Appendix 12

SAIDE Submission to the Review Committee on Outcomes-based Education and Curriculum 2005

The introduction of OBE and Curriculum 2005 has caused considerable confusion, partly because we have attempted to change too much too quickly. Furthermore, we have reacted to the old system’s emphasis on the compartmentalizing of uncontextualized knowledge by over-emphasizing social learning outcomes and integration at the expense of developing deeper conceptual understanding. 

To address these problems, and others identified below, we suggest in the discussion that follows:

•      Simplification of the Curriculum 2005 policy and, in particular, discontinuing phase and programme organizers

•      Clarification of the meaning of fundamental, core and elective learning when applied to GET and FET

•      Exit level performance (ELPs) indicators that indicate what the learner should be like at each key stage. [These ELPs need to be consistently presented across all learning areas: consistently applied, consistently conceptualised and practically useful. They should indicate the nature of evidence required to demonstrate achievement as well as assessment strategies in at least the fundamental learning areas of literacy (LLC) and numeracy (MMLMS), as well as the notion that some learners may indeed ‘fail’ to achieve these outcomes within a realistic time period]

•      Modularization and mapping of learning in the FET band and possibly also the senior GET phase

•      Re-emphasis of the importance of appropriate content and the supply of suitable learning materials

Adoption of a more incremental approach to managing change in education.

 Some Key challenges and recommendations 

Simplification of Curriculum 2005 terminology and policy

The proliferation of new terminology has caused considerable confusion. For many role players, the distinctions between related terms such as SAQA, NQF, OBE, and Curriculum 2005 have become blurred. Much of the criticism relating to the apparent ‘complexity’ and ‘sophistication’ of OBE (for example, Mulholland/Jansen, 1998 and our own included) is in fact criticism of Curriculum 2005 rather than of OBE per se. 

Confusion in terminology is particularly apparent in the Curriculum 2005 policy documents with reference to the related terms: performance indicators, assessment criteria, and range statements. For many role players, these terms are almost synonymous, as are OBE and Curriculum 2005. 

The irony here is that we have a terminological overload but in all the important places – i.e. detailed, assessable criteria at different levels – we have vagueness, inconsistency across learning areas, and little clear evidence of logical curriculum sequencing. Another confusion is that terms that have universal common-sense meanings, like assessment criteria, are used differently within South Africa (in the SGB for field 5 assessment criteria are level specific while in Curriculum 2005 they are not) and between South Africa and other countries. 

Recommendations

There is a need to reduce the quantity and complexity of new terminology needed to implement the new curriculum. In particular, we feel that a lot of unnecessary complexity could be avoided if the concepts of phase and programme organisers were discontinued. Furthermore, the key emphasis of introducing an outcomes-based approach could be underscored if precise assessment criteria around “expected levels of performance” (ELPs) were available. These ELPs need to be consistently presented across all learning areas: consistently applied, consistently conceptualised and practically useful. They should indicate the nature of evidence required to demonstrate achievement as well as assessment strategies. Both these issues are taken up below. 

Nevertheless, the introduction of a simplified Curriculum 2005 will be a major paradigm shift and will still be quite complex. A systematic, centrally driven and sustained training and support intervention, involving the major institutions with proven expertise in the area of educator development, as opposed to short term, decentralized interventions involving a multitude of small NGOs and other service providers, could also help to limit potential confusion arising from different perceptions and interpretations of core concepts. This issue is taken up in more detail below.   

 Core and elective learning 

There is a similar lack of clarity regarding the distinction between core and elective learning when applied to qualifications in GET and FET. 

Recommendations:

We need to clarify the meaning of fundamental, core, and elective learning in the GET and FET bands. It is not clear how the learning areas in Curriculum 2005 relate to the envisaged fundamental, core, and elective learning areas in the FET and ABET frameworks. Amongst other things, clarifying the relationship will facilitate the articulation between school-based and ABET provision.  

