Teachers' perspectives on factors which facilitated and hindered the implementation of curriculum 2005 (C2005) in the general education and training (GET) band in one district of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa

Abstract

The study investigated teachers' perspectives on factors which facilitated and hindered the implementation of Curriculum 2005 in the General Education and Training (GET) Band in one district of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. Curriculum 2005 was the new curriculum underpinned by the outcomes-based education. It was introduced in South Africa as a way of moving away from the apartheid system of education, which was based on racial lines, and to offer a uniform system of education. The implementation of Curriculum 2005 was a process which had to follow a certain time-frame, starting from Grade 1 in 1998, with the intention that it would have been introduced in all grades by 2005. When in the year 2000 it became clear that the suggested time-frame could not be achieved, the then Minister of Education, Asmal, commissioned a review process which culminated in the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) introduced in 2004, and finally the National Curriculum Statement (NCS), which was introduced for the first time in 2006, in the Further Education and Training (FET) Band.
 
 This study was carried out in the OR Tambo district municipality of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. The schools used were drawn from the rural, urban and former Model C. In selecting the sample, every sixth school was used. This gave a total of twenty schools. From each school, two teachers from the foundation and intermediate phases and one member of School Management Teams (SMT) were used as participants. In selecting the participants, a combination of purposive, theoretical and systematic sampling was used.
 
 In order to investigate factors which facilitated and hindered the implementation of Curriculum 2005, a qualitative research design was adopted. The study was informed by grounded theory. Interviews conducted in the participants' places of work were used to generate data. Once gathered the data were analyzed using coding and theoretical sampling procedures to examine commonalities and differences between different categories of participants, for example those from rural, urban and Model C schools.
 
 The main findings of this study were as follows. Firstly most of the teachers charged with the implementation of Curriculum 2005 did not fully understand the outcomes-based methods of teaching and as a result, in many cases, continued to use traditional methods of teaching. Secondly, participants perceived that Curriculum 2005 was more appropriate for facilitating learning than the previous Apartheid curriculum and that the Revised National Curriculum Statement was an improvement of C2005 because it simplified the original version of C2005. Thirdly, the training provided for teachers was too brief and did not adequately prepare them for implementing Curriculum 2005. Fourthly, the implementation of Curriculum 2005 was detrimentally affected by a lack of support from the Department of Education and districts. Finally, curriculum implementation was compromised by the lack of basic teaching and learning resources in the majority of schools which participated in the study.
 
 This study has contributed to the existing literature by confirming most of the key findings presented here. However, this study has added to the existing literature by the presentation of a comparison between the traditional curriculum, C2005 and the RNCS. According to the majority of the participants in this study, RNCS simplified C2005 while the latter was an improvement to the traditional curriculum. 
 
 The implications of the study for policy and practice with respect to the implementation of Curriculum 2005 are that: there should be effective and creative preservice education and training of teachers; the Department of Education should communicate information about the process of implementation before any policy initiatives are introduced; there should be continuous professional development activities for all those engaged in the process and in future training for implementation has to be provided before the implementation of any policy initiatives such as the one suggested in this thesis.