Similar to the above sub-section, an aspect of teachers’ thinking that can both constrain and enable action of curriculum implementation efforts, is situated in institutions that provide support, norms and rules of the school environment. I refer to these as the organisational structures. The immediate environment, considered in terms of the organisational structures such as the principal’s office, the School Management Teams and fellow colleagues, contributes to defining the ways in which people make sense of new experiences and situations. These organisational structures that I’ve just mentioned are important contexts for teachers work and for their efforts to make sense of curriculum policy. In this study, however, respondents felt that full-scale enactment of A&C within the NCS was difficult because of the lack of strong leadership at schools.
Relating to the observed role of school principals and fellow colleagues in curriculum implementation, T4 expressed her concerns of her principal’s negative attitude towards A&C:
“… If I can do away with Arts and Culture and replace it with one or more foreign languages, I gladly will do so…” (T4’s principal).
Referring to the role of her colleagues, T2 added that they undermine this learning area:
“Some of my colleagues see Arts and Culture as a ‘joke subject’ and not as important within the NCS” (T2).
T3 picked up the point:
“A&C in their eyes (colleagues) is ‘worthless’ and doesn’t count as important enough in the school curriculum.”
Reporting on the role of active support structures of Senior School Management Teams (SMT’s) after the initial training workshops, T4 felt that they (SMT’s) had done nothing to introduce this new learning area to learners, parents and other stakeholders and that this had impacted negatively on teachers’ morale and professional self-belief. According to her, SMT’s did not empower teachers enough in these new changes; they themselves had no knowledge of A&C as a new learning area and how to effectively support them to put it effectively into classroom practice (T4).
Also commenting on the expected supportive role of SMT’s, T1 felt that the SMT’s should have had a thorough prior understanding of all the requirements of this learning area within the curriculum policy so as to offer the necessary support. However, according to him, this was not the case (T1).
It seems that teachers in the above extracts may need a great deal of collegial support. This is another dimension of the situation and sense-making where teachers draw on existing and collective knowledge to determine what particular policies mean, in order to decide on a response to policy makers’ recommendations. Asking respondents how they would have welcomed initiatives from the SMT during this curriculum policy change for Arts and Culture teachers T4 and T5 suggested the following strategies:
“…the identification of other teachers with experience in some of the Arts and Culture sub-disciplines which could have enhanced the effective implementation of this learning area at school level…” (T4).
“…find ways for enabling teachers to develop further expertise in Arts and Culture learning area content and teaching strategies…” (T5).
Some teachers are in need of specific guidance, in particular through interactions from peers, colleagues or groups. This could aid sense-making not only because individuals learn from each other, but also because group interactions bring insights and perspectives to the surface that otherwise might not be made visible to the group. Asking respondents which challenges they were still facing with regard to implementing A&C at schools, their responses reflected what was said above:
“Teachers from other subjects and learners should show more appreciation for Arts and Culture. There should be enough support for teachers in the form of continued teacher development programmes” (T4).
“Teachers should learn to work together on a mutual understanding for effective implementation of the learning area. Learners must also learn to show great interest and also learn to work together on tasks. Schools should avail more resources for successful implementing of Arts and Culture. Time should be spent more on practical work and less on theory” (T5).
There is also the acknowledgement of distributed expertise from local communities, such as local actors or artists who can mediate confusing situations by interacting with teachers and learners, leveraging the knowledge that is situated within these group relationships:
“We could give more opportunities to artists in visiting the school and to talk to learners about their achievements in the real ‘artistic’ world. But there should be financial assistance to achieve this” (T6).
“And I am experiencing a lack of Art and Culture resources, as well as problems for coping with very large classes” (50 learners) (T3).
In summation, the responses of the teachers is an indication that organisational arrangements are important when it comes to the implementation of policy, as they provide opportunities for the teachers to deliberate. The teachers’ feelings of not receiving support from colleagues and School Management Teams contributed to their negative disposition towards the ineffective implementation of A&C at their schools. Teachers’ feelings in this regard resonate with the findings by Spillane et al. (2002) that the interaction patterns in schools are, at least in part, a function of the overall organisational structure. As such, organisational arrangements can either hamper or enable interactions among teachers in relation to policy and practice.
Together with the above mentioned the school structures and teachers’ relationships with all of the role-players as indicated through the findings in the study, undermined opportunities for the teachers to test or be exposed to alternative understandings of policy proposals. Schools, nevertheless, vary in their ways of structuring the work of teaching and especially in the extent to which their structural arrangements support interactions among staff about their work. Such arrangements are especially influential when it comes to the adopting of innovation in schools.
This section of the inquiry has demonstrated how social contexts affect how teachers make sense of policy, by arguing that knowledge is distributed and emergent from the interactions of teachers. Such views help to explain important variations in implementation that arises from the role of context in the curriculum implementation process.
4.4 THE ROLE OF POLICY STIMULI IN ARTS AND CULTURE