We assume that Foundation Phase learning is essentially aimed at developing fundamental knowledge and skills. We recommend that, in order to build on existing practice, intermediate phase learning will comprise a fundamental component in the form of two languages and an advanced level of numeracy and a core component which comprises the other three elements of the learning programme proposed in the Curriculum 2005 policy documents.  We assume that, by the senior phase and going on into FET, greater choice will be possible, allowing for separation of the learning programme into fundamental, core and elective components. We suggest that it is in the elective component that educators could be expected to be more innovative, and make a greater attempt to adopt a more integrated, theme-driven, vocationally oriented approach, for example through an elective in travel and tourism studies that will draw upon knowledge and skills from a number of learning areas.   

 Mastery of concepts and skills 

The critical and specific outcomes place considerable emphasis on social learning and inclusivity and place even greater emphasis than in the past on age grouping as an organizing principle rather than the level of competence achieved in the respective disciplines. In the absence of clearly articulated and nationally agreed expected levels of performance as well as supporting assessment strategies, the way has been paved for automatic promotion. This creates the possibility that intermediate and senior phase educators will need to teach learners who have not mastered the concepts and skills that would normally have been dealt with in the foundation phase.

Recommendations

The idea of mastery of key concepts and skills as a prerequisite for promotion should be re-inserted into the curriculum, but with the caveat that it not be on a yearly basis and that assessment should be more diagnostic and criterion-based.

Elps and assessment 

A commitment to OBE and criterion-referencing requires that clear, precise, grids of descriptors of good performance be developed. Strategically, we suggest that this begin with the three GET phases and FETC as ‘benchmarks’ and in critical learning areas. Ultimately, such grids of descriptors should be developed for all subjects as minimum criteria (thus avoiding the danger of strangling Learning Areas with too much prescription). 

We need to capitalize on the fact that for many years what happens in classrooms has been driven by what happens in ‘the final examination’. This unfortunate mindset is not going to change quickly, but it does represent an opportunity to promote change. We are likely to be more effective in promoting changed practices in South African classrooms by putting less emphasis on workshops that ‘introduce OBE’ and more emphasis on changing how we assess learners using the nationally developed criteria and strategies at key phases that we have called for above. 

There is thus a need to promulgate nationally determined expected levels of performance (ELPs) at key phases in at least the fundamental competence areas of literacy and numeracy (Language, Literacy and Communication and Mathematics, Mathematical Literacy and Mathematical Sciences). The ELPs need to be supported by a clearly articulated assessment strategy that emphasizes the shift from ‘What do learners know?’ to ‘What can learners do with their knowledge?’ and the variety of ways in which evidence to this effect can be captured. The key stages for assessment are assumed to be the ends of Grades 3, 6, 9 (GETC), and FET Level 4 (FETC).  

It is also assumed that these assessments would need to be nationally administered, invigilated and externally moderated, but not necessarily traditional pen and paper examinations. This approach would need to be complemented by the development of ELPs and assessment strategies for all other learning areas, which policy could be implemented locally via provincial departments of education and, where appropriate in FET, by relevant ETQAs. We feel that this cannot be done all at once, and that the fundamental learning areas at each of the key phases should be the national focus to start.   

 Phase organisers and programme organisers 

The emphasis on integration in the Curriculum 2005 policy documents, through the establishment of learning areas, phase organizers and programme organizers has led to a conceptual confusion. These tools of integration have come to be understood by many educators as a statement of a new principle of education: namely that all learning across all learning areas should be integrated all of the time. Thus the emphasis in assessment is transferred from the subject content and skills of the learning areas to assessment criteria based on the ‘organizers’. This paves the way for key areas of knowledge and skill to be disregarded. 

We need to recognize that integrated syllabuses, by design, tend to favour breadth (general knowledge) rather than depth (disciplinary knowledge). Yet the ability to transfer knowledge across areas, to adapt to changed circumstances (re-tooling etc), and to work successfully in a knowledge/information society requires deep principled understandings of core concepts. The challenge is to design a system that retains the logic and depth of subject-based systems but which is not as rigid as these i.e. encourages a search for links between areas. Yet we have turned this teaching method into an epistemological principle and done it at so many levels that it drowns all other, legitimate educational concerns. 

