| Summary: | A research report submitted to the School of Education,
Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Education (MEd) === What are teachers’ understanding of curriculum change and how they think it affects their
practice in a pedagogic setting? Whilst this may be thought of as a straight-forward answer,
this study has interestingly demonstrated that teachers’ understanding does not follow the
simplified prescription of the curriculum but their understanding of their own contexts and how
they view that affects their pedagogic practice.
Studies of teachers’ responses to curriculum change have overlooked the underlying factors
around teachers’ willingness or unwillingness to change. In-depth interviews allow the study to
explore teachers’ understanding of curriculum change in the context of South African
educational reform. In this regard, whilst a simplistic answer to the questions of this study,
teachers have displayed highly-ordered and well-reasoned viewpoints on how their
understanding of curriculum change shape their pedagogic practice. This has made the
researcher to categorise teachers’ responses into three pre-determined themes described by
Bernstein (1996): knowledge, pedagogy and assessment whilst using the fourth – social context
of learners – as background of interpreting the findings of the study. This research project
unsurprisingly concludes that teachers hold a wide variety of views about curriculum reforms
and implementation in South Africa. Both the primary and secondary data sources indicated that
curriculum in South Africa is progressing towards more prescriptive approaches.
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