The challenges of curriculum change challenges of curriculum change teachers in Limpopo province

[摘要] This thesis focuses on the challenges a particular group of rural primary schoolteachers experienced as they implemented a national outcomes-based curriculumthrough the support of an external agent. It uses Fairclough’s (1991) model ofcritical discourse analysis and his theory of critical language study as a framework toexplore the discourses and practices of this group of South African teachers.Methodologically, this thesis is located in the qualitative paradigm, and usesinterviews and observations to systematically probe teachers’ understandings ofcurriculum and change.Three themes are developed in this thesis. First, the theme of teacher collaborationis presented as a new social practice that the teachers creatively took up during aschool development project. It shows that while social and institutional processdetermined the nature of the project as a social practice, at a situational level, theteachers played a much more determinative role as they shaped the project and itspractices in several intriguing ways. Second, the curriculum roles that werediscursively produced by the teachers as they struggled to transform their practicefrom isolation to collaboration are revealed. This demonstrates that while many ofthese roles were common to all schools, the role of the teacher as leader emergedin only two of the schools. And third, through analysing the lessons taught by thisgroup of teachers in their classrooms, the tacit knowledge of pedagogy and contenton which their practice was based is made explicit. These themes provideopportunities for certain common sense assumptions about teacher collaboration,leadership, learning and practice to be interrogated in terms of their applicability tothe schools in the project.The thesis concludes with a discussion of the possibilities that still exist for teachereducators to enhance understanding of what happens inside traditional ruralschools.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand