cumulative impact of all these elements is to create an environment for seamless and successful learning, with few boundaries, barriers or exclusionary constraints hindering further learning. This idealism of seamless learning is borne out in Curriculum 2005 (national Department of Education, 1997b:5) when describing the benefits of an outcomes-based NQF model: 4 Learning is recognised whether it takes place in formal or informal settings. ^ Learners are able to move between the education and working environments. + Areas of learning are connected to each other to enable learners to build on what they learn as they move from one learning situation to another. *• Credits and qualifications are easily transferable from one learning situation to another.

The notion of ease of transfer from one learning context to another implicit in seamless learning is perhaps the most appealing feature of the radical discourse of OBET, but it also represents its most problematic feature. The next section will raise some of OBET's limitations.

A CRITIQUE OF OBET In most critical accounts of OBET written in South Africa, there are usually three fundamental flaws which are highlighted. These are: OBET's genesis in the discipline of behavioural psychology; its false claims regarding knowledge transferability; and, lastly, its diminution of the contribution made by teachers and the curriculum in the learning process and, in contrast, its privileging of assessment technologies. Each of these criticisms will be dealt with briefly. A critique of traditional behaviouralist approaches to competence Perhaps the most fundamental criticism to be made of OBET is that its definition relies too heavily on behaviouralist principles. Behavioural psychology assumes a unanimity of behaviour: under the same circumstances, we all behave in the same predictable way. This predictability is assured by our conditioning process and is invariant. As such, the display of 'competency' can be mastered and measured with precision. The danger here is that there is no place in such a schema for imagination, creativity and innovation — qualities which cannot be measured in discrete quantifiable units, but which are the key priorities of a good general education. Ashworth and Saxton (1990: 11) have problems with the depiction of 'competence' as a complex entity made up of simpler items of ability. This 'atomisation' of knowledge distorts the process of learning, as the example of a cyclist below highlights: A cyclist never learns separately to incline the body, to turn the wheel, to press the pedals, and to judge the fall of the bike from the vertical; all this happens in a 46

CHAPTER

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A N D R EK R A A K

coordinated whole. A complex skill entails elements none of which can ever be defined independently of the rest. Any behaviour is a 'meaningful Gestalt'; a whole in which the individual elements affect each other in a manner that changes their nature. The elements of skill are not recognisable or separable from the complex whole. (Ashworth & Saxton, 1990: 12)

Competence models attempt to describe competence in precise, transparent and observable terms, to predict the specific outcome of effective action. However, as the above discussion suggests, all human knowledge cannot be categorised with such precision. The confident rhetoric of outcome practitioners also overplays the extent to which 'assessment' has been made more learner centred, transparent and therefore more acceptable. All assessment is subjective, and criterionreferenced assessment does not escape this problem. Furthermore, the construction of competency 'standards' is in itself a highly subjective process entailing largely arbitrary decisions (Ashworth & Saxton, 1990: 6). All of these problems have led Ashworth and Saxton (1990: 18,24) to conclude that: The lack of concern for context, the frequent inability of the notion of competence to include the range of human activities necessary to accomplish fully skilled performance, and the atomistic and additive view which the competence model imposes on activities makes it a poor guide for the teacher . .. The professional skills of the teacher are not likely to be assisted by the adoption of a view of action which is so lacking in sensitivity to the radically individual psychologies of the learners .. . We believe that 'competence' is the embodiment of a mechanistic, technically-oriented way of thinking which is normally inappropriate to the description of human action, or to the facilitation of training of human beings. The more human the action, in the sense of being un-mechanical, creative, or sensitive to the social setting, the more inappropriate the competency model of human action is.

Collapsing boundaries: the issue of transferability A second powerful criticism of OBET, which is repeated regularly throughout this book, is that outcomes models assume that learning acquired, assessed and accredited by OBET - specifically core or generic competencies - can be transferred and applied across differing knowledge and societal contexts. The idea of 'seamless learning' described earlier is a typical OBET characterisation of the ease of the transfer of learning. This central proposition flies in the face of recent theories on cognition and learning (see Gee, Bernstein, Lave and Wenger). These writers stress that generic competencies or capabilitiesare acquired in specific contexts -often through a process of enculturation or socialisation in what Lave and Wenger call 'communities of practice' -and, as a consequence, are not applicable in other knowledge or occupational contexts. For example, the 'problem-solving skills' that a brain surgeon and plumber acquire in their communitiesof practice -an example of one key generic competency - are not one and the same and cannot be easily substituted one for the other. Outcomes-based education and training ignores

SECTION

B

M E A N I N GM S .O T I V A T I O M NS E ,T H O D O L O G I E S

institutional locale -the site of learning is irrelevant. All that is important is effective performance of the outcomes specified in the unit standard. This can be done through night-school,distance education, recognition of prior learning, enterprisetraining or through the traditional forms of institutional study. This formulation has the dramatic effect of collapsing if not decimating all boundaries which historically have evolved around different forms of knowledge acquisition and knowledge organisation and which are intrinsically linked to specific institutional locales disciplinary knowledge in universities, institutionally prescribed categories of knowledge (curriculum) in schools, and experiential knowledge in private enterprises. These categories become irrelevant in the OBET scheme of things. The implications of this critique are serious. They throw up new contradictory features in the way in which government education and training policy is being currently articulated. Paradoxically, OBET stands in sharp contradiction to the approaches being developed by government towards FET and HET. In these spheres, as outlined earlier in this chapter, government policy is 'systemic' in character, seeking to create a unified and coordinated system of further and higher ET provision. This systemic focus is fundamentally a strategic response to the combined pressures of globalisation and its multiskilling imperative, the shift to new problem-solving and transdisciplinary forms of knowledge production, and the shift away from elite to more open systems of provision. All of these changes suggest a shift away from the rigid boundaries between different forms of disciplinary knowledge (and between theoretical and practical knowledge) towards a greater hybridisation of knowledge - new formations of knowledge that contain both the theoretical and applied, academic and practical. The new emphasis in a unified and coordinated system of FET and HET is towards the following knowledge forms. 4 Knowledgef m that are deoelopedpfogrammaticaUy-that is, transdisciplinary constructs that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries and which link academic knowledge more effectively to the requirements and problems of the society and economy at large. The synergy created between different disciplines interacting in the process of seeking solutions to specific social and economic problems -as suggested earlier -has led to many new fields of knowledge in universities from information technology, telecommunications technology, genetic engineering, biotechnology, advanced materials design, artificial intelligence to ecotourism and, finally, media, feminist and cultural studies.

+ Knowledge f

m that arise out of transinstitutional partnerships between university-based scholars, industry-based scientists and professional knowledge workers in civil society. Knowledge generation has now become a much more open process of production and acquisition. Crossing knowledge boundaries is becoming an everyday occurrence as new industry-education partnerships are forged and as knowledge

C H A P T E R

2

A N D R EK R A A K

workers increasingly engage real social problems equipped with a wider variety of transdisciplinary investigative tools. (See Kraak, 1995; 1997.) The emergent paradox in current ANC education and training policy formulation lies herein: OBET decimates knowledge boundaries, refusing to recognise the institutional locales of differing forms of knowledge acquisition and construction. Systemic approaches, on the contrary, seek to build unified, open and more coordinated approaches to FET and HET based, firstly, on a respect for knowledge boundaries, but, more importantly, on an understanding of the strategic importance of knowledge interchange and hybridisation. Social progress and economic prosperity in the information economy are founded on the synergies and innovation which arise from transinstitutional and transdisciplinary knowledge collaboration. Table 2.7 overleaf summarises these paradoxical differences.

The diminution of teaching and the curriculum

A hrther area of substantial critique regarding OBET is its disregard for the centrality of the curriculum and the need for a professionally trained and motivated teacher corps. Formally, OBET argues that all that is required in terms of a national curriculum framework are certain loose and flexibly specified guidelines regarding essential outcomes to be attained and assessment mechanisms to be used. Specific learner content will not be prescribed in a national curriculum framework as these curriculumdesign activities would be devolved: .. . not only to the provinces, but also to local clusters of institutions, for example, schools, teacher centres and, ideally, to individual institutions and teachers thernselves. At all levels of curriculum development ... the nature of particular areas of learning, the needs of target groups of learners and the demands of'the changing socioeconomic context should inform the formulation of outcomes (national Department of Education, 1995b: 8).

In addition to the construction of such a weak national curriculum framework, OBET also argues that the attainment of unit standards and prescribed outcomes is independent of any specific institutional type, whether school, night class, college, enterprise-training or RPL,. This privileging of 'stand-alone' unit standards over and above a clearly defined curriculum and specific institutional location has the following devastating implications for the teaching and learning process.

