Scielo RSS http://www.scielo.org.za/rss.php?pid=2520-986820190003&lang=en vol. num. 77 lang. en http://www.scielo.org.za/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://www.scielo.org.za http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300001&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en There is sufficient evidence to suggest that post-apartheid curriculum reform has failed to produce the desired equity in performance for South African learners. Research on classroom practice preceding the current Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS; see Department of Basic Education, 2011), showed very slow pacing of knowledge as a cause of poor performance. Among other complex changes the CAPS regulates the pacing of knowledge. Adherence to prescribed CAPS pacing has been enforced in schools via monitoring tools by hierarchical management structures. In this study, I sought to investigate the impact of the new pacing regime on teaching and learning. The study is framed by Bernstein's theory (2004) that pacing carries invisible social class assumptions, and cognitivist theory (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002) that teachers' individual cognition is influenced by situated cognition and policy signals. I ask two questions: "How does the new pacing regime impact the pedagogic code and pedagogic discourse in lessons?" and "What are teachers' views on how the new pacing regime impacts teaching and learning?" Based in a qualitative research design, in-depth interviews with teachers and classroom observations provided the main data sources. Data analysis shows that the strong pacing of knowledge has unintended consequences: the pedagogic code is lexicalized and hence impoverished and pedagogic discourse contains far too little elaboration for slower learners to facilitate acquisition. The curriculum policy on pacing and hierarchical monitoring of enactment of pacing distracts teachers from the pedagogic goal of supporting learning. Furthermore, teachers are focusing solely on keeping up with the prescribed pacing although they doubt that average and slower learners are learning at that pace. These learners are being left behind and excluded from acquiring the elaborated pedagogic code, its abstract orientation to meaning, and the specialization of their identity. It is highly possible that the current curriculum reform will fail to produce the desired social justice and equity in performance. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300003&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en We explore the implementation challenges and efficacy of instructional strategies focussing on tasks that require learners to attempt sense-making using either inductive or deductive reasoning during group discussions. The first author collected data via participant observation of 73 Grade 10 to 12 learners whom she taught. She also used field notes, audio visual recordings, interviews, questionnaires, and learner journals. We, as the researchers, underwent the inductive cyclic process of implementation, data collection, reflection, and modification over 20 research cycles, four of which we report on here, over three years. The implementation challenges we experienced included problems related to time-consumption and classroom management, the stress related to impromptu communication, as well as the heavy demands placed on the teacher's energy levels along with some learner confusion and shortage of content knowledge. We found considerably more variability in these challenges, often negatively influencing efficacy, for the inductive instructional strategy, but a reduction in the extent of these challenges, associated with consistent efficacy, for the deductive oriented strategy. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300004&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The role and influence of learners' emotional experiences on their engagement or disengagement while working on mathematics tasks is under-researched in South Africa. Cognitive education research points increasingly to the importance of emotional awareness in cognitive activities and learning situations. In this paper, we describe how Grade 8 learners gained more awareness of their emotions during tasks by using an emotions lexicon as they participated in a mathematics club. We used observations, questionnaires, and interviews to gather data about the learners' awareness of their emotions and their engagement and perseverance with mathematics tasks. Our results indicate that awareness of emotions through access to an emotions vocabulary has a positive influence on individual learners' motivation and mathematical engagement as well as on group engagement, but we found, too, that the expected social consequences of engagement in emotionally risky classrooms may vitiate the personal gains. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300005&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en In the persisting South African education crisis, low quintile schools are known for their lack of adequate resources, poorly trained teachers who lack content and pedagogical knowledge, overcrowded classrooms, and a lack of parental support. I used a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive design to explore South African low quintile school teachers' knowledge of self-regulated learning as well as their perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning in learners. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 purposively and conveniently selected Grade 8 secondary school teachers. The participants hold positive beliefs about self-regulated learning but lack pedagogical knowledge to develop this. They also experience departmental pressure regarding curriculum coverage, assessment, and administration that inhibits their time to do so. The participants perceive their efforts to develop self-regulated learning as being weighed down because this is not a priority at school, with high pass rates in the Annual National Assessment and Senior Secondary School Certificate examinations taking precedence. Future research needs more classroom-based studies to determine how teachers might start to become more skilful at teaching self-regulated learning skills since the development of this is not an automatic process but needs to be supported in learners. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The rationale for desegregated schools has been accompanied persistently by sophisticated exclusionary policies and practices, often masked by excuses related to language, residential area, and fees. That a number of schools continue to employ dubious learner selection practices is a concern that extends beyond the confines of school halls and holds particularly worrisome implications for conceptions of democratic citizenship. On the one hand is the obvious tension and seeming juxtaposition between parental choice of school and the selection of learners by the school. On the other, is the reduction of learner selection to racial discrimination. This article focuses on two questions: What is necessary for schools to shift their policies and practices of learner selection so that they make a foundational contribution to democratic citizenship education, rather than undermining it? How might schools better position themselves as the custodians of democratic citizenship education so as to play a restorative role? http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300007&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Most initial teacher education programmes include a compulsory teaching practice module and there are various models that could be used for first-year students' teaching practice. In South Africa, the Minimum Requirements for Teachers Education Qualification document provides guidelines for teaching practice in initial teacher education programmes, but it does not include specific implementation guidelines. To address this gap, a campus-based teaching practice model to prepare and support first-year students was implemented at a South African university. In this article, I explore first-year students' experiences of this model. I used a mixed methods research design to address this aim. I found, according to their claims, that 89% of participants had benefitted from this model since it provided them with critical insight into what it means to be a teacher. The results of this research could benefit teacher educators and initial teacher education institutions in other places. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300008&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en After the national transition in 1994, South Africa was welcomed back into the international political and economic arena. Becoming part of the global community, including emerging economies, has had major implications for the country, including its school system. The previously relatively stable and predictable, if unjust, school system needed radical change. In this paper, we report on how Organisation Development (OD) as an action research school change strategy was introduced to a school staff. The outcome has been a gradual change in the organisation culture of the school. This includes more collaborative decision-making, open communication, teacher leadership, increased enthusiasm among teachers, and an on-going process of incremental school change. We suggest that OD is a feasible change strategy for schools and school systems in emerging contexts of rapid and ongoing change in which schools are expected to take increasing responsibility for themselves. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300009&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en In this paper we address an area that has been largely neglected by researchers-state provision of adult education in South Africa. We argue that there have been decades of neglect, or, at best, token support for our country's adult education system, and we look at how the system could be revitalised, both in terms of minimal requirements for immediate basic improvement as well as for a more radical and forward looking transformation of the system. South Africa has a history of attempts to provide school equivalent education to black adults through night schools. Suppressed in the 1950s and 1960s, they resurfaced after the 1976 Soweto revolt, and in 1996 the Constitution secured adult basic education as a right. State night schools were renamed Public Adult Learning Centres (PALCs), and seemed poised to become a powerful delivery mechanism, but continued as inadequate night schools. In 2015 the PALC system was ostensibly transformed into a community college one, but this transformation was based on the weak foundation of inadequate PALCs. A new 2019 plan for the Community Education and Training College System includes long needed major overhauls that must be made if adults' right to effective and relevant education is to be finally realised. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300010&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en In this conceptual paper, I argue that the decolonising curriculum project at a faculty of health sciences is not achieving the intended purpose of decolonisation, which is to engage alternative African knowledge frames within the programmes' curricula. In the race to respond to students' demand for the decolonisation of the university curriculum, in 2017 the faculty took a decision to focus on socio-economic determinants of health as an aspect of curriculum content that would serve the decolonising project. I contend that this approach does not constitute a decolonising project since there is no engagement with what ought to be an alternative African paradigm, in this case African healing as an alternative knowledge frame. Drawing on critical race theory (CRT) and the notion of critical performativity, I propose reclaiming the rightful place of African identities and knowledges by engaging critical performativity as a pragmatic and progressive pedagogical approach to explore African healing as an African indigenous knowledge system (IKS) in politically conscious and authentic ways. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2520-98682019000300011&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en In this conceptual paper, I argue that the decolonising curriculum project at a faculty of health sciences is not achieving the intended purpose of decolonisation, which is to engage alternative African knowledge frames within the programmes' curricula. In the race to respond to students' demand for the decolonisation of the university curriculum, in 2017 the faculty took a decision to focus on socio-economic determinants of health as an aspect of curriculum content that would serve the decolonising project. I contend that this approach does not constitute a decolonising project since there is no engagement with what ought to be an alternative African paradigm, in this case African healing as an alternative knowledge frame. Drawing on critical race theory (CRT) and the notion of critical performativity, I propose reclaiming the rightful place of African identities and knowledges by engaging critical performativity as a pragmatic and progressive pedagogical approach to explore African healing as an African indigenous knowledge system (IKS) in politically conscious and authentic ways.