Some policy-related facilitative implementation dynamics

The findings of this study revealed a number of exogenous curriculum implementation factors at some levels of policy implementation that played out on Ellen as she was implementing this curriculum. I will now explore these implementation dynamics.

6.6.2.2.1 Macro-level policy-related facilitative implementation dynamics

Evidence shows that at the broad level of education policy implementation, the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education and the Curriculum Development Unit (CDU) seemed to make decisions and take actions that negatively affected Ellen’s mediation of policy in her classroom. In section 5.5.2.2.3 I posited that at certain places, some people’s inaction to support policy implementation to teachers is actually a practical implementation decision and action that affects teachers’

response to policy messages.

Ellen lamented the inadequacy of curriculum materials and resources towards the implementation of the AIDS curriculum. She believed that the Ministry of Education’s CDU was failing to make available to schools adequate textbooks and teacher guides. With a copy of the syllabus as the only available material to refer to, Ellen experienced difficulty in lesson preparation and teaching.

Ellen seemed to share a similar view to Stella on the Ministry and CDU’s dissemination of a hastily and ill-developed AIDS curriculum. Ellen’s more pronounced concern on this matter was the inadequacy of accompanying curriculum materials. Stella’s concern went beyond the non-availability of complementary

materials to the issue of curriculum developers’ failure to conceptually link the curriculum elements that make operationalisation of guidelines clear and easy.

According to Ellen, the paucity of curriculum materials which are congruent with the curriculum, such as textbooks, teacher guides, and ready-made media kits, caused teachers to have a fuzzy understanding of the curriculum and its pedagogic principles. She advocated the provision of curriculum materials with clearly laid-out instructional guidelines that make syllabus interpretation and teaching less difficult.

She remarked as follows:

Maybe they... must give us material that is laid down or broken down, so that the teaching of AIDS can be very easy. As of now, we just take it from the syllabus, and the syllabus is very shallow, and we have to find other means of making children understand.

Ellen’s sentiments above are confirmed by the fact that in her lessons I saw her use only her scheme/plan of work and a copy of the syllabus as sources of information.

She seemed to use personal intuition as her primary source of content matter to add flesh to the skeletal guidelines in her scheme/plan and her copy of the syllabus. I actually saw her writing written tasks for pupils straight from her head onto the chalkboard, and I reflected on the depth of the knowledge that she had to offer to her learners.

It seems that Ellen was aware of the aspect of depth of knowledge, as she describes the syllabus as “shallow”. Ellen thus fulfilled the need to find other means of making her pupils understand the curriculum, by using charts on HIV/AIDS, which I saw on the classroom walls.

Adding to Ellen’s implementation challenges was what she perceived to be the inadequate teaching time that the Ministry of Education had allocated for this curriculum. For Ellen, the 30 minutes allocated for the teaching of the AIDS lessons was so little that she ended up leaving out the energisers that is, some periodic warming up activities used during AIDS lessons to keep learners active, and life skills development, and she neglected to use participatory teaching methods. She perceived the time to be so little for role plays and drama that sometimes she was compelled to go into the next lesson or interrupt pupils in the middle of their

activities. Indeed, in her lessons, I noticed that she taught for much longer than the stipulated 30minutes.

For teachers to earnestly engage with change, facilitative motivation by way of supervision and monitoring is required. Ellen claimed that the Ministry did not visit schools to supervise and monitor whether teachers were implementing the AIDS curriculum properly. Ellen believed that in the absence of guidance, there was bound to be neglect of certain curriculum specifications by teachers and a lack of accountability.

6.6.2.2.2 Meso-level facilitative implementation dynamics

The findings of this study indicate the manner in which, by their actions and decisions, local education authorities at provincial and district level influenced Ellen’s operations as she taught this curriculum. Below follows a brief description of the impact of these dynamics.

According to Ellen, the local education authorities provided very few and irregular staff development workshops at provincial and district level for teachers to meet and share practising ideas. Ellen noted that even when the few workshops were made available at school district level, only a few teachers were selected and allowed to attend from her school.

Furthermore, she claimed that there were no local school district resource persons that came to impart knowledge on the implementation of the curriculum to teachers in schools.

In view of the above scenario, it means that in the context of their limited knowledge, Ellen and other teachers lacked opportunities for continuing professional teacher development for the improvement of their teaching practice. By implication, the chances that they had to enhance their knowledge remained bleak.

6.6.2.2.3 Micro-level facilitative implementation dynamics

The degree of facilitative support offered to a teacher for implementation of a curriculum has far-reaching effects on how the teacher engages in cognitive sense-making and enacts education policy. Findings from this study indicate that in some

At the school level, Ellen believed that she lacked sufficient facilitative support from her head who she said did not provide her with adequate curriculum materials, such as textbooks and teacher guides. This oversight made her teaching of the curriculum difficult. The head also did not initiate and provide school-based staff development workshops to support teachers with opportunities for learning how best to implement the curriculum. According to Ellen, only a few, irregular workshops were presented “once in a blue moon” at the school, and these were not very effective, Ellen maintained. Consequently, Ellen’s prospects of gaining knowledge from fellow teachers as they shared tacit ideas in collaborative teacher learning settings remained remote. Teaching the curriculum remained a struggle for Ellen.

According to Ellen, another issue that shaped and framed the kind of scheme/plan that she ultimately produced for her class was whether the plight of the infected children in her class was addressed. Coming as some kind of administrative, instructive advice from her school head, this obligation demanded that teachers select