Using grounded theory, action research and ethnographic case study methodology this research explores the contrasting ways in which a prescribed curriculum is translated into an enacted curriculum. The current study looks at a 12 week secondary engineering unit (helmet design) which was designed with significant input from a university based team including content experts, learning scientists, master teachers, classroom teachers and school district administrators as part of a grant focused on the creation of a high school engineering course. The unit was enacted in a rural/suburban school by a group of average students by a teacher with high content knowledge in engineering. Five thrusts were identified for analysis including Assessment, Activities, Apparatus, Technology and Standards. Findings indicate much alignment with Apparatus, Standards and Technology thrusts and disparity within the Assessment and Activities thrusts. / text

The objective of educational innovation, wherever it takes place, at school or at national level, is to improve current practices. In its recent attempt to improve the quality of education in Malawi, the national government in 2001 embarked on curriculum reform and adopted an Outcomes Based curriculum which was implemented in 2007. The design features of the Malawi Outcomes Based Education were influenced by South Africa’s Curriculum 2005. Following the implementation of the curriculum reform, the purpose of this study was to investigate the enactment of Expressive Arts, its theme-based design and content, facilitative pedagogy and continuous assessment in a selection of six state primary schools – three urban and three rural in Zomba district where teachers were first trained to teach Expressive Arts. The study is framed by the theory of Illuminative evaluation (Parlett and Hamilton, 1976) and Productive Pedagogies (Lingard et al., 2001). Following a qualitative research design, data were collected through observation and post-observation interviews. Data analysis showed limited productive pedagogies in most lessons. The majority of lessons were characterised by lower intellectual quality, a focus on instrumental knowledge, integration at a superficial level, dominance of communalising practices, gendered practices, prevalence of localising discourses and a pedagogy aimed at national examinations. The overall picture from these findings is that classroom atmosphere in the twelve classrooms gave students limited opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge and development of skills, values and attitudes required for them to actively participate in the changing Malawian context and to be able to compete successfully in other contexts. It appears that dominant pedagogic practices in the Expressive Arts classroom serve to position learners in parochial orientations and issues. Therefore, there was an obvious discrepancy between the state’s intended curriculum and the teachers’ enacted curriculum. The implications of these findings for Malawi education have been raised. The most salient of these implications include the need for Malawi Institute of Education, the main change agent of primary school curriculum in the country, not only to consider revising the Expressive Arts curriculum but also to focus on the development of teachers in line with their needs for deeper content knowledge and productive pedagogic strategies.

The purpose of public schooling in many democratic nation-states is the preparation of an active participatory citizenry. For this reason, educators advocate the use of participatory classroom practices for instilling in students knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes for active civic responsibilities. In this connection, Malawi has since the re-introduction of democracy in 1994, reformed the primary school curricula to emphasize participatory classroom practices. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how primary school teachers in Malawi planned and implemented social studies lessons for the preparation of competent citizens in a democratic civil society. The study used a case study genre of qualitative research involving three senior grade teachers as research participants. The study yielded four major results based on four generic research questions. The first result was that the social studies primary school curriculum has content and pedagogical approaches that are appropriate for the preparation of active participatory citizens. The second result was that the three teachers displayed limited understanding of the concept of participatory learning that was suggested to them in the curriculum documents. As such, their planning of lessons was largely teacher-centered, which they thought was participatory in approach. The third result was that the teachers’ limited conception of participatory learning, as reflected in the teaching plans, was transferred to their classrooms. In this way, the teacher-centered classroom practices caused a lot of missed opportunities for the students’ development of skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and rational decision-making that are necessary for active participation in a shared democratic political community. The last result was that state policies on the use of English as the medium of class instruction and the grade eight mandated examinations negatively contributed to the decisions that the teachers made in the organization of participatory classroom practices. Thus, the general picture based on these research results showed that there was a discrepancy between the state’s intended curriculum and the teachers’ enacted curriculum. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate opportunities to learn (OTL) algebra by grade ten learners at three Catholic secondary schools in South Africa. Performance in mathematics is poor and is a great cause for concern. Despite the government’s effort to make education open and available to all, underperformance has continued among the black majority who were previously marginalised in the former regime. This thesis focuses on the OTL which are afforded learners who are given the chance to attend classes. This thesis met its aims through an extensive review of related literature and the implementation of practical research. The latter was carried out through case studies conducted in three schools where lessons were observed and interviews conducted with the respective teachers. Literature on how OTL mathematics are created is lacking in South Africa. Real OTL still needs to be created if the expected level of performance is to be achieved. The research produced a number of key findings: the learners were given the right to attend class but were subjected to different OTL, learning to convert within and between the different registers of representation of algebraic concepts is necessary to provide learners with OTL, it is not enough for learners to master certain facts and procedures, and learning is enhanced if the means to make the conversion necessary for concept building is developed and the OTL provided. The teacher’s approach influences the way OTL are realised and utilised by learners. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that the OTL afforded the grade ten learners were not the same and that different chances to make conversion within and between registers of representation of algebra concepts were given. Giving the teachers guidelines without expounding the meaning of specific terms such as ‘convert’ leaves gaps in their practices and results in some learners receiving adequate OTL and others not. This research argues for a more involved capacity building programme for in-service teachers to acquaint them with the expected learner-centred approaches to lesson delivery as well as familiarise them with the terminology used in defining terms in the syllabus. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate opportunities to learn (OTL) algebra by grade ten learners at three Catholic secondary schools in South Africa. Performance in mathematics is poor and is a great cause for concern. Despite the government’s effort to make education open and available to all, underperformance has continued among the black majority who were previously marginalised in the former regime. This thesis focuses on the OTL which are afforded learners who are given the chance to attend classes. This thesis met its aims through an extensive review of related literature and the implementation of practical research. The latter was carried out through case studies conducted in three schools where lessons were observed and interviews conducted with the respective teachers. Literature on how OTL mathematics are created is lacking in South Africa. Real OTL still needs to be created if the expected level of performance is to be achieved. The research produced a number of key findings: the learners were given the right to attend class but were subjected to different OTL, learning to convert within and between the different registers of representation of algebraic concepts is necessary to provide learners with OTL, it is not enough for learners to master certain facts and procedures, and learning is enhanced if the means to make the conversion necessary for concept building is developed and the OTL provided. The teacher’s approach influences the way OTL are realised and utilised by learners. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that the OTL afforded the grade ten learners were not the same and that different chances to make conversion within and between registers of representation of algebra concepts were given. Giving the teachers guidelines without expounding the meaning of specific terms such as ‘convert’ leaves gaps in their practices and results in some learners receiving adequate OTL and others not. This research argues for a more involved capacity building programme for in-service teachers to acquaint them with the expected learner-centred approaches to lesson delivery as well as familiarise them with the terminology used in defining terms in the syllabus. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has associated the poor pass rate in the National Senior Certificate (NSC) Grade 12 Physical Sciences examinations to the learners’ lack of practical skills and the inability of learners to solve problems by integrating knowledge from the different topics in Physical Sciences. The CAPS (Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement) is central to the planning, organising and teaching of Physical Sciences. Even though more than a third of the learners achieved below 30% in the NSC Grade 12 Physical Sciences: Physics (P1) November 2017 examination, there was a lack of references made to the CAPS, rationalising the poor performance. A disjointed alignment between the CAPS and the P1 is a possible cause for the poor performance. Since there have been no previous studies that investigated the alignment between the CAPS and the P1, this study aims to fill that gap. This study used a positivist research paradigm and a case study research strategy. A purposive sampling procedure selected the CAPS Grades 10 – 12 Physical Sciences document; the Physical Sciences Examination Guidelines Grade 12 documents and the final and supplementary P1 examinations in the period starting November 2014 to March 2018 as the documents for analysis. A summative content analysis research technique was conducted using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) research method. The SEC method employed the use of the four topics of Grade 12 Physics and the four non-hierarchical levels of cognitive demand as described in the modified version of Bloom’s taxonomy. The physics topics included mechanics; waves, sound and light; electricity and magnetism; and optical phenomena. The cognitive demand levels included recall; comprehension; application and analysis; and synthesis and evaluation. This study found a 100 percent categorical coherence, a 67.3 percent balance of representation, a 79.4 percent cognitive complexity and an average Porter’s alignment index of 0.77 between the CAPS and the P1. The overall Cohen’s kappa for all the documents analysed was 0.88. The findings of this study indicate that the mechanics topic was under-emphasised whilst the application and analysis cognitive demand was over-emphasised in the P1. The CAPS and the P1 did not utilise the highest cognitive demand, synthesis and evaluation which may be interpreted as an environment that fosters lower order thinking. To change this environment of lower order thinking and simultaneously increase the alignment between the CAPS and the P1 this study recommends that firstly, the CAPS decreases the recall based content of the mechanics topic. Secondly, the CAPS and the P1 increase the synthesis and evaluation cognitive demand-based content at the expense of the recall cognitive demand-based content. Thirdly, the CAPS must include the content of the school-based physics practical assessments while decreasing the focus on physics definitions. The ultimate aim is an improvement in the pass rates of the NSC Grade 12 Physical Sciences examinations. / Science and Technology Education / M. Sc. (Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (Physics Education))