The prescription of phase organizers is particularly self-defeating in this regard, as it turns the focus away from critical learning area concepts and towards general social skills and understandings. Substantial research has tended to suggest that this kind of curriculum disadvantages the very people it is designed to serve (because learners from advantaged home backgrounds get the rigour of academic thinking at home while many learners from less advantaged homes get it only at schools). 

Whilst recognizing that in the old content-based approach obvious opportunities for cross-curriculum learning and real life application were missed, Curriculum 2005 would seem to have gone to the opposite extreme. The over-emphasis on integration through the underpinning outcomes, amalgamation of disciplines into learning areas, and rearrangement of learning areas into learning programmes guided by phase and programme organizers suggests that integration is an end in itself, rather than emphasizing a process through which discipline-based learning can be made more meaningful by creating links between learning areas and real life experiences and application. Whilst this emphasis on integration makes a great deal of sense at the foundation level, it is not clear that it is necessarily so desirable in the senior GET phase and the FET band, by which time the disciplines that make up learning areas have developed a conceptual integrity and value of their own. Curriculum 2005 appears to assume that learning at all levels is similar except perhaps in the complexity of the content learnt. Thus a pedagogy very appropriate for ECD and FP has been forced on all levels even though the form of learning must change as learners proceed.

Recommendations

The prescription of phase and programme organizers should be discontinued after the Foundation Phase.

 Senior GET and FET 

In the senior phase of GET as well as at FET level, we suggest that a reorganizing of the current discipline-based content would be more appropriate than to try to continue to pursue a phase and programme organizer approach. We suggest that the revised syllabuses need to be modularized and mapped to provide developmental sequencing that will allow greater flexibility. In practice this may make no difference to the way in which the FET is currently broken up into subject areas at grades 10,11 and 12. A school may still offer x notional hours of learning in climatology, x in history or art, x in Xhosa literature and so. However, breaking down the existing subject areas into modules, allows for incremental change at the FET level that would facilitate change and increase responsiveness in the curriculum.  

Rather than having to enrol for a three-year programme in six subjects (as is currently the requirement), learners can select fundamental, core and elective modules (at first made up of content focus areas very similar to those currently in the core curriculum) and accumulate credits for submission and national assessment for the FETC. As new approaches to assessing these are introduced, so too can some modules be removed and new electives introduced over time. At a later stage this may allow schools to offer modules at different levels to students in different age cohorts or in ‘different grades’. For example, in Grades 10 – 12 learners are expected to study a little climatology and geomorphology every year and are thus bound to a long drawn out process. However, climatology and geomorphology are not interdependent. It should be possible for a learner to cover all three levels of climatology in one continuous programme if they wish and then be assessed on that programme. Thus learners who in terms of age are in grade 10, may in fact complete some programmes at Level 2, but others at Levels 3 and 4. In the FET band, a learner may complete foundational literacy and numeracy at Level 2, and Climatology, Electricity and Human Physiology at Levels 2, 3 and 4. 

This same learner might work through only Travel and Tourism in Grade 12, but will work through all three levels of the programme in a continuous way. The important component of this discussion is to find the ways in which Curriculum 2005 facilitates this transition at FET level. The GETC requirements and rules of combination in terms of entrance requirements for FET modules thus become very important. 

However, there is a danger that modularization, although opening up choice, could lead to the same sort of fragmented, surface learning as we previously identified to be a danger inherent in an overly integrated curriculum. The way to prevent this is to develop strong rules of combination (or designated paths, learning programmes, etc.) that limit choice and an integrated assessment strategy. 

In the process of modularisation, the discipline-based knowledge and content would need to be organized around the achievement of outcomes, e.g. using map work knowledge and skills to plan a safe journey from Johannesburg to Durban. Attempts to look for sensible cross-curricular links would also be a conscious part of the process, for example the interpretation of graphs in mathematics, physical science, biology, economics, geography – all of which require the ability to work with the concepts of the Cartesian Plane and gradient.

We believe that the modularization of the FET band in particular will help to promote a sense of FET study as a different, more mature experience. We suggest that such a concept be piloted and, if successful, phased in over a suitable period of time.