+ Outcomes-based education and training privileges the development of isolated unit standards at the expense of a well-thought-out national curriculum fi-amework.The benefit of the latter is that it enables the linking of curriculum content, pedagogic proce5ses and regulatory mechanisms to societal goals such as infonned and denlocratic citizenship,non-racialism and multiculturalism, and social development and economic prosperity for all. By failing to solidify these linkages, the 'curriculum' as is generally understood in educational practice is undervalued in OBET.

SECTION

B

MEANINGS, MOTIVATIONS, METHODOLOGIES

THE OUTCOMES-BASED CONCEPTlON

A SYSTEMIC CONCEPTION

-- -

MECHANISM FOR IMTFGRATING 1 DIFFERENT FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE t

C o l l a p s ~ st h h~o u n d a r l ~ s

Traverses the boundaries with-

between theoret~caland applied1 experiential knowledge, and between the academic and the vocational

out collapsing them Creates new forms of knowledge that are simultaneously theoretical and applied

Emphasis on competencies Unit standards methodology

Hybrid formations incorporating disciplinary (Mode 1) and problem-solving (Mode 2) knowledge constructs -

RELATIONS BWEEN DIFFERENT KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES

1

EVALUATION

ROLE OF THE STATE

i I

-

Knowledge transferability

Knowledge interchange

Knowledge is portable and transferable from one location to another

Interchange between 'Mode 1' and 'Mode 2' knowledges They remain, however, distinctive knowledge formations with clear boundaries

Criterion referenced; inclusive; no grading

Norm referenced; exclusion of failures

Massive bureaucracy to define, accredit and monitor unit standards In Australia and New Zealand, over 15000 unit standards are registered in the OBET system

Creation of a single, unified system of FET and HET through regutatow and planning mechanisms which encourage programme-driven rather than disciplinarv-based ET provision

+ Assessment of performance is seen as an exact science which can be specified through explicit assessment criteria. This approach undervalues the role of teachers in exercising professionaljudgement in what in reality is a very subjective and difficult process. Overspecification of assessment criteria does not reduce the subjective elements. Rather, it merely diminishes the role that teachers play.

+ The emphasis on devolving the process of specifying curriculum content

with little state prescription has the effect of opening up learning and teaching to laissez-faire curriculum development which is sectional in nature and excludes the 'national good'. Paradoxically, this formulation

I

I

~

CHAPTER

2

ANDREKRAAK

stands in sharp contrast to the aspirations of 1980s radical discourse, 'People's Education', which sought to specify certain non-negotiables in the national curriculum framework: non-racialism, non-sexism, a respect for manual labour, linking mental and manual labour, the introduction of new subjects such as Development Studies and People's History, leamercentred education and multilingualism.

+ Devolution of the responsibility of drawing up specific cuniculum content

assumes a high degree of capacity in curriculum design which South Africa does not possess. Such a decision also plays havoc with the national educational publishing industry which under these new conditions is unable to tender for large runs of prescribed texts and, as a consequence, is unable to exploit economies of scale if devolved curriculum production leads to a high degree of variance in actual texts in use in schools and colleges across the nine provinces of the country.

Developing broader conceptions of outcomes The critique raised above has posed a fundamental challenge to the ANC government's approach to OBET. It has responded to this criticism over the past four years by attempting to define more broadly based conceptions of competency using the term 'outcomes' to signify this change. This shift mirrors international developmentswhere the debate has focused on the inseparability of 'competence' and 'knowledge' and the absurdity of viewing skills in discrete technical tenns in isolation of broader 'contexts' (Wolf, 1989: 39). Wolf argues that skill competencies are highly contextualised: they cannot be categorised in isolation of their 'knowledge and understanding' underpinnings (Wolf, 1989: 44). A broad approach to competency, therefore, seeks to integrate the development of 'skill competencies' and the 'knowledge and understanding' construct? which underpin such competency. Mansfield (1989: 28) provides a useful description of the broad skills required:

+

They are based on descriptions of 'work roles' which are external to individual attributes. Most narrow approaches define competency in terms of the individual's attaining discrete units of competence. They are broad based in that they include considerations of the interaction between the 'technical' role and the organisational environment.

+

They are dynamic in that they are able to incorporate changes in work organisation, technology and society. They are concerned both with concepts such as adaptability,versatility, change, creativity and innovation as well as with routine activities.

SECTION B M E A N I N GM SO , T I V A T I OM NS E ,T H O D O L O G I E S

Broad competencies therefore are those skills which prepare workers to face the challenges posed by the new global economic context -adaptability in the face of change, understanding and participation in the management of work roles and production systems, taking responsibility for contingencies, quality control, innovation and flexible responses to new product demands -competencieswhich are impossible to develop in narrow training systems. This is precisely the shift that has taken place in ANC policy thinking - from a scepticism and eventual rejection of competency models in the early 1990s to an embrace of an outcomes approach. A glance at the latter part of Table 2.5 will highlight the key dimensions of this new, 'added-on' broad definition. Outcomesbased education and training now includes the following.

+ The icebergvktaphmintroduced by the seminal text Ways ofseeing(Human

Sciences Research Council (HSRC), 1995) to symbolise the importance of seeing performed competency as being underpinned by a much larger foundation of knowledge and understanding. Outcomes-based education and training, in this symbolism, is not merely about measuring discrete (visible) units of competence. It is about recognising the indivisible link between competence and the conceptual,problemsolving, interactive and context-bound abilities which underpin (but which are invisible in) the performance of 'competence'.

+ Rules of combination and the final integrative assessment are key OBET

regulatory mechanisms which attempt to prescribe rules of assessment and course credit combinations to ensure that the link between visible performance and invisible understanding and knowledge is continuously established in the learning process and in the formation of new qualifications. The most recent broadening initiative arises out of the Green Paper on A Skdh Dmelqimmt Strategy (Departmentof Labour, 199'7)which, interestingly, sees a return to the term 'competency' with the developmentof the idea of 'applied competency'. The Green Paper defines this as the overarching term for three kinds of competence:

+ + +

Practical competence: Our demonstrated ability to perform a set of tasks; Foundational competence:Our demonstrated understanding of what we or others are doing and why; Refixive competence: Our demonstrated ability to integrate or connect our performances with our understanding of those performances so that we learn from our actions and are able to adapt to changes and unforeseen circumstances. (Department of Labour, 1997)

These attempts at broadening the conceptualisation of OBET are mirrored in efforts elsewhere in the world, for example the Australian TAFE colleges and the 'Scot-VET' system. Regrettably,all of these initiatives are still at the initial implementation stages

CHAPTER

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and are therefore unable to report systematicallyon their success in transcending the behaviouralist limitations of earlier competency models. It may be that this distinction between 'competency' and 'outcomes' is simply a question of semantics. The real test of the distinctiveness and broadness of the new approach can only occur once such a system has been implemented and when the full extent of the institutional pressures, which may mediate and alter the intrinsic worth of an outcomes route, can be measured. These pressures may include a costconscious state, narrow employer approaches to competency training and a legacy of rote-learning in the formal school and industrial training classroom. Each of these factors could have the effect of steering future OBET developments in the direction of narrow competency standards at the expense of broader interpretations.

Discursive convergence and divergence The main thrust of this chapter has been to argue that education and training policy formulation in South Africa over the past decade has been characterised by the paradoxical interplay between three competing ET discourses which at certain historical moments have converged, yet at other moments have diverged. More specifically, it has been argued that OBET has become dominant over a structural or systemic discourse in part because it has been couched publicly in the more palatable language of People's Education, and less so in terms of its massively technicist armour- of terminology and procedure.

Implications of the dominance of OBET The implications of OBET's current dominance and its diminution of systemic discourse are profound. In short, it means that the structural features of the current ET system which amplified the social class inequalities of the apartheid capitalist system will not be consciously and directly addressed through ET policy as was the case in the systemic discourse of the earlier (1990-1994) period. There has been an important shift in educational perspective away from macrolevel concerns about a divided ET system and unequal society to a micrelevel obsession with unit standards and the minutia of an overly prescriptive assessment model. The ET reform process has lost sight of its original purpose in seeking to create a unified and integrated system which would consciously address social inequalities which arise out of the ET system. The obvious status inequalities between the current elite academic schooling track and its stigrnatised vocational alternative will remain largely unaltered by a reform project which simply tinkers with its assessment system.

