A caveat to note for analytical purposes in this thesis is that I appraise issues through the conceptual lenses of the phenomenological-adaptive approach, Honig’s
“people, policy, and places” model, and the cognitive sense-making model. Broadly speaking, individual teachers make sense of and mutate a curriculum in a manner that they personally understand at particular policy mediation venues.
Phenomenologically, Stella’s written versions of her understanding of the AIDS curriculum constitute her symbolic representations of her implementation of the curriculum with learners. Thus, themes derived from the schemes/plans represent Stella’s general codification of this curriculum. They can be connected with themes from interview data, to gain a fuller picture of Stella’s cognitive sense-making of this curriculum at the symbolic level of implementation.
5.4.1.1 Document analysis theme: Codifying an essentially cognitivist approach, with behaviourist undertones
Stella’s conception of the ideal way of implementing the national AIDS curriculum seemed to lean towards an essentially cognitivist approach. A cognitivist approach to teaching and learning basically emphasises development of learners’ intellect, mainly through in-depth mastery of subject matter. Predominant representation of subject matter materials that favour intellectual actualisation in learners seems to confirm this inclination. Content centres on the impartation of factual knowledge in the form of topics and concepts. Stella’s assertion that she uses the textbook methods of “reading and analysing situations from textbooks” and “reading stories from textbooks” seems to confirm her use of a cognitivist conception, as such learning activities favour the development of the intellect in learners. This oral
assertion is represented in the broad interview theme “A cognitivist, pragmatic epistemology with behaviourist undertones” which describes Stella’s beliefs about the teaching of this curriculum. Furthermore, Stella’s scheme/plan reflects the same possible theme of “Relationships”, which spans seven of the 13 weeks of the term’s work. Although it does not explicitly show in the scheme/plan, the topics and concepts for seven consecutive weeks are subsumed in the “Relationships” theme.
From a cognitivist perspective, repetition of the same broad idea over a space of time is meant to increase learners’ depth of understanding of content, thereby developing their intellect.
In her written version, Stella omitted themes and life skills as integral content dimensions related to topics and concepts that she suggested. In the interview, Stella intimated that themes were omitted from her plan, simply because she did not have a copy of the current syllabus, but used the outdated Let’s Talk textbook, which did not list themes. This omission meant that learners would not be assisted to gain broad and integrated ideas from what they would have learned.
Consistent with the above evidence pointing to Stella’s cognitivist inclination, interview data confirms her epistemological position of knowledge impartation. She categorically stated:
Okay, myself, what I believe is for pupils at least to have knowledge about AIDS itself as a subject, as deadly disease<er>, rather than skills, skills, skills...I think knowledge <er> will be of important use to them.
By implication, Stella omitted life skills in her scheme/plan not only because of her lack of awareness of the need to explicitly teach them, but probably because of the blind spot seemingly created by her somewhat persistent belief in impartation of knowledge as the hallmark of implementation of this curriculum.
It is important to remember that to say impartation of factual knowledge emphasises cognitive development is not to imply that factual knowledge always leads to intellectual development. Rather, in terms of the AIDS curriculum, life skills address all facets of human development, namely intellectual, social, emotional, moral and spiritual development (MoESC, 2009:16).
In contrast with Stella’s cognitivist approach, there were some behaviourist undertones which were evident in her scheme/plan. Her plan reflects a behaviourist, programmatic approach to teaching, where Stella broke content down into smaller teaching units, arranged in sequence according to a weekly focus. Behaviourist objectives were evident in her plan, which described observable actions and behaviour learners should demonstrate at the end of each week. The idea was to have learners respond to units of knowledge as learning stimuli, to master these units, and then to proceed to subsequent units, presumably after successful mastery.
Thus, through the process of successive approximation and shaping, Stella’s learners would undergo shaping of certain competencies in her programme. In the interview, Stella confirmed the use of a conceptual analysis of content, and she stated her behaviourist objectives. This is reflected in a sub-theme that I termed “a behaviourist-pragmatist conception of the AIDS curriculum” subsumed in the above-stated broad interview theme. Her programme would be pragmatic in the sense that learners would utilise the acquired knowledge about HIV/AIDS “to confront situations as they present themselves”.
However, of major concern is the fact that the evidence suggests that Stella had a confused understanding of content. It appears that Stella did not conceive of shaping of competencies in terms of themes and life skills, but in terms of mastery of subject matter and, perhaps to a remote extent, life skills. In the same vein, it is difficult to comprehend Stella’s conception of content. She seemed to be unclear of the distinction between topics, content, and themes. For her, the broader ideas occurred in the form of concepts broken down into topics. This is in conflict with curriculum developers’ view of themes as the broader ideas from which topics and concepts are derived. Stella simply understood concepts in terms of their function in guiding her scheduled, programmatic teaching. She stated thus:
You know, a concept is rather<er> a broad topic. It is there to guide me what I must teach for the week.
In addition to the above issues, the content aspect of “caring for children infected or affected by HIV/AIDS” seemed to be intimidating for Stella. Stella excluded this dimension, thereby failing to comply with the specifications of the AIDS curriculum.
Triangulated data from the interviews confirms her conception of exclusively imparting knowledge, and not caring for her learners. She stated:
I thought I left it out, because it was not <er> part of my duty to do the caring.
Myself, I do the education part of it, I educate, and then when there are pupils who need care, that is done by supportive teachers.
She absolved herself of the responsibility of caring for her learners, abdicating the responsibility to other role players. Thus in her conceptualisation of the content of the curriculum, Stella seemed to be unaware of the fact that the “educating role “that she purported to play included educating learners on how to take their antiretroviral medication at home and at school, for example.
Regarding the pedagogy of this curriculum, Stella seemed to have understood discussion and picture codes as the only key participatory methods for effective teaching of AIDS lessons for the whole term, to the exclusion of the various other participatory methods. Her plan suggests that she proposed to use more of the traditional teaching methods found in the teaching of other subjects and suggestive of the lecture method, for about one-third of the programme in the term. It appears that Stella was unaware of the idea that only through the use of a variety of participatory methods, such as role play, case study, values clarification, Futures’
wheel, Devil’s advocate, etc., could learners personalise and internalise content issues, thereby acquiring life skills. Stella was able to suggest only a few interactive teaching methods. Implicit in the interactive nature of this curriculum is the belief that it is only through activities involving talking about situations relating to HIV/AIDS that learners can learn HIV/AIDS prevention strategies.
From the foregoing evidence, it seems logical to tentatively characterise Stella’s symbolic representation of the implementation of the AIDS curriculum as a configuration which is indicative of the impartation of knowledge more than life skills, through Stella’s use of predominantly teacher-centred teaching methods, as opposed to learner-centred methods. It seems plausible for me to conclude that regarding adaptation of the content of this curriculum, Stella’s personal configurations tended to run counter to curriculum developers’ conceptions.
In the domain of education practice, it is accepted that what is taught to learners depends on the educator’s professional expertise. Thus, the jargon phrase “the science and art of teaching” that people use in this domain highlights the concept of pedagogy. It is to the major findings regarding Stella’s proposed pedagogy that I now draw the reader’s attention.
A complete picture of Stella’s implementation practices would be obtained by observing her actualising the version of the curriculum that she had codified. At the symbolic level of curriculum implementation, the foregoing findings suggest teaching patterns that could be either confirmed or refuted by lesson observations and further interviews.