Teachers’ representations of the implementation of the Zimbabwean Social Studies 2015-2022 curriculum: challenges and mitigation strategies.
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Date
2019
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Abstract
Zimbabwe and her Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education undertook an updated curriculum to guide teaching and learning from 2015 up to 2022 after noticing that the education system was too redundant to effectively help in the socio-economic
transformation of the country. However, the unpremeditated launch of the new curriculum in which Social Studies was embedded invited disparagements and public hullabaloos from key stakeholders professing the uncertainty of the feasibility of the implementation. This thesis investigated the teachers’ representations of the nature of the challenges that they faced in implementing the Social Studies curriculum and the strategies to curtail the glitches, syphoning insights from the Ubuntu philosophy and Fullan’s (2015) theory on educational change. As such, the study was guided by the two theoretical frameworks, resulting in the application of epistemological pluralism within the education system. The research, cast as a descriptive and interpretive case study engrained in the qualitative paradigm made use of semi-structured interviews, observations and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) to capture the teachers’ experiences and views on the challenges they were experiencing in the implementation of the 2015- 2022 curriculum and the mitigation strategies thereof. A total of 12 purposively sampled Zimbabwean teachers drawn from six schools located in the urban, rural, growth point and farm set ups participated in the current study. The findings revealed that Zimbabwe adopted the top-down approach in the dissemination of the new curriculum, devoid of the teachers’ consultations and participation. It emerged that the Social Studies curriculum had trekked an abstruse and ambivalent landscape in a volatile economic environment resulting in trenchant problems demonstrated by innumerable challenges such as inadequate resources, lack of training for teachers, too large a workload, poor public relations and lack of teacher representatives in the construction of Social Studies content. The study discovered that the basis of Ubuntu that the curriculum claims to hinge on is just on paper but practically it is not applied. Thus, the remedy to the challenges of Social Studies curriculum centres on the return to and application of “the usable past” which embraces Ubuntu values as explicated by Mbigi’s (2005) Collective Finger Theory (CFT) and Fullan’s theory of educational change. Implications are that, there is need to consult teachers in curriculum change, wherein their concerns and voices are listened to. The study elucidates the need for a collective psyche in educational change in which curriculum planners engage the teachers in curriculum construction. The study recommends the employment of an integrated approach, thereby “ubuntulising” educational change which merges the benefits of both the top-down approach and
bottom-up approach; a specific and comprehensive teacher’ training; global partnership in resource mobilisation; enlisting teachers as developers of the Social Studies content; and improving cordial relations among educators to better school practices and policies. The study suggests the revival of the “usable past” which captures traditional African customs, work ethics and beliefs to perfect curriculum reform and implementation process.
Description
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.