The way ahead: Turning around the current reform trajectory The ascendance of OBET and the decline of systemic reform is not an irreversible fact of the current conjuncture. Outcomes-based education and training represents

SECTION

B

a particular set of political choices and discursive convergences which do not exploit all the options available to government. The task at hand is to ensure a return to the systemic discourse of the 1990-1994 period. The progressive ideals of learnercentred education and the appealing transparencyof formulating clear 'outcomes' in education as well as the fairness of criterion-referencing are not wedded to unit standards methodology to the exclusion of any other possibility. What is required is their delinking from unit standards methodology and the merging of progressive pedagogic ideals with the systemic reform agenda of the 1990-1994 period. One innovative ET development project is showing the way in this regard. The Education, Training and Deuelqtmmt Practices Project of the National Training Board (NTJ3,1997) has evolved two approaches to the question of 'standards' in ET. 'Model One' is based on a unit-standards-ledapproach to outcomes where the emphasis is on the development of a common set of generic unit standards across all learning contexts, delinked from a predefined curriculum framework. Standards in this model are micrefocused, generated from below. This is the conventional approach against which much of the criticism listed above is directed. However, the innovativeness of this NTB project clearly lies with the second model: a qualifications-ledapproach to defining outcomes. This model is macro-oriented, focused on the knowledge/occupational field. Its starting premise is to define the purpose and need for particular types of qualifications in the larger society and economy. Only then does it begin to 'define down' to a 'unit of qualification' which takes its meaning from the full qualification and from its relationship to other units in the qualification. It is a broad and holistic approach which opposes defining standards to the smallest detail possible. Alternatively, it emphasises the development of applied competence at wholequalification level (that is, defining the practical, foundational and reflective components required to make a qualification responsive to social and economic needs). The model is also critical of criterion-referencing which excludes grading and, consequently, which marginalises the professionaljudgement of teachers. Model Two adopts an approach to defining whole qualifications which resonates closely with the emphasis on programmatic provision in the NCFE and NCHE reports for unified and co-ordinated systems of FET and HET. Central to this approach in defining standards is first to examine the disciplinary/occupational field and subfields and then to identify strategic knowledge and learning priorities in that field. Only thereafter would a ladder of interlinked qualifications at different levels on the NQF be developed with clearly defined roles. Once such qualifications have been defined as holistic entities with progression routes to other qualifications, 'units of qualifications' can then be designed down. These units will allow for the development of differing qualification foci and areas of specialisation based on differing combinations of practical, foundational and reflexive competences.

CHAPTER

2

The NTB initiative has made an important start. Support for such work must be garnered as part of a much greater movement back toward the structural concerns of the systemic discourse of 1990-94. Key changes necessary to succeed in this political endeavour would be: the creation of a single ministry of Education, Training and Employment with a real rather than rhetorical commitment to integrating education and training; the development of a laddered set of well-articulated qualifications for the postcompulsory phases. These qualifications should be designed down, programmatically defined and responsive to current social and economic needs; the abandonment of unit standards methodology; the development of a clear vision of what the content of a national curriculum at the school level should entail and achieve; and the restoration of respect for the professional role played by teachers in the learning and assessment process. Only then can we begin to make progress in terms of the dual challenge of attaining structural change and progressive pedagogy in South African education and training.

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M E A N I N GM S ,O T I V A T I O N MSE.T H O D O L O G I E S

BIBLIOGRAPHY Actu. 1990. Development of a Competenq-based Training Systemfor Australia: Policy, Issues and Discussion Paper. Actu pamphlet. Canberra: Actu. African National Congress (ANC). 1992.ANC Polzcy Guidelinesfor a Democratic South Afica. African National Congress (ANC). 1994a A Policy Frameworlz for Education and Training. Johannesburg: ANC. African National Congress (ANC). 1994b. A n I m p k t a t i o n Plan for Education and Training.Johannesburg: ANC. Ashworth, PD & Saxton,J. 1990. On 'competence'. Journal ofFurtherand HigherEducation, 14 (2), 3-25. Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Themy, Research, Critique. London: Taylor and Francis. Bird, A & Elliot, G. 1993a. An Integrated Approach to Post-compulsmy Education. Paper presented to a policy workshop of the Centre for Educational Policy Development, ANC Education Department, March. Bird, A & Elliot, G. 199313. A Framewmll for Lifelong Learning A Unijiid Multi9ath A e a c h to Education and Training. Draft ANC/COSATU discussion document prepared for the first ANC National Training Policy Workshop,June. Bird, A & Elliot, G. 1993c. A Framewmfifor Lifelong b u r n i n g A Unzjiid Multipath Approach to Education and Training. Draft ANC/COSATU discussion document prepared for the second ANC National Training Policy Workshop, August. COSATU. 1991a. Discussion Paper on Human RRFources Development. Paper submitted by the COSATU Human Resources Committee to a meeting of the Commonwealth Secretariat's Expert Group on Human Resources in South Africa, London. COSATU. 1991b. Economic Policy Conference. Pamphlet. Johannesburg: COSATU. National Department of Education. 1995a. White Paper on Education and Training. Draft White Paper Number 1,15 March. National Department of Education. 1995b. A Curriculum Framewmfifor General and Further Education and Training. Discussion document developed by the Consultative Forum on Curriculum, December. National Department of Education. 1996. Lqelong Learning through a National ~mlzj?~ations Framewmll. Report of the Ministerial Committee for Development Work on the NQF, February. National Department of Education. 1997a. Curriculum 2005: Lifelong Learningfor the Twentyfint Century -A User's Guide. Pretoria: National Department of Education. National Department of Education. 199%. Curriculum2005: Lifelong Learningfor the Twenty first Century. Pretoria: National Department of Education. National Department of Education. 1998. Pn$aringfi the Twentyj5rst Century through Education, Training and Work. Green Paper on Further Education and Training. Pretoria: Government Printers.

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Department of Labour. 1997. Skills Ijmelopment Strate,, I

2

The use of the present tense is deliberate, as far from being past, the 'old' South A f r ~ c astill has a considerable presence.

3

The resolution of this debate was left open to be part of the brief of the Constitutional Court.

4

Durkheim (1964) reminds us that the division of labour produces solidarity only if it is spontaneous.

",

181)

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C C O N C E P T S .C O N T E X T S , C R I T I C I S M S

In terms of the principles of solidarity shifting from the mechanical to the organic, the contentious Employment Equity Bill is perhaps not the simple form of 'reverse discrimination' that many critics label it. We might see it as an attempt to put down benchmarks or standards that must be implemented and developed in an evolutionarymanner leading towards the organic. Like attempts to produce a more demographically representative national cricket team, it is not a simple reversal of policies of the past. It is a fundamental dislocation with the past, an attempt to create a symbolic moral consensus, a form of symbolic interdependence, out of difference.

The schooling system There are convincing indicators of the broader organic-type legal framework now being reflected strongly in the schooling system.

+ Contractual relationships are the essence of the Education Labour

Relations Act of 1993that also provided for the constitution of the South African Council for Educators (SACE).All educators in public schools must be registered with this professional body with its overwhelming employer-union representation.

+ The Ministry of Education appears to have prioritised the development

of policy frameworks with the aim of putting into place legal and r e p latory frameworks (De Clercq, 1997). The recent discussion document N o w and Standards for Teacher Education, Training and Development, together with other policy documents, defines the roles of competencies of educators at all levels. Emphasising the need for research into the roles and competencies of educators understood as being linked to academic, occupational and professional requirements, the Norms and Standards serves as an exemplar of one of the key features of organic solidarity: that of determining 'the obligation with all possible precision' (DurkheimJ964: 75) and creating 'among men an entire system of rights and duties which link them together in a durable way' (1964: 406).

+ With respect to the curriculum, Curriculum 2005 has been promoted

as a panacea, as a new form of moral consensus fashioned out of differentiation by simultaneously emphasising the individual student and the interdependence of all learners and teachers. 'Learners take responsibility for their learning; pupils [are] motivated by constant feedback and affirmation of their worth' (Department of Education, 1997: 7). We turn to a consideration of curriculum and curriculum practices in an educational system built on organisational features of organic solidarity.

A detailed outline of the implications of the new operational principles of organic solidarity embodied in a hybrid competence/outcomes curriculum approach is beyond the scope of what can be accomplished here. However, using some of Bemstein's early concepts, we are able to identdj some daunting challenges for teachers.

4 One of Bernstein's foundational concepts is that of 'classification'. The essence of classification is boundary strength between different areas/fields/regions of learning. Changes from strong classification (mechanical) to weak (organic) entail a new construction in the identity of learners: from ascribed to achieved roles. Whereas learners were previously stratified and positioned in a highly structured environment, now they are both differentiated and expected to develop coherence through civil interpersonal relations. It is a truism to observe that in the 'old' South Africa, schools were sites of resistance in 'the struggle' with teachers often targeted as being agents of the apartheid regime.

4 The tensions contained within a hybrid SAQA curriculum approach are likely to manifest themselves in the classroom. O n the one hand, competence invokes the 'universal democracy of acquisition' (Bernstein, 1996: 56).While students may learn at differing rates, there are no pupil deficits, and education is about the learner's realisation of innate potentialities that simply need the right environment to develop. O n the other hand, outcomes-based assessment implies that learners are assessed against specific benchmarks. Learning is aimed at what is missing: the deficit. The focus shifts to the teacher and his or her ability not just to elicit, but to impose the 'correct' knowledge, skills and values required to achieve the specified outcomes.

