D.Ed. / According to Prof. Linda Chisholm (2000) in an address delivered at the Annual Conference of APEK,"...the report of the Review Committee on Curriculum 2005 has evoked a great deal of debate and discussion in two main areas related to the values that it promotes: the first is the relationship between outcomes-based education and Curriculum 2005 and the second is the role of technology and economic and management sciences in the curriculum." The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) promotes the idea of Outcomes Based Education (OBE) and the principles of Curriculum 2005 (C2005), but the emphasis is now to develop a schools' policy built on a set of recommendations for it to be revised and streamlined by substituting the terminology with "user-friendly" phrases and language (Chisholm, 1999:1). By preparing the science teachers in South Africa with the necessary skills to effectively transform the present curriculum into a workable and flexible system, the empowerment they gain from such an exercise is crucial to their focus on science teaching and learning. According to Prof. Chisholm, "a human rights based, antidiscriminatory approach demands a higher level of reading, writing and arithmetic that has existed to date, whether before C2005 or with C2005. For us there can be no return to basics, and the challenge now is to ensure not only that more have access but also that all have access to higher levels than before." This is a sustainable demand of the twenty-first century; hence the term curriculum was adopted.With an environmental education approach, the cross-curricular and dynamic nature of the environment (Van Rooyen, 1998: 104) that is exposed to South Africans today can be positively channelled through the acquisition of basic scientific skills needed to confront the 21s t Century. Outcomes Based Education is one approach that has been tabled, and has its merits and disadvantages. If an environmental education programme becomes the learning programme upon which the curriculum is based, then the overall quality of education in South African schools and the quality of life of the nation can be uplifted through the application of such a model or programme, particularly in the fields of general and physical science: The long-term aims of this study include the following: To encourage a broad, participatory process of Curriculum development for environmental education in South Africa, in accordance with the EEPI (Environmental Education Policy Initiative); To provide educators teaching Physical Science with a programme which can be applied to determine methods which enable the scientific problem solving skills of South Africans and their overall quality of their lives to be uplifted and improved; To carry out the above process through effective education for the environment; To contribute to and refine the new C2005 through the application of environmental strategies and methods of assessment , based on critical and specific outcomes.(OBE)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:9074 |
| Date | 13 August 2012 |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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