 Educator development 

The implementation of OBE, and more problematically Curriculum 2005, has profound implications for educators and educator training. For example, the emphasis on the distinction between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ ways of providing education and on an ‘outcomes-based’ as opposed to a ‘content-based’ approach (C2005 policy document) has created an impression among some role players that content is no longer important. 

Recommendations

We would argue that teacher training and support interventions still need to provide educators with detailed content knowledge and understanding in the subjects/disciplines that make up the new learning areas and that the issue of integration can be picked up in discussions related to methodology. 

The recent PEI research tells us that many, perhaps the majority of, educators failed to master the ‘subject’ knowledge they were required to teach in the past, and that they are currently required to teach in those Grades still following the 1994 revised syllabus. It seems unrealistic to expect these educators to suddenly become developers of curricular and learner support materials when their own foundational competence is so weak. 

It would seem that many of the OBE training interventions that have been implemented to date have failed to take these realities into account. These training interventions have therefore tended to centre only on establishing a very superficial understanding of the broad principles of OBE and Curriculum 2005 and have failed to get to grips with systematic implementation and support at classroom level that takes into account the inadequacies of the classroom-based educator’s own knowledge and experience. 

This problem seems to be a direct consequence of the strong focus on social skills and integration around social phase organizers, exacerbated by the failure to provide appropriate textbooks and an unrealistic emphasis on teachers as producers of learning materials. We need to re-emphasise the importance of content and explain that the problem with the old approach was how content was learnt, not content itself. We need to supply educators with good textbooks, compiled by teams of experts, that can be models both as carriers of good, well-sequenced content as well as how the textbook learning can be the springboard for the application of that learning in situations beyond the classroom. 

The amalgamation of previous subject disciplines into new learning areas has created particular challenges for educators. As noted above, the recent PEI research indicated that many teachers had not mastered the content of the subjects in which they had specialized during their training.  

Many educators thus lack a firm conceptual basis from which to engage with the unfamiliar content suggested by the more broadly defined learning areas. 

We are thus confronted with the following challenges:

•      The practical problem of relatively poorly skilled teachers being asked to take on the complexities of integrated teaching that may lead to further gaps between rich and poor schools.

•      The conceptual problem that new teachers are being asked to learn the content of integrated areas, leading to greater breadth of knowledge but no depth, making meaningful integration even more difficult.

•      The need to recognize the practical problem that universities are unlikely to change their degree offerings and that this might lead to poor quality courses for teachers being inserted into degrees.

We need to recognize that educators need depth in a subject within a Learning Area and that only then can they meaningfully be taught how to work with other subject experts, what their subject adds to the Learning Area, etc.   

 Learning resources 

We suggest that emphasis is moved from educators as materials developers to developing educators as readers. This is a key problem but it is not really being addressed, except by avoiding it (e.g. making course reading easier rather than developing educators’ reading skills to the level where they can interact meaningfully with professional articles and documents). 

We suggest the need for a major drive in the development of good textbooks to drive both a good curriculum for learners as well as appropriate teacher upgrading. 

We need to rethink the way in which OBE and Curriculum 2005 have been introduced using a cascade model of training. The cascade model has led to three problems:

•       educators are taught what OBE is but not how it can be implemented

•       the delivery of short courses that defy the idea that paradigm changes take time, practice, understanding (i.e. till the new practices become habits), and

•       training that is done through ad-hoc arrangements with NGOs rather than through a long-term strategy involving the best teacher education institutions.

 Developing priorities 

A lot of changes have been introduced simultaneously. It is difficult for role players to prioritize these changes and know what to attend to first. A basic principle about managing change is that radical change needs to have a central and key focus that is clear to everyone. Its implementation needs to be broken down into manageable components and arranged into phases with active processes to achieve buy in. Currently, within the curriculum area, educators are expected to accommodate:

•   changes in the way education is managed

-     NQF, SAQA, SACE, DOE(s),

-     SGBs, SMTs, flatter structures

•   changes in pedagogy

-     from content-driven, teacher-centred practice to outcomes-based, learner-centred practice with associated notions of new learning areas, integration, learning programmes, phase and programme organisers

•   changes in assessment practices

-     less paper-based summative assessment

-     more varied, formative, continuous assessment

•   changes in what is expected of educators

-     new norms and standards for educators.