4 The integration of knowledge into 'learning areas' (a shift from strong to weak classification) means a collapsing of the traditional boundaries

and subject clisciplines.' Teachers are expected to work together in teams and to promote a co-operative culture of learning amongst str1dent5, encouraging a problern-solving and project approach to c~trriculum.At the same time, outcomes-based assessment promotes a solution-giving and task-oriented curriculum.

4 With knowledge weakly classified,so the power embedded in social relationships shifts from the vertical to the horizontal. In the vertical plane, the loyalties of pupils are t o sllbject teacher, and from subject teacher t o sttbject head, and so on. On a horizontal plane, learners have stronger relationships with one another in co-operative learning, and teachers with one another as they attempt to intrgrate knowledge. Teachers and learners also 'work together' t o achieve a common goal: - ~- -

5 mp,.

*4>,,

1.-

~

-

--

In the previous system, school subjects enjoyed hallowed status.

S E C T I O N

C

C O N C E P T S ,C O N T E X T S , C R I T I C I S M S

achievement of the outcomes. This implies a profound shift in personal allegiances and loyalties from the positional emphasis of a mechanical solidarity and strongly classified curriculum to the interpersonal, weakly classified emphasis of an organic solidarity.

+ There is much evidence in the symbolic interactionist literature to suggest that, in practice, a good deal of teaching is about control first, and education second (for example, Woods, 1979).As the law has changed from repressive to restitutive, corporal punishment (formerly rife) is prohibited and teachers have to adapt from reliance on positional control (being respected because one is a teacher) to personalised forms of control (enjoying authority because of one's personal attributes).

+ Societies characterised by mechanical solidarity have strong boundaries

between the inside and outside. In organic (differentiated) societies, there is a blurring of all symbolic boundaries (Bernstein 1971).We see this in the weakening of the boundary between home and school in the Schools Act. Teachers will increasingly be subject to a variety of accountability relations to the employer, the parents, SACE, the unions, the governing body. And, of course, to learners, who must be encouraged to express their different identities in a co-operative environment in which they are all equalised and their differences are made equivalent. The learners must both learn through their own activities (on their own) and learn specified outcomes - a difficult balancing act.

+ A shift from a strongly classified collection code curriculum to a weakly

classified integrated code threatens teachers' abilities to appreciate the new context. Weaker classification changes the recognition rules 'by means of which individuals are able to recognise the speciality of the context that they are in' (Bernstein, 1996: 31). By making the context clear, strong classification orients individuals to what is expected and appropriate. Ifweak classification can cause ambiguity and confusion by making the 'recognition rules' elusive, Curriculum 2005 could be creating a new set of recognition rules unfamiliar to both teachers and learners.

+ If classification defines what meanings are available for teachers and

learners to construct appropriate practices, Bernstein's concept of 'framing' regulates how meanings are put together. Framing refers to the nature of control over:

+ + + + +

the selection of the communication; its sequencing (what comes first, what comes second); its pacing (the rate of expected acquisition); the criteria; the control over the social base which makes this transmission possible (Bernstein, 1996: 27).

CHAPTER

I 0

K E N H A R L E Y& B E N P A R K E R

When framing is weak, the learner has apparent control over all of the above. The difficulty for teachers becomes clear. In Curriculum 2005, framing is weak in all respects -except t.m'terin.Criteria in Curriculum 2005 are expressed in generic arid specific outcomes, and these are now the single element of strong framing. In otlieiwords, the criteria (or outcomes) represent the only domain in which the tlane mitter has apparent control. But the transmitter here is not the teacher -it is the National Department of Education which declares outcomes in policy documents. Curriculum 2005 states that: Teaching will become a far more creative and innovative career. N o longer will teachers and trainers just implement curricula designed by an education department. They will be able to implenient many of their own programmes w long as they produce tht: necessary outcomes. (Department of Education, 1997: 29). While indisputable, this judgement does not adequately capture the complexity of the teacher's role in ensuring that outcomes (controlled at national level) are achieved within a particular pedagogical relationship (the apparent control of' which rests with learners). This is especially problematic in a context in which the rules of the game (the 'recognition rules') are ellwive, if not inscrutable.

The discolirse of competence, and the identity roles associated with it, have been developed in countries with a fi~rmof social integration very different to that inherited by the 'new' South Africa. National qualification frameworks have emerged primarily in countries with a tradition of'dernocracy, advanced econoriiic systems, and social welfare. South Africa, having only just begun its.journey away from apartheid, has put in place a new legalistic framework created along liiles that exemplify L)urkheim's contracts of organic solidarity. In stark c.oljtrast, tlir 'old' South Africa exemplified mechar~icalsolidarity and its covenants of clan and tribe. Bernstein's theory wollld suggest that teachers' identities wci-c fishioncd in a mechanical mock or forrn of'social organisation. While Rerristein's theory can be applied to changes in many settings, the sheer scalc and speed of change in South Africa make the theory resonate evocatively. The irriplication of what wc have argued is that one aspect of South Africa's dif'fic~ultiesin iniplementirlg (;ur~-icull~ni 2005 lies in the attempt to graft ;r legalistic social fi-a~neworkarid cturicrllurn of'oi-ganic solidar-ityonto a corps of teachers whose identitics and roles were fi~rgedin the apartheid niills of mechanical solidarity. This begins to expose thc sofi untlerbelly of the hybrid approach to ORE: that it assumes as already existi~igwhat it is ir~tendedto prod~ict..The new systcrn of OBE attempts to produce the kinds of consciousr~essant1 ider~tityon which its operationalisatio~i,workability and success actually depend. In these terms, one appreciates the immensity o f t h e shift that ORE and (hrr-icull~~n 2005 ask teachers to make.

SECTION C CONCEPTS, C O N T E X TCSR,I T I C I S M S

Are teachers well positioned to meet this challenge? From the international literature we know of the gap between policy and practice, and the effect of teachers' beliefs on their practice.6 An important recent study of sixty-eight rural teachers in KwaZulu-Natal Uessop, 1997) demonstrates the role of teachers' life histories on their pedagogical beliefs, skills and practices. Major themes identified in this useful study include the following.

4 Pedagogical conservativism is a biographical safety net for teachers who feel insecure with new ideas and practices.

4 Teaching is viewed instrumentally in the sense that tangible artefacts of teaching assume greater importance than pedagogical relationships.

+ Much practice appears to be 'trial and error', routinised, or intuitive. Curriculum is perceived as the textbook or syllabus.

4 Teachers do not have a language of theorising or thinking about their practice.

4 In general, policies do not reach schools or even speak in the same 'language' as teachers.7 In contrast with the teachers who believed that the provision of physical resources alone would improve their practice, Jessop concludes that working from where teachers 'are at' and building in their own experience and strengths is more likely to be effective than sweeping change. This view concurs with that of Hargreaves (1994),who argues that teacher development should be focused on teacher mindsets to enable 'root changes' to take place. Yet Curriculum 2005 requires that teachers become curriculum developers, classroom managers and learning mediators in the context of a discourse which is unfamiliar, perhaps even unrecognisable. In this regard it is notable that the sponsors of Curriculum 2005 have, from the outset, given very little consideration to the context in which the new policy is to be implemented. As Christie observes, the 1995White Paper 'had almost nothing to say on implementation processes' (1997: 6 5 ) . Indeed, critics have had a lot more to say about implementation than the bureaucrats, Jansen's (1997) courageous broadside 'Why OBE Will Fail' being the best-known example. The need for teacher development is often pointed out, including by Spady himself. In a speculative way, we have used the theoretical implications of Durkheim and Bernstein as a way of conceptualising the possible implications of a particular model for the organisation of knowledge and the structure of the curriculum; and for the way in which educators conceptualise and construct their professional identities. The implication of this argument is that teacher development for OBE

-

.-

-.

-

6

See, for example, Broadfoot, (1988) on professional~sm,Johnston (1991) on teacher images; Vulliamy et al (1997) on teachers' self-identities and ideologies as powerful mediators of imposed changes.

7

A good deal of empirical work in this country suggests that our teachers do not, by and large, perceive themselves as curriculum developers. See, for example, Modiba (1996); Walker (1994); Wedekind et al(1996).

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K E N H A R L E Y& B E N P A R K E R

is a lot more complex than simply being a matter of 'training' teachei-s.8 However, broad generalisation about teachers in an extremely diverse context inevitably leads to oversimplification. Teachers' roles as citizens and as educators are formed within markedly differing contexts, making it difficult to talk about a South African teacher in universal terms. It is to the question of teachers, curriculum and social context that we briefly turn. This is necessary because the inheritance of the 'new' South Africa embodies a mixture of organic and mechanical solidarities.

