SISTEMA ESTRUCTURAL

Several forms of facilitative support that a teacher receives towards the implementation of a curriculum constitute the kind of teacher capacitation, and the adequacy thereof, that is availed to him or her. Findings on Stella’s implementation practices reveal deficient teacher capacitation as a key endogenous contextual factor which Stella believed played out on her and other teachers implementing Zimbabwe’s primary school AIDS curriculum.

For Stella, there were inadequate resources in the way of curriculum materials to use for sourcing content and obtaining clear pedagogical guidelines for practice.

According to Stella, curriculum developers, as well as the Ministry of Education, did not make available copies of the syllabus teachers’ guides that were in current use.

The non-availability of resource materials resulted in Stella improvising by using the outdated Let’s Talk textbook as a reference source for implementation of the curriculum.

Regarding paucity of materials, Stella’s sentiments are consistent with the lesson observation data, which revealed a lack of curriculum materials. It was observed that Stella used mainly the Let’s Talk textbook, her scheme/plan, from which she extracted teaching matter, and the chalkboard. The limited curriculum materials that Stella used raise questions as to the depth of understanding she possessed as a teacher concerning content and pedagogy, and the learners’ degree of comprehension of some of the work.

Besides its failure to provide teachers with the resources mentioned above, the Ministry of Education contributed negatively to Stella’s implementation efforts, by allocating limited teaching time for the curriculum. Evidence from the lesson observation data confirms Stella’s concerns with teaching time, as her lessons usually took more than the prescribed 30 minutes.

One can deduce that, due to the paucity of curriculum materials, Stella responded by improvising. In one of the lessons, she used a Grade 7 Environmental Science textbook to extract content matter from, and wrote an extensive piece of text from it on the chalkboard and on sheets of paper.

Another issue raised by Stella which compounds the problem of deficient teacher capacitation was inadequate facilitative teacher implementation support by way of supervision and monitoring by the Ministry of Education and the school heads.

Stella claimed that the school inspectors have never visited her school and that at her school no one (including the head) cares to afford this curriculum the attention it deserves. It can thus be inferred from the evidence that the change leaders’ actions and decisions not to provide implementation support to Stella seemed to shape and frame her practices negatively. In terms of Honig’s model and the

change leaders towards the AIDS curriculum that negatively affects the level of commitment of teachers such as Stella. By not capacitating teachers, for whatever reason, change leaders seem to create in Stella and other teachers the impression that this curriculum is not important.

What lends credence to the inference I make above is Stella’s reference to inadequate feedback on workshops. She squarely blamed the local education authorities, whom she thought simply neglected their supportive role. Much as they operate from their offices (the “place”, in terms of Honig’s “people, policy, places”

model) as change agents carrying power and authority to pass decisions on policy enactment, their decision to not be active in the implementation of the AIDS curriculum was one that caused indignation for Stella. She commented as follows:

They are the ones who see to it that they organise things like <er> workshops.

And they are the ones who should be moving around schools to see that the curriculum is being implemented. So, once I see that they do not come, I’ll tend also not to do things in the way that is expected<er> to be done. And they are also the ones who should make sure that schools have enough resources. So, if they don’t supply us with <er> resources like syllabuses, teachers’ guides, and textbooks, what can I do as a teacher?

The analogy that I make from Stella’s sentiments is that of a classic case in which those people in decision-making offices (the “place”, in terms of Honig’s “people, policy, places” model) tend to simply delegate and defer implementation responsibility to their subordinates (the teachers), whom they have not capacitated with support to do the task. Nor did the change leaders apply pressure on the teachers to ensure implementation. It is a case where people with enormous change influence abdicate themselves of their mandate of ensuring implementation of policy, thereby creating an enormous implementation challenge to Stella in her classroom.

Exacerbating the problem mentioned above was the issue that Stella raised of the poor example her school head set regarding implementation of this curriculum.

Stella believed that her school head that should set the pace by ensuring that the curriculum is not neglected actually did not bother to monitor its implementation.

Again, in terms of Honig’s proposed model, here lies a case in which Stella’s

curriculum adaptation occurred within a context space where there was much licence, where teachers assumed any attitude towards policy that they pleased.