We would suggest that this is too much change for the average poorly trained educator working in an under-resourced, over-crowded school to accommodate and that there is a need to simplify, prioritize and re-examine time frames. 

A second principle that seems to have been disregarded is related to educational theory that has become universally accepted. In our teacher training courses we advocate that for meaningful learning to take place, a conscious effort must be made to link new learning to prior learning and experience. The vast majority of our school-based educators have no experience of the kind of learning we are trying to introduce. Educators will require intensive, systematic and sustained training and support to be able to meet the expectations we have of them. Training interventions to date have largely failed to model, in a sustained and systematic way, how OBE and C2005 can be implemented by teachers whose lifelong experience has been of a completely different paradigm. OBE training interventions seem largely to have ignored the lessons of experience contained in the national audit of teacher education and the later PEI research. The emphasis in policy documents and training has been on accentuating the difference between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ rather than on recognizing where there is common ground for understanding. For example, the introduction of OBE has not changed the fundamental questions that educators have always been expected to ask of themselves:

•      Who are my learners?

•      What is the purpose or goal of this lesson?

•      What and how should I teach so that learning can happen?

•      How can I assess whether learning has happened?

Accentuating the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ has led to some widespread misconceptions, such as:

•      You must always use group work.

•      It is always wrong to use a teacher-centred strategy.

•      Learners should not memorise anything.

•      Nobody should ‘fail’ being interpreted as automatic promotion without establishing remediation strategies, rather than the possibility of delayed achievement

•      Foundation Phase educators who no longer teach spelling and reading because there are no outcomes that mention these things (PEI). 

Neither have these training interventions adequately addressed the needs and concerns of the educator responsible for 80, extremely diverse, learners in an overcrowded classroom with access only to chalk and a chalkboard in a poor state of repair. The reinvention of the education system needs to start from where the educators are now and to set more realistic goals and timeframes. 

Recommendations

The recently gazetted Norms and Standards for Educators policy document details, among other things, a specialist role for educators. The lack of ELPs for fundamental learning makes it very difficult for current providers of INSET and PRESET to determine what Fundamental learning concepts form part of the programme for, for example, an MLMMS or Intermediate Phase specialist. It is suggested that the ELPs for Fundamental learning be promulgated as soon as possible and that educator trainers should integrate these skills into the discipline related concepts that make up a learning area. This would provide a model for a wider understanding of the more general integration of outcomes across learning areas in an OBE system. 

We believe that it is necessary to prioritize the changes we want educators to make in the way that they teach as we are currently trying to do too much too quickly. We suggest that our top priority might be a five-year programme, managed by the state but implemented by existing teacher education institutions, to provide rigorous training in assessment. This could be used as a basis for understanding:

•            The link to outcomes/descriptors etc.

•            The choice of teaching methods

•            The use of textbooks

•            The need for a general and concerted effort to improve reading skills. 

We believe that the PEI research indicates that, currently, it is unrealistic to expect educators to be curriculum developers. We suggest that it is necessary to provide ‘syllabus’ guidelines for each learning area that outline the ELPs, the contributing outcomes, suggested content areas and evidence of achievement. A set of precise descriptors of performance initially for fundamental, then also for core and finally on a continuing basis as needs emerge in elective learning, could serve this purpose without necessarily contributing to the proliferation of documents that has characterized the implementation of Curriculum 2005 to date:

Outcomes

Learners should demonstrate an understanding of the historical impact of key figures on international economic policy formation. Learners will be expected to write a 500-word essay/a poster containing appropriate graphics and at least 200 words/ offering a critical analysis of the impact of the writings of Adams or Marx or Keynes or Friedman. 

We believe it is necessary to provide such guidance otherwise learning programmes will be skewed towards the particular interests of educators, key areas of knowledge and skill could be missed altogether, the same topics could be repeated ad nauseam and it would not be possible for learners or educators to easily move from one learning site to another.