Much education policy misrecognises the nature of the relationship between school and society (Whitty, 1997).In South Africa, an organic solidarity has been imported and recontextualised, disembodied from the forms of social organisation that gave rise to it. In the adoption of such an approach '... [t] here is ahvays the dangeithat changed curriculum formulations will do little more than introciuce new enclosing orthodoxies which continue to privilege the social groups with cultural capital' (Christie, 1997: 64). Cultural capital, in the present context, is likely to be the preserve of the fornlerly privileged white community. Although the 'old' South Africa, as we have argued, etidenced the outward forms of mechanical solidarity, the policy of racial differentiation resulted in a strongly segmented division of labour. By and large, whites occupied the modern sector jobs while blacks were locked into jobs associated with a simple division of labour. People of colour were debarred from the more modern jobs and, until state policies began collapsing, occupietl the largely unskilled, manualjobs. Despite economic sanctions being applied against the state, white society increasingly moved into the more complex division of labour asociated with an industrialising and then globalising economy. Whiles were thus given the opportunity of working in the field of what Scott ( 1 997) refers to as 'Mode 2 knowledge'. Generated within a context of application, Mode 2 knowledge is generated in an open systern in which producers, brokers, users and others 'mingle promiscuouslv' (Scott, 1997: 35). Mode 2 knowledge is heterogeneous and transdisciplinary. As such, it has strong affinity with Kernstein's concept of' 'weak classification', and with the interdisciplinary principles on which Icarning areas are premised in Curriculuni 2005." The sector ofthe division of labour politically demarcated for whites would at very least have permitted this social grouping exposure to the principles of weak classification. As an example to substantiate this point, it is interesting to recall that in the 1980s the ex-Natal Education 8

While we do not know of any rigorous evaluation of the 'training' documents, it appears as if these deal with surface manifestations of a profound curriculum shift The heading of one of the training documents, for example, appears to rely on cheerful optimism in its announcement that: 'You have time! You will be trained!' (Median In Educat~onTrust, undated). In presenting differences between the 'old' and the 'new' curriculum, the original Curriculum 2005 document did so in dichotomies so crude as to be unhelpful for purposes of real understanding of what was at stake.

9

Mode 1 knowledge, produced in more traditional ways by closed communities, would be strongly classified

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C O N C E P T S .C O N T E X T S , C R I T I C I S M S

Department embarked on a project to introduce theme teaching across traditional subject boundaries in its primary schools. For many teachers in rural areas, the continued recognition given to tribal authority structures, customary law and communal land ownership reproduces strong bonds of mechanical solidarity. One interesting example of the shift in legal coding has been the prohibition of 'corporal punishment'. For many teachers and students in the 'old' South Africa, corporal punishment in a variety of forms was a pervasive part of everyday life. Its sudden removal has impacted on teacher/student relations in unexpected ways that have complicated the work of the teacher, most noticeably, by a lack of respect and discipline. There was nothing to replace the cane -just 'hollow' words about human rights, responsibilities, duties and liberties, and even this language is restricted to a largely urban elite. These distinct principles of solidarity are likely to persist for some time to come in South Africa's schooling system, and teachers will be faced with a kind of role schizophrenia as they become key relays in the transformation of schooling. Sometimes positional, sometimes personal, their curriculum practices are likely to reflect tensions and dissonances. There is thus evidence suggesting that the 'new' South Africa was born as a rainbow nation but with a privileged enclave of those whose identities had been formed in conditions most closely approximating organic solidarity. It is interesting to note that while questions have been raised about the implications of importing global economic wisdoms into the economically differentiated system which the ANC has inherited (Kraak, cited in Christie, 1997),there has been little consideration of how OBE will nest into a strongly differentiated education system. If our analysis above is accurate, then it is likely that previously 'white' schools will benefit most from the new policies and discourses. They already meet many of the conditions assumed to be in place for the implementation of OBE: well-resourced schools, supportive parents, and efficient and co-operative management. The o b vious danger is that those schools most ravaged by apartheid may well be further disadvantaged by the new approach.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION What then can we do to get out of the impasse? In building the rainbow nation, how do we integrate differences into workable principles of organic solidarity embodied in a hybrid competence/outcomes curriculum approach? To achieve this requires recognising our mutual interdependence and our essential independence and multiple subjectivities. In South Africa's recent past, there were clearly distinct forms of social solidarity and curriculum that shaped political identities determined by dichotomous oppositions. The differing principles of solidarity were closely associated with political movements engaged in a civil war.

C H A P T E R

10

KEN HARLEY & BEN PARKER

In emerging from such a context it is a very difficult shift to see relationships as those of mutual in(ter)dependence - the basis upon which an organic legalorganisational framework rests. South Africass primary form of 'co-operative governance' is a 'stakeholder' model in which distinct constituencies engage in debate and try to reach corrlprornises acceptable to a significant majorih (the principle of sufficient consensus). ... the National Department relies on multipartite structures in the form of task teams and forums made up of key stakeholders to foster consensus, contain conflict and plan the steps necessary to develop and put this systern in placc.. (De Clercq,

1997: 142)

In the case of SAQA bodies, constituents are divided into six sectors: state, labour, business, providers (universities,technikons, colleges), N o s and Critical Interest Groups. As with the implemeritation of OBE, there is a paradox here. The creation of these SAQA governance bodies assumes as already existing what they intend to bring about. There is a danger that co-operative governance will become conflictual, with represented groups asserting their interests rather than working on the hasis of mutual interdependence. To work successfi~lly,SAQA's cooperative governance assumes that the people in the structures have the necessary applied conlpetencies to perform their roles efficiently and effectively. In other words, the legislation of a new 'organic' solidarity can be achieved/implementeci only if it already exists. The debate and arguments in the governance bodies have to be rational - a case of the best argument winning - for organic solidarity ro take hold. If arguments and debates are settled by the 'voting' power of a rcp1.csentative, then a principle of mechanical solidarity persists. Viewing the samr: issue from a different angle, we agree with De Clercq's view that the stakeholder network model is '... likely to entrench and not confront the already uneven relations t~etweenand among the dif'f'crent education stakeholtlers' ( 199'7: 142). llisjunctt~rebetween legislated rules and act~ialpractices pnlrnotes, i r l Durkheim's terms, anomic a break from the 'old' Sot~thAfrican principles of' rnecl-lanical solidarity,but without sufficient subjection t o new fonns of'inoral obligation, rights, duties and responsibilities. This runs the risk of creating a sense of' despair and powerlessness at the very mornent teachers are being called upor1 to play a major role in transforming education and training.

We have argued that the importation of OBE and the NQF may have misrecognised the nature of the relationship between school and society in South Atrica, especially with respect to teachers' personal and professional identities. Indeed, we suggest that teachers and student5 are likely to experience a loss of stnictur-e, ho~indary,continuity and order in a way that will make implementation of (:ilrriculurn 2005 extremely problematic. To implement OBE and the NQF, teachers may well need first to shift their own identities, their understanding of who they are and how they relate to others. This requires a high degree of

SECTION

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CONCEPTS, CONTEXTS. CRITICISMS

interpersonal skills, self-reflection and adaptation. These are the very skills that the mechanical mills of apartheid failed to forge. How then does one make that which has not yet been made? The policy-makers for, and the educators of, South Africa's teachers face a daunting task - to transform the identities and roles of teachers. Their task is made more challenging by the underlying weaknesses that emerge from adopting an imported model which emerged in very different societies with organic solidarities binding together a highly advanced division of labour into a context still dominated by mechanical solidarities. The argument that led to this conclusion has been theoretical and speculative. As committed educationists, we do not like the conclusion: it is pessimistic and depressing. Yet as researchers we feel it has a compelling if undeveloped logic. To attempt to provide 'quick fix' solutions to practical curriculum problems on the basis of what has been attempted in this article would be to trivialise intractable issues in the same way that OBE training has trivialised complex issues. It would be equally culpable of formulating proposals abstracted from the real world of educational practice in schools. The best we can venture is to argue for theoretically informed qualitative empirical investigation into the roles, competencies and practices of teachers. What really is happening in classrooms and, if teachers are struggling with curriculum issues, what are the problems? In this respect we believe that the theoretical view we have outlined, gloomy though its commentary may be, does contextualise promising concepts and criteria offered by Durkheim and Bernstein. These concepts and criteria provide a fruitful foundation for the kind of research that could serve as a basis for teacher develop ment, as well as reflexively informing the theoretical perspective that we have attempted to develop.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Appel, S, Harley, K, Muir, R & Penny, A. 1993. School integration in the former 'white' schools: the example of Pietermaritzburg and its environs. South Afican Journal oj'Srience, 89 (9), 418-419. Atkinson, P. 1985. Language, ,Structure cind Repduction: A n Introdurtion to thr Sociolo~ofBasil Hemstpin. London: Methuen. Bernstein, B. 1971. Open schools, open society? In BR Cosin et al (eds), School and Soczetj: A Soriolog.lca1R e a k 166-169. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M I T Press. Bernstein, B. 1996. PedagoOg,Symbolic Control and Identity. L,ondon: Taylor and Francis. Broadfoot, P 8c Osborn, M. 1988. What professional responsibility means to teachers: National contexts and classroom contexts. British Journal of Soriolog?' oft.,'cluration, 9 (S), 265-287. Christie, P. 1997. Global trends in local contexts: A South African perspective on competence debates. 1)z~rourw:Studie~in thr Cultural Politzts oft.':Luratzon, 18 ( I ) , 55-69. De Clercq, F. 1997. Policy intervention and power shifts: An evaluation of South Africa's education restrl~cturingpolicies. journal of Education Polil~,12 (3), 127-1 46. Department of Educatioli. 1997. Curriculum 2005: Lzfrlong 1,nlrvting for t h 215t ~ (,'rntury. Pretoria. 7Faznlng and Department of Education. 1998. Norms and Stc~ndarclsfir 7 k t hrr Edl~rc~lzon, I)~(~rlopment. Discussion doc~itnent.Pretoria. Department of Labour. 1997. Green Paper on Skills Developnierit Strategy for Economic and Employment Growth in South Africa. Pretoria. Durkheim, E. 1964. 7 %I)zvz~ton ~ of I,abour zn ,Sorwh. Tranddted b y G Sinipwn. New Ynrk: Macmillan. Chanpng 'linvc: 7 k ~ c h m\.l/ork ' and Cliltuw In (I I'octHnrgrenves,A. 1994. (;hnnpng I~(L(IwT-\, moci~rV I A p . Lotidon: (:acsell. Harley, K 8c Wedekind, V. Vision ant1 constrairlt in curricul~~rn change: A case study of Solith Afiicarl secotidaty school principals. (Fortllcoming in 0j)m l5~i71mtiQ RPadrr).

