Jonathan D. Jansen

Curriculum reform in South Africa : a critical analysis of outcomes-based education

Abstract> Since South Africas first national democratic elections in 1994, the Government of National Unity has issued several curriculum‐related reforms intended to democratise education and eliminate inequalities in the post‐apartheid education system. The most comprehensive of these reforms has been labelled outcomes‐based education (OBE), an approach to education which underpins the new Curriculum 2005. While the anticipated positive effects of the new curriculum have been widely heralded, there has been little criticism of these proposals given the social and educational context of South African schools. In this article the philosophical, political and implementational dilemmas of OBE are systematically analysed and assessed. [1] An earlier version of this article, entitled Why OBE will Fail, was presented at a National Conference on outcomes‐based education held at the University of Durban Westville in March 1997. I am grateful to Renuka Vithal and Ben Parker for critical comments on the original p...

Political symbolism as policy craft: explaining non-reform in South African education after apartheid

The policy literature in developing countries is replete with narratives of ‘failure’ attributed to the lack of resources, the inadequacy of teacher training, the weak design of implementation strategy, and the problems of policy coherence. This research on education policymaking after apartheid presents the following puzzle: what if the impressive policies designed to change apartheid education did not have ‘implementation’ as their primary commitment? Drawing on data from seven detailed case studies, the construct of ‘political symbolism’ is proposed as a first step towards developing a more elaborate theory for explaining one of the most intractable problems in policy studies: the distance between policy ideals and practical outcomes.

Mode 2 knowledge and institutional life: Taking Gibbons on a walk through a South African university *

This paper examines the response of a blackuniversity in South Africa to the challengesposed by the mode 2 knowledge thesis of MichaelGibbon. The case material is based on theFaculty of Engineering at the University ofDurban Westville, which in the period 1999–2000grappled with the implications of Gibbon’sthesis for knowledge, inquiry and professionalidentity in a proposed university-industrypartnership. The author argues that entrenchedinstitutional rules and behaviours threaten toundermine any attempt to rethink the researchand practice of engineering education even whensuch restructuring appears to work in the bestinterest of students.

The school curriculum since apartheid: Intersections of politics and policy in the South African transition

In the wake of South Africas first non-racial elections in 1994, the new Minister of Education launched a national process which would purge the apartheid curriculum of its most offensive racial content and outdated, inaccurate subject matter. At a first glance these essential alterations to school syllabuses sounded reasonable and timely, given the democratic non-racial ideals of the new government. However, these syllabus alterations had little to do with changing the school curriculum and much more to do with a precarious crisis of legitimacy facing the state and education in the months following the national elections. The haste with which the state pursued a superficial cleansing of the inherited curriculum is explained in terms of the political constraints, conflicts and compromises which accompanied the South African transition from apartheid.

Autonomy and accountability in the regulation of the teaching profession: a South African case study

This article examines the struggles of the South African government to establish school‐wide evaluation policies within post‐apartheid institutions. It is demonstrated that even when such evaluation policies promise teacher development and whole‐school improvement, there is significant resistance to government intervention in the school environment. It is also shown that even when individual schools express a willingness to participate in such evaluation actions, they remain deeply suspicious of, and even subvert, the original goals of these policies. The explanation for such behaviour is lodged within the troubled history of the apartheid inspection system, on the one hand, and on the underestimation in policy design of the deep‐rooted suspicions of state surveillance systems even under the terms of a new democracy. In conclusion, the article shows how this fierce—though understandable—contestation of school‐level autonomy actually works against the long‐term developmental interests of both teachers and ...This article examines the struggles of the South African government to establish school‐wide evaluation policies within post‐apartheid institutions. It is demonstrated that even when such evaluation policies promise teacher development and whole‐school improvement, there is significant resistance to government intervention in the school environment. It is also shown that even when individual schools express a willingness to participate in such evaluation actions, they remain deeply suspicious of, and even subvert, the original goals of these policies. The explanation for such behaviour is lodged within the troubled history of the apartheid inspection system, on the one hand, and on the underestimation in policy design of the deep‐rooted suspicions of state surveillance systems even under the terms of a new democracy. In conclusion, the article shows how this fierce—though understandable—contestation of school‐level autonomy actually works against the long‐term developmental interests of both teachers and learners in South Africa’s 29,000 schools.

Mergers in South African higher education: theorising change in transitional contexts

Abstract Drawing on a study of five merger cases in recent South African higher education, this article examines why in each case, the mergers proceeded despite intense opposition from the entities affected and in a form and manner different from that envisaged by their state designers. It considers too, the inadequacies of existing merger theories to explain these two factors and draws on contingency theory to show how the merger outcomes were the product of a complex interplay between governmental macro-politics and institutional micro-politics in a context of political transition. It also exposes the assumption that policy implementation is a rational process in which institutional practice mirrors the formal intentions of government planners, arguing that the merger process in South Africa has to date been marked by behaviour and action that has been both irrational and incoherent as well as not necessarily in the interests of the higher educational process.

