Curriculum reform and teaching in South Africa: making a `paradigm shift'?

Learner-centred pedagogy: Towards a post-2015 agenda for teaching and learning

“…Teachers and learners are motivated primarily to prepare for these, often through rote learning. For these reasons, an analysis based on a desire for a full 'paradigm shift' from teacher-centred to learnercentred practice (Tabulawa, 2003;Nakabugo and Siebö rger, 2001) and exploring barriers to this full transformation is a depressingly consistent one, if one is evaluating LCE in terms of a normative set of policy scripts.…”

The Perils of Outcomes-Based Education in Fostering South African Educational Transformation

“…In doing so, however, the rate and depth of curriculum changes were so swift that educators had difficulty keeping up. Curriculum 2005 meant that teachers needed to place more emphasis on formative assessment as a continuous feedback loop rather than on summative assessment that provides final test evaluations (Nakabugo & Siebörger, 2001). Not surprisingly, research studies revealed that reliance of Curriculum 2005 on formative assessment as the foundation of curriculum changes made little progress.…”

“…Not surprisingly, research studies revealed that reliance of Curriculum 2005 on formative assessment as the foundation of curriculum changes made little progress. Nakabugo and Siebörger (2001) stress that establishing the outcomes and assessment standards and merely telling teachers they must change their approach to teaching was an unproductive approach. Without appropriate training, teachers were left to rely on their understanding and perceptions of curriculum documents, which we now know does not succeed (Schmidt & Datnow, 2005).…”

Joyful learning? The effects of a school intervention on learning outcomes in Karnataka

“…Developing an appropriate child-centred pedagogy is a daunting task for countries such as India given the situation that several millions of first-generation learners have joined a rapidly expanding national schooling system. Learner-centred education (LCE) is perceived as a solution to a myriad of issues facing the school education system in many developing countries (Tabulawa, 1997;Nakabugo and Sieborger, 2001;Harley et al, 2000), and some researchers even call it as a policy panacea (Sriprakash, 2010). 3 It is expected that the effect of LCE would get reflected beyond the realm of education to address such broad and intractable issues as poverty (Brock, 2009);exclusivity (O'Sullivan, 2004); and the need for a democratic political culture (Harber, 2006).…”

“…National educational reform is one such principal channel using which many countries have introduced LCE into the classroom learning. South Africa, where learner-centred pedagogy was promoted in the post-apartheid era (Nakabugo and Sieborger, 2001;Harley et al, 2000;Spreen and Vally, 2010), Namibia, where LCE has been enacted for teacher educators through Basic Education Teachers Diploma programme (BETD) (Nyambe and Wilmot, 2008;Dembele and Miaro-II, 2003), Poland, where learner-centred pedagogical practices have been part of the education system in the post-Communist period (Vulliamy and Webb, 1996), Tanzania, where a revised curricula for secondary schools developed in 2005 enact the use and promotion of LCE (Vavrus et al, 2011), Zambia, where the Teacher Education Reform Programme (ZATERP) introduced in the late 1990s place the learner at the centre of the educational process (Musonda, 1999), Turkey, which has revised the curriculum for primary schools in 2005 to accommodate student-centred pedagogical practices (Aksit, 2007;Altinyelken, 2010a,b) and India, where child-centred pedagogy was made part of its universal elementary education programme called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) introduced in 2001 (Planning Commission, 2010), are examples of countries that followed this route. There are also innovations that are conceived, developed and implemented at the local level so as to integrate child-centred pedagogical practices into classroom learning.…”