J e w ~ pT., 1997. /ozoc~)cl-\ (I Grountl~d771rory o/ 7i.achrr I~~-i~rLof)wz~nt: A Stucl) o f [he Nc~r~atl-clrr (PhI), King Alfrrtl's Univer\~h/(;allege 8c of Rum1 Pnmnq 7i.nthnr trz KzcrcrZ7rl~r-Nc~tn1. Univer 5ity o f Sol~tharnpton,U K ) . Johnston, S. 1990. Understanding curriculum decision-making through teacher images. ~ ~ 0 2 1 1Of/ l ~((:t~r)-l)%( l 11l~?11 ,stll(I~~\, 22(5), 46,%71. Ministry of Edllcatiotl. 1997. (;o71ur-nrn~nlGnzrllr, 6 ,]line 1997, No. 180.5 1. Pretoria: (;overnrnent Printel; Modiba, M. 1996. South African black teacher$' perception$ about their practice. I'rr~f)r(tiup\ in kciut nt~orz,17 ( 1) , 1 17-1 33. National Tra~ningBoard. 1997. I','duccction, 'llc~znzngand l)P-i~rlqi)rn~nl I'rutllc~~ Prqrct Phctr~ 2 R+rl. Pretot ia.

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National Training Board. 1998. Education, Training and Development Practices Project Phase 3 Report -Model 2. Pretoria. Muller,J. & Taylor, N. 1995. Schooling and everyday life: Knowledges sacred and profane. Social Epistemology, 9 (3), 157-275. Penny, A, Appel, S, Gultig,J, Harley, K & Muir, R. 1993. 'Just sort of fumbling in the dark': A case study of the advent of racial integration in South African schools. Comparatiue Education h i e u , 37 (4): 412433. Popkewitz, T.S. 1997. Globalization, Regionalization, Knowledge and the Restructuring o f Education: Some Notes on Comparative Strategies to Educational Research. Paper presented at the 10th World Congress of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, 12-17 July 1998. Scott, P. 1997. Changes in knowledge production and dissemination in the context of globalisation. In N Cloete et al (eds),Knowledge, Identity and Curriculum T r a n s f i t i o n in Afica, 17-42. Cape Town: Maskew Millar Longrnan. South African QualificationsAuthority (SAQA). 1997. Government Gmtte, 29 August 1997, No. 18221. Pretoria: Government Printer. (SAQA 14/P ETQA Regulations: 8/97 Revised). Spady, W. 1995. Outcomes Based Education: Critical Issues. American Association of School Administrators. USA: Breakthrough Systems. Vulliamy, G et al. 1997.Teacher identity and curriculum change: A comparative case study analysis of small schools in England and Finland. ComparatiueEducation, 33 ( I ) , 97-1 15. Wedekind, V, Lubisi, C, Harley, K & Gultig,J. 1996. Political change, social integration, and curriculum: A South African case study.Journal of Cum'culum Studies, 28 (4),419-436. Walker, M. 1994. Professional development through action research in township primary schools in South Africa. InterrzationalJournal ofEducationa1Development, 14 (1), 65-73. Whitty, G. 1997. Social theory and education policy: The Legacy of Karl Mannheim. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18 (2), 149-163. Woods, P. 1979. The Divided School. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Young, M. 1996. The Outcomes A m a c h toEducation and Training Theoretical Groundingand an International Perspective. Paper presented at the Inter Ministerial Conference to launch the National Qualifications Framework held at Technikon SA,Johannesburg, April 1996.

SECTION D

Inside Classrooms

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CHAPTER 11

'A Very Noisy OBE' : The Implementation of OBE In Grade 1 Classrooms JONATHAN D JANSEN UNIVERSITY OF DURBAN-WESTVILLE

You find it very noisy, and when you're trying to teach - you're to do different things with different groups. The noise level .. . it can be too high. Because then you can't work with others on a quieter level. So you've got to control that some way. I find that quite difficult. It is a noisy OBE. And it is quite stressful not only for the teacher but also for the children. (Interview with Grade 1 Teacher, 1998)

The announcement by the South African state that OBE would be implemented in all Grade 1 classrooms in January 1998 triggered a vigorous public debate about, inter alia, the prospects of implementation given the lack of teacher training, the low levels of material support for the new curriculum and the complexity of this curriculum innovation (Jansen, 1998a). But what actually happened in Grade I classrooms during the course of implementation? This chapter provides preliminary evidence about OBE implementation in thirtytwo Grade 1 classrooms in KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga provinces during the first ten months of 1998. This large multiyear study on OBE implementation is guided by a single research question: how do Grade 1 teachers understand and implement outcomes-based education in their classrooms? The findings reported in this chapter constitute a tentative and preliminary account of OBE implementation, given the short period of time in focus (that is,January to August 1998). Nevertheless, the emerging findings suggest important trends and trajectories regarding OBE implementation which already offer critical insights and formative lessons for post-Grade 1 OBE policy, plans and programmes.

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I N S I D CEL A S S R O O M S

This study was conducted in two of South Africa's nine provinces, namely KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga. These provinces were selected for both practical and purposive reasons: KwaZulu Natal is the province in which the research team is based, thereby allowing not only for easy access and low evaluation costs, but also providing immediate relevance to the different stakeholders served in this province through the general work of CEREP. Mpumalanga was chosen in part because the research team has conducted work in this province before on behalf of the provincial department of education and has established positive working relationships with officials in the region. More importantly, both provinces represent the typical South African contexts required for the evaluation - that is, small urban centres with a large distribution of rural areas; large discrepancies in educational resources across racial and spatial divides; and generally low standards of performance in the schooling system (Department of Education, 1996). The unit of analysis in this study was the Grade 1 classroom. The study consisted of three components: (1) a baseline study leading to (2) an impact assessment followed by detailed (3) case studies of Grade 1 classrooms. The baseline study was conducted in all the Grade 1 classrooms selected for this research using a combination of profile questionnaires of resources and teaching before and after OBE. In the impact assessment component of the study, a starting minimum of five schools was selected within each province, each school dstinguished on the basis of a sliding scale of available resources. In other words, the evaluation made the assumption that there is a relationship between available resources and the ways in which teachers understand and implement OBE in their classrooms. The five school types include:

+ a very well resourced school with excellent infrastructure, for example a typical urban-based white school; + a school with reasonable infrastructure but with less of a resource base than the typical white school, for example a typical urban-based Indian school;

4 an established township school with stable infrastructure but with the minimum of resources available for operating the school, for example a typical urban township school; a school in a peri-urban area commonly described as an 'informal settlement' in which there is a decaying infrastructure and few, if any resources for operating the school, for example a school in a squatter settlement area; a school with poor infrastructure and few, if any resources available for supporting the school, bearing all the characteristics of a rural school

+ +

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J O N A T H ADN J A N S E N

such as large class sizes, for example a rural school far removed from city or even town centres. Within each school, two Grade 1 classrooms were selected for study - that is, ten classrooms per province and therefore twenty classrooms in the study as a whole. However, because of the availability and interest of both schools and additional researchers to participate in the study, the number of classrooms extended to was thirty-two, with the additional sixteen coming from eight other schools in KwaZulu Natal province. As evaluation studies mature in South Africa, the critical value of baseline data is

being appreciated as a measure against which to track changes following a particular intervention (Jansen, 1997; Taylor, 1997). The difficulty with the evaluation design of this study is that both the suddenness of OBE implementation and the late availability of funding meant that it was almost impossible to establish baseline studies during 1997. The compromise reached during our deliberations was to generate retrospective baseline data using a collection of instrumentation (ME, 1998) as soon as the sampled schools were established. The instrumentation used in the study can be summarised as follows.

4 A questionnaire profile of the school, assembling data about the aggregate levels of human and material resources available in the school as a whole.

+ A questionnaire profile of the two sampled Grade 1classrooms, collecting data on the resources available within each of these classrooms in considerable detail.

4 A questionnaire profile of each of the two teachers per Grade 1 class room per school, developing a detailed portrait of the teacher in terms of fonnal qualifications, teaching experience, preparation levels for OBE implementation, levels of personal confidence in relation to the new curriculum, etc.

4 A questionnaire profile of teaching practices of the two teachers concerned by comparing teaching approaches and strategies before the intrcl duction of OBE (that is, prior to 1998) and since the introduction of OBE (that is, since January 1998). The teacher's recollection of how he or she taught prior to OBE implementation in 1998 therefore constituted the du facto baseline data for measuring the dimensions and directions of change since the new curriculum was formally introduced at the beginning of the year.

4 A classroom profile which combined the quantitative questionnaire data (second) with photographic evidence and other measures, for example measuring classr-oom space against number of learners occupying that classroom.

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I N S I D EC L A S S R O O M S

+ A detailed teacher interview protocol which was conducted after each of two five-day observational periods; these open-ended interviews probed for teacher understandings of OBE based in part on what the researcher observed over the said fiveday period.

+ An observation protocol which consisted of detailed indicator specifications (seven indicators later elaborated into a set of ten indicators based on initial observations); these observation documents, containing both categorical, narrative and critical incident accounts of OBE implementation constitute the most direct measure of how teachers understand and implement OBE inside Grade 1 classrooms. The observational studies were done at two points: early in 1998 (February/March) for five consecutive days and later in the year (September/October) for the same period, in order to gain a more reliable account of teacher understandings of OBE. The observational indicators were carefully crafted from a study of official documents on Curriculum 2005 and OBE in which the main goals set by the Department of Education for this new curriculum were translated into a tangible and observable set of indicators. The initial set of indicators was piloted with Grade 1 teachers and OBE trainers to establish their credibility (OBE Instruments, 1998). The case studies were conducted in four classrooms, two in each province. The set of two classrooms per province, from different schools, was selected as reputational samples - that is, one classroom with an outstanding record of successful OBE implementation, and another classroom in which the teacher was clearly struggling to implement the new curriculum. Such selection was made by talking to teachers and trainers in the province and through the observations of researchers during the impact assessment phase of the study. The case study methodology used most of the instrumentation developed for the impact studies but quadrupled (four times longer) the observation time and included several interviews with the teacher throughout the period of observation.

WHATDO WE KNOWABOUTTEACHER UNDERSTANDINGS AND IMPLEMENTATION OF OBE? The findings presented are necessarily tentative and based largely on the baseline and impact assessments. However, across the thirty-two classrooms drawn from different contexts there are clearly converging findings while, at the same time, there are also diverging patterns based on differentiated implementation contexts. Teachers hold vastly different undmtandings of OBE, men within the same school. The teachers interviewed expressed considerable variation in their understanding of OBE. Some described OBE as synonymous with C2005. Most teachers defined OBE by reference to certain common practices -for example, learner-centred instruction, activity-based learning,

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J O N A T H ADN J A N S E N

group work, learning by discovery, less direct teaching and more teacher facilitation, less of a focus on content coverage, learning by doing, etc. In other words, teachers certainly held and expressed a very practical and immediate view about what constitutes OBE. None of the teachers referred to OBE in Spadyean terms - that is, in the terms described in official elaborations of what constitutes OBE, such as the principles of 'success for all learners' or the reorganisation of time schedules or 'culminating demonstrations' of learning specific tasks o r assessment based on outcomes. Instead, teachers referred to OBE in terms common to most progressive pedagogy everywhere, rather than the mastery learning underpinnings of the Spadyean version. This wide variation of meanings attributed to OBE by teachers simply reflects the range of terms and concepts used in official documents. The research study was certainly not expecting a uniform understanding of OBE; however, the considerable range of meanings attributed to OBE has implications for implementation which could, similarly, be expected to reflect a very broad set of teaching and learning strategies within Grade 1 classrooms. And the range of meanings implies a lack of coherence and focus in the communication of policy on OBE and C2005.

Euchers display considevable uncertainty about whether their practices i nfict constitute OBE, imspective of the aggregate h e l s of institutional resources cw years of personal teaching experience. While all teachers expressed a clear view about what they understand as OBE, most teachers were uncertain about whether they were in fact 'doing' OBE in their classrooms. Well-qualified teachers with years of experience and a reputation for being outstanding Grade 1 instructors, demo~lstratedthe same levels of uncertainty about their practices as in the case of poorly qualified and inexperienced teachers. In part this uncertainty derived from the feeling that there needs to be a distinction between past and present practices - the fact that there was little affirnlation of existing practices in the policy documentation where the emphasis was on changing current behaviour. Teachers did not appear to know, therefore, whether drilling the three Rr, was inconsistent with OBE or acceptable within an OBE framework or requiring adjustment along an OBE practice continuum. The uncertainty also reflected teachers' starting the year with what they have always done - that is, their feeling of comfort and security with the familiar; the lack of in-depth training; the uncertainty of the planners arid trainers themselves; and the lack of on-site supercision and feedback on current practices in the Grade 1 classroom. In short, what is striking in this research is that the clarity of conceptual meaning about OBE is disynchronous with the uncertainty of meaning in-practice among Grade 1 teachers implernenting the new curriculum.

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+ Teachers u n i f m l yfelt that theirprzparationfor OBE implementation was inadequate and incomplete.

+

All the teachers in the study regarded the OBE training in the fiveday block period as inadequate. There were two strands of opinion in the assessment of training. The first strand regarded the training as necessary and useful but felt that much more training was needed in order to become more meaningful in the lives and practices of Grade 1 teachers. A second strand regarded the training as simply misguided - that is, the training was too basic and offered at a level which such teachers had long surpassed in their own development. Perhaps predictably, black teachers held the former view and requested much more training for longer periods of time than the standard fiveday training. And white teachers saw the need for no training or a totally different kind of training; this group would at various points in the interview process suggest that the Department should concentrate its limited resources 'on those who need it' (read: black and disadvantaged) while the rest of 'us' would manage by and with ourselves. This raises an important issue witnessed during these interactions, particularly with white teachers: a high level of ambiguity about their own practices expressed within a ten-minute period as both clear and certain understandings of what OBE means and what should be done, and strong feelings of confusion and uncertainty about whether they were really understanding or doing OBE. The common thread in teacher responses, though, was for a different quality and frequency of teacher preparation for OBE. Teachers in most classrooms had the basic C2005 documentation required for the Foundation Phase. Despite initial unevenness in the delivery of OBE materials, all schools and classrooms visited during the period of study had the basic C2005 materials. This basic documentation consisted of the Foundation Phase programmes in literacy, numeracy and life skills. Some teachers had personal copies of these materials in their classrooms; other teachers had to access the materials through the principal's office or the Grade 1 or Foundation Phase co-ordinator. Of course, a distinguishingelement with regard to OBE-related materials is that some schools had many other resource materials to support the new curriculum such as the South Afiican Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE) multimedia distance education resource, OBE writings, etc. What this research did not document, however, was the extent to which teachers actually used these policy documents in designing and reviewing their lessons; this would constitute an important follow-up study of OBE-in-use.Such follow-up research would be particularly important, given the claims of many teachers that they were not implementing OBE, at least in the early part of the Grade 1 year.

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+ Teachersstrongly expe,ssed the uiau that OBE, -runs not impkmentnbk in t h early ~ part of the school year with young children. Grade 1 teachers regard the first year of schooling as inappropriate for an OBE programme. When expressing this view, the teachers describe OBE in C2005 terms: that is, as requiring active learners who construct their own learning based on self-initiated activities in which the teacher stands back as facilitator of the process. The reasoning behind this view is expressed in three different ways. Firstly, that very young children need to learn some basic disciplines in mder to gain from formal education for example, sitting quietly, taking turns, active listening, etc. For teachers, an OBE (in their terms) approach either does not take account of such prerequisite learnings or assumes that these learnings already exist. Secondly, teachers argue that the sophistication of an OBE approach needs learners with a starting level competency in reading and writing to engage with this new approach. This means some drilling work, phonics, number recognition and other basic skills; in short, an exposure to traditional Grade 1 teaching prior to the introduction of OBE within such classrooms. Thirdly, teachers argue that children in Grade 1 classrooms come from different backgrounds with respect to language competency, reading abilities, numerical literacy, personal confidence and mastey of early life skill routines (for example, toiletry needs). For instance, children who did not attend preschool or school readiness programmes differed markedly in terms of their preparedness fixformal schooling from those children who did attend such schools. This difference is 1101-mally treated by Grade 1 teachers through a notion of 'bridging' the less able learners into the basic adjustment for formal schooling. Again, this means that long before teachers can implement C2005, as they ~ulderstandit, these basic preparatory skills need to be learned. Teacher after teacher made the distinction as fbllows: 'I have my OBE, and I have my skills'. In other words, fix Grade 1 teachers OBE was incornpatiblc with h r i d g i ~ ~org basic skills; it w a s only possible after the latter-was achieved in the Grade 1 classroom. For this reason, many teachers expressed the view that they might very well makc thc trr-lnsition t o ORE later- in the Grade 1 school year: But not vet.

+ 'li.nc.hprs g~murccllvc.laimeti thnf t h m

IIIPTP .sotrw thing^ fhnt thq 7uer~doing clif;krentlj si'nc~l h zntrodmctzon ~ of'OBt,; Out lhaf thq ~ I J P T P mainly tmching as they did befi)r~, OBI';.

Teachers made general claims that they were changing their practices as a result of OBE. The specific changes mentioned were the following: allowing learners rnore time to explore and articulate their own learning - that is, teacliers were teaching less; being more flexible with the timetable; doing less written work in books sirlct. learners were

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encouraged to use multiple representational contexts for their tasks; and introducing life skills more deliberately in the curriculum. Other than these specific changes, teachers claimed that their practices did not change very much: they were still doing the three Rs; they were still concentrating on their phonics; they still did drilling of basic skills; they have always used activities to structure the learning tasks in Grade 1;and they have not really followed the specific outcomes closely, even though teachers are aware of them.

+

It is important to state clearly that there was a disjunction between teacher claims (as made during interviews and on questionnaires) and teacher practices (as observed during the teaching episodes).Most teachers were talking for more than 90 % of the teaching time, whether in white or black schools. Learners never asked questions, though this might be related to the nature of Grade 1discourse where learners appear to constantly provide commentary on the lesson ('My Daddy has a large knife' when the teacher introduces eating utensils) or interrupt with information, especially in white classrooms. Learners respond in unison to most teacher questions or prompts, with relatively little individual tutoring or feedback, irrespective of class size. The ongoing Grade 1 observational studies will later provide much more systematic and reliable accounts of either synchrony or dis-synchrony with respect to teacher claims and practices. Other research in South African classrooms suggests, however, that often claims and practices are not synonymous when working with teachers Uansen, 1996; Ntshingila-Khosa, 1998). Teachers understand and implement OBE i n very d i f f m t ways within and across dqfermt resource contexts. Each Grade 1 classroom is different with respect to OBE implementation. Reading across the multiple and 'thick' datasets, there are patterns emerging with respect to teacher understandings and implementation of OBE.

+

Pattern 1:Most of the Grade 1 teachers observed are clearly not doing anything differentlyfrom what they did before -that is, conventional Grade 1 teaching, focused on making the young learners competent in the basics of reading, writing, numeracy, discipline and confidence. Within this group there are two kinds of teachers. In the first group, both the formal statements of these teachers (interview and questionnaire data) as well as the observational evidence suggest that most of the teachers are doing what they feel comfortable with and what is familiar to them from years of practical experience. These teachers do not claim to be doing OBE nor do their practices suggest that to be the case. In the second group, the teachers claim that they are doing OBE perfectly and completely within their classrooms; yet in our

observations of these teachers, there is very little evidence to suggest that they are practising OBE at all. Profession apart, both groups of teachers within this frame are not practising OBE.

+

Pattern 2: Some teachers use C2005 and OBE simply as a broad and guiding framework against which to plot or refer their own teaching. That is, they profess a selflconsciousness about the new curriculum policy and attempt to organise their work within that curriculum frarnework. This is often done at a very superficial level, such as a retrospective labelling and categorisation of classroom activities under one of the three learning programmes. These teachers imposed the framework provided by the new curriculum on what they had already planned or implemented as a way of demonstrating conformity or conlpliance with official policy, or simply as a way of confirming the claim that 'we have always done OBE'. In the latter view, OBE simply provided a language and terminology to describe what was already happening. It is this 1.m~ ,

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Such a n approach may contribute towards the values expressed in the statement made in recent education legislation: The curriculum, teaching methods and textbooks at all levels and in all programmes of education and training, should encourage independent and critical thought, the capacity to question, enquire, reason, weigh evidence and form judgements, achieve understanding, recognise the provisional and incomplete nature of most human knowledge, and communicate clearly. (Department of Education, 1995: 22)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnett, Ronald. 1994. The Limits of Competence. Ballmoor: SRHE and Open University Press. Blank, WE. 1982. Handbook for Deueloping Competency-based Training Programmes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. Department of Education 1995. White Paper on Education and Training Pretoria: Government Printers. Department of Education. 1997. Curriculum 2005. Discussion document, Pretoria: DOE. Grundy, Shirley. 1987. Curriculum: h d u c t or fiaxis? London: The Falmer Press. Kelly, AV. 1989. T h Curriculum - Themy and Practice. London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd. National Commission of Higher Education (NCHE). 1996. A Framework of Transfiation. Pretoria: DOE. Meyer, T. 1996. Competencies. Randburg: Knowledge Resources (Pty) Ltd. Woodmffe, C. 1992. In R Boam &P Sparrow, Designing and Achieving Competency. Maidenhead: Mc Graw-Hill International (UK) Ltd.

CHAPTER 13

A Destination Without a Map: Premature Implementation of Curriculum 2005? BY

EMILIA POTENZA & MAREKA MONYOKOLO GAUTENG DEPARTMENT O F EDUCATION & GAUTENG INSTITUTE FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT In conjunct~onw ~ t hthe Foundation Phase Team of the BenoniIBrakpan Teach~ng& Learning Unit'

The views expressed in this chapter are the individual views of the authors. The paper does not represent the views of the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) or the Gauteng Institute for Curriculum Development (GICD)

This chapter argues that the critical factor in successfully translating Curriculum 2005 into practice is to ensure that the three pillars of curriculum transformation are in place and in alignment. These pillars are curriculum development, teacher development and the development, selection and supply of learning materials. As implementation of Curriculum 2005 begins, there are apparently no clear strategies to put these pillars in place in any province. What have some of the consequences been! This question is addressed by reflecting on the curriculum development process in Gauteng and looking at a case study on the implementation of Grade 1 in the Benoni/Brakpan district. Curriculum debates over the last year have centred around the question of whether or not OBE is the right philosophy to be adopting as a basis for transforming the school curriculum.: We believe that, as a country, it has been necessary to come to terms with the essence of OBE and how it rnight be implemented in our context. However, the real test of the success of OBE depends on how effectively it mn be implemented.

1

The members of the Foundation Phase Team are Valerie Ramsingh (Foundation Phase Co-ordinator), Cheryl Kindon, Suraiya Casoo, Winnie Kananda, Mmela Sikhosana, Jabu Mabuza and Dr Brahm Fleisch.

2

Our current definition of curriculum includes the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that inform teaching and learning, and how these are taught and assessed.

op,?akdr?, I m

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The question we need to be asking now is what strategies and institutional structures need to be put in place in order to implement OBE effectively. The promulgation in October 1997 by the national Minister of Education of the new curriculum for the General Education and Training (GET) band implies that Curriculum 2005 is now national policy and that all state schools in this country are obliged to implement it. The national department has determined the norms and standards. It is now,the responsibility of provincial departments to mediate them and develop the strategies and tools for implementation. But, what is there to implement? The original idea behind Curriculum 2005 was that the critical and specific outcomes would be developed at a national level to ensure basic norms and standards. These outcomes would then inform the three key pillars or the essential components of the curriculum, namely:

4 cum'culum development, including illustrative learning programmes and progress maps' or some framework for assessment;

4 learning materials based on the illustrative learning programmes; 4 teacher trainingthat would assist teachers to translate all of the above into practice.

3 232

A progress map describes the path of typical learner progress through an area of learning. It is a tool that can be used by teachers and parents as a framework for assessing progress. e p , a * 4 > , , 1.m

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E M I L I A P D T E N Z&A M A R E KMAO N Y O K O L O

In order to translate the Policy Document for each of the phases of the GET band into practice, we believe that it is a necessary precondition that the three pillars of the curriculum are in place and in alignment. To spell it out a bit more clearly, we believe that at a provincial level the following aspects need to be addressed.

+ Illustrative learningpmgramnw~and progress maps or tools for assessment for every grade/level within each phase need to be developed. These need to be accessible to teachers and made available to publishers. They should be available well enough in advance of implementation to inform the learning materials that will be developed by publishers for each 'qade, as well as the content of the training courses that are desi