The tension between curriculum coverage and quality learning: The experiences of South African teachers
Introduction
The low achievement of South African learners is well-researched. Participation in international benchmarking tests show that learners are very close to the bottom of the achievement rankings in both mathematics and literacy (Spaull, 2013). International assessments indicate that South African learners perform much worse than learners from other middle to low income countries, in spite of large amounts of resources directed to previously disadvantaged schools since the dawn of democracy (Spaull, 2013). The recent data from the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) shows that 78 % of SA Grade 4 students cannot read for meaning (Mullis et al., 2017). This means that they could not locate and retrieve explicitly stated information or make straightforward inferences about events and reasons for actions given in a text. They will thus “never fully access the curriculum despite being promoted to higher grades” (van den Berg et al., 2016).
Schollar (2018) presents data from a range of mathematics assessments that show a similar trend, namely that 80 % of primary school learners are below the expected competency level for the grades in which they are enrolled. A review of the Annual National Assessments (ANA) data shows that learners’ mean score in mathematics declines from Grade 1 (where the mean score is 68 %) to Grade 9 where the mean score is just above 10 % (Simkins, 2013 cited by Schollar, 2018). Only 16 % of Grade 3 students in South Africa are performing at a Grade 3 level in mathematics (Spaull and Kotze, 2015). Thus the learning deficits ‘grow over time to the extent that they become insurmountable and preclude learners from following the curriculum at higher grades’ (Spaull, 2013, p. 8), although they may be automatically progressed to the next grade. The progression policy states that a child may only repeat one grade in a school phase,1 and after that will be automatically progressed to the next grade.
In an attempt to improve learner achievement, there has been an increasing intervention by the state and other stakeholders to monitor curriculum coverage, to ensure that teachers are covering the curriculum and are providing their students with sufficient opportunities to learn. In this regard, Shalem and Hoadley (2009) note that “the state’s regulative role is to manage teachers’ time better – demanding more time on task from teachers, regulating curriculum coverage and standardizing assessment practices” (p. 125). The key contentious issue regarding systems that have strong external regulation of teachers’ work is that this may lessen teachers’ professional autonomy and may place them in the role of simply being ‘technicians’ who have to implement what they are told to do (Shalem et al., 2018).
In this paper, we engage with the teachers’ experiences of the strong curriculum pacing demands that the Jika iMfundo programme makes on teachers’ work and practice. We argue that a structured curriculum is necessary but not sufficient to improve learning in South African classrooms. Unless teachers also learn specific pedagogies and strategies to remediate the gaps in learners’ knowledge and skills, insisting on strong pacing and curriculum coverage is unlikely to be sufficient to help all children learn (Pritchett and Beatty, 2012). The data from this study indicates that teachers did not seem to have a range of strategies to teach learners who were not at the level of the curriculum.
Section snippets
School curriculum reform in South Africa
In South Africa, the first curriculum reform post-1994 was a radical, outcomes-based curriculum that afforded teachers high degrees of autonomy to create their own lessons and learning materials, as long as these met the learning outcomes that were specified in the curriculum. This Curriculum 2005 was a hybrid, which embraced both a progressive, learner-centred emphasis on teacher facilitation, and a focus on the achievement of generic, demonstrable outcomes. It was under-stipulated in terms of
Curriculum coverage
There has been a growing focus in South Africa on improving curriculum coverage, which is the number of content topics that are actually taught. Hoadley and Galant (2016, p. 3) contend that the curriculum coverage “determines the amount of curriculum content covered and the cognitive demand level.” Jika iMfundo conceptualizes curriculum coverage as a “professional process of judging and reporting coverage as a function of what learners have learned”, and puts assessment and engaging with
Introduction to the Jika iMfundo programme
The poor learner outcomes in South African schooling have been a huge area for research and discussion for more than 15 years. A report on identifying the binding constraints in education argues that there are four key areas that constrain the improvement of learner outcomes for the poor in South Africa (van den Berg et al., 2016). These are weak institutional functionality; weak teacher content knowledge and pedagogical skills; wasted learning time and insufficient opportunity to learn in
Methodology
This paper aims to address the following research question:
What are South African teachers’ experiences of curriculum coverage as required by Jika iMfundo curriculum trackers?
The study reports on data collected through semi-structured interviews with 29 HODs from a purposive sample of 15 schools. The research team of four people conducted the semi-structured interviews. The population was all the schools in the Pinetown district of KZN which had participated in the Jika iMfundo project. We
Tension between fast pace of the curriculum trackers and slow pace of learners
Many teachers reported that the Jika iMfundo curriculum tracking tool was useful because it helped them to plan what topics to teach and assisted them to cover the scope of the curriculum. They also mentioned that the trackers helped them to know which topics to teach and whether they were ‘on track’ with curriculum coverage or not. A majority of the teachers also highlighted that the pace of the Jika iMfundo curriculum was too fast. This strong curriculum pacing of Jika iMfundo presented a
Discussion
Here, we argue that focusing on curriculum coverage is necessary but not sufficient to address the deep-seated issue of poor learner achievement. We organise this discussion using the three factors that DeStefano (2012) identifies as being key factors in influencing academic learning, namely time, students’ abilities, and teachers’ pedagogy.
According to DeStefano (2012), time is one of the three factors that influences whether or not a student will reach the desired level of academic
Conclusion
We have argued that a focus on curriculum coverage, strong pacing and quantifiable teacher accountability measures is necessary but will not be enough to provide quality learning experiences for all learners. Any large-scale reform must also acknowledge that the very problem that needs to be solved (low learner achievement) is a binding constraint to it being solved. The importance of unquantifiable factors like teachers’ knowledge, confidence and professional judgement as well as the need for
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Carol Anne Bertram: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Carol Cynthia Nonhlanhla Mthiyane: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - review & editing. Jacqueline Naidoo: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - review & editing.
Acknowledgement
Funding for this research was provided by the South African Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE).
References (37)
- et al.
System-wide improvement of early-grade mathematics: new evidence from the Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics Strategy
Int. J. Educ. Dev.
(2016) - et al.
Comparing opportunity to learn and student achievement gains in southern African primary schools: a new approach
Int. J. Educ. Dev.
(2013) Poverty & privilege: primary school inequality in South Africa
Int. J. Educ. Dev.
(2013)- et al.
Starting behind and staying behind in South Africa. The case of insurmountable learning deficits in mathematics
Int. J. Educ. Dev.
(2015) - et al.
Improving literacy and math instruction at scale in India’s primary schools: the case of Pratham’s Read India program
J. Educ. Change
(2016) - Christie, P., Monyokolo, M., 2018. Learning About Sustainable Change in Education in South Africa: The Jika Imfundo...
- et al.
Bringing a student-centered participatory pedagogy to scale in Colombia
J. Educ. Change
(2016) - et al.
Teacher knowledge and employer-driven professional development: a critical analysis of the Gauteng Department of Education programmes
South. Afr. Rev. Educ.
(2014) 2018/2019 Programme Performance Measures and Technical Indicator Descriptions
(2017)Opportunity to Learn. Washington DC: Equip2 State of the Art Knowledge in Education, USAID
(2012)
Specialising pedagogic text and time in Foundation Phase numeracy classrooms
J. Educ.
System-wide improvement at the instructional core: changing reading teaching in South Africa
J. Educ. Chang.
Selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching
Perspect. Educ.
What do we know about teaching and learning in South African primary schools?
Educ. As Chang.
Learning to fly: pedagogy in the Foundation Phase in the context of the CAPS reform
J. Educ.
Pedagogy in Poverty. Lessons from Twenty Years of Curriculum Reform in South Africa. London and New York: Routledge
An analysis of the grade 3 Department of Basic Education workbooks as curriculum tools
South Afr. J. Child. Educ.
Different rules for different teachers: teachers’ views of professionalism and accountability in a bifurcated education system
J. Educ.
Cited by (9)
Bridging Cultures, Building Careers: The Role of Diverse Work Environments in International Assignments
2023, Croatian International Relations ReviewExploring the impact of the COVID-19 school reform plan on teachers’ assessment practices
2023, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and PracticeA systems approach to understanding novice teachers’ experiences and professional learning
2023, Journal of Education (South Africa)Secondary school mathematics teaching evaluations by students: A report card for the mathematics teacher
2023, Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology EducationPerformativity, managerial professionalism and the purpose of professional development: a South African case study
2023, Journal of Education PolicyReflecting on the nature of Curriculum Inquiry in South Africa 2010 –2021
2022, Curriculum Perspectives