Leading against the Grain: The Politics and Emotions of Leading for Social Justice in South Africa.

This article explores the work of leaders who promote social justice against the grain of public expectations. Employing a biographical lens, it describes a study of White South African principals who consciously and deliberately transform their white schools into racially diverse communities of teachers, learners and parents. It looks at the underpinning beliefs, attitudes and concerns that influence the ways in which these school principals lead their lives and their schools, what motivates their decisions to defy the dominant trends, how they balance competing pressures and tensions, and the consequences of their behaviors.This article explores the work of leaders who promote social justice against the grain of public expectations. Employing a biographical lens, it describes a study of White South African principals who consciously and deliberately transform their white schools into racially diverse communities of teachers, learners and parents. It looks at the underpinning beliefs, attitudes and concerns that influence the ways in which these school principals lead their lives and their schools, what motivates their decisions to defy the dominant trends, how they balance competing pressures and tensions, and the consequences of their behaviors.

Curriculum as a political phenomenon : historical reflections on black South African education

Until recently, studies of the curriculum in South Africa have been subsumed under (and lost to) broader studies of educational history (Du Plessis, 1965; Behr & Macmillan, 1971; Molteno, 1984). Recent foci on the curriculum have been largely descriptive in nature (Macdonald & Penny, 1984; Buckland, 1982) or directed at strategies for curriculum change (Basson & Walker, 1984; Millar, 1984). There have been few, if any, systematic studies of curriculum history per se, particularly few pertaining to Black education in South Africa. The purpose of this article is to trace the evolution of the curriculum designed for Black education in South Africa since the colonial penetration of the 1650s to the present time. Specifically, by conceptualizing curriculum as a political phenomenon I will demonstrate that curriculum change in schools for Black South Africans has been principally determined by events outside the schools, i.e., by changes in the sociopolitical context of South Africa. Simultaneously, I will argue that a significant degree of continuity (that is, relative stability over time in the ideological and material assumptions governing the school curriculum) characterizes the curriculum in Black schools. The phenomenon of curriculum continuity will be explained in reference to the institutionalization of ideological forms, educational inequality, and societal racism in apartheid South Africa. The social origins and salient characteristics of curriculum within broad periods of educational history in South Africa will be discussed and key implications of historical curriculum analysis for postapartheid educational reconstruction will be presented.

Curriculum reconstruction in post-colonial Africa: A review of the literature

Abstract In post-colonial Africa, curriculum reconstruction has emerged as perhaps the most politically contested aspect of educational change on the one hand and at the same time represents an accumulating legacy of failure on the other. Despite the continuing saliency of the curriculum debate in Africa, our initial review of the literature suggested a need for an overview of curriculum reconstruction since African independence on a continental-wide basis, and to examine the lessons suggested for future attempts at curriculum change. The more specific objectives of this paper is to: 1. 1. Provide a comprehensive bibliography on curriculum change in Africa in the past 25 years. 2. 2. Identify major trends in curriculum innovation which characterize efforts at educational reconstruction since independence. 3. 3. Review the salient themes which engaged and continues to foster curriculum debate and controversy in independent Africa. 4. 4. Examine alternative explanations for curriculum failure throughout the continent. 5. 5. Draw critical implications from this survey study for curriculum policy in a post-apartheid dispensation. Our most significant and more general conclusions suggest that curriculum failure has resulted largely from an inadequate consideration of both technical/practical as well as critical/political contingencies which have an impact on curriculum; that the dearth of indigenous curriculum models severely limits relevant and effective change; and that an important component of any future attempts at curriculum reform must exploit the accumulated evidence and experience derived from 25 years of educational reconstruction in Africa.

On the politics of performance in South African education: Autonomy, accountability and assessment

ConclusionThe South African obsession with performance-based pedagogies, as I have shown, has negative implications for resolving equity problems in educational reforms; it threatens to negate a political debate about ‘goals’ in favour of a technician’s debate about ‘ends’; and it fragments knowledge into meaningless tasks that assign value to external behaviours rather than the multiplicity of ways in which learning and valuing can be experienced (if not always expressed). The real danger to building a strong democratic culture through education is that what should be vibrant debates about ‘what’s worth knowing’ could be effectively silenced in a performance assessment system that only values, through a complex assessment system, that which is worth doing. Such an understanding of education is, unfortunately, entrenched in a global network of economic and technological processes that make such pursuits appear both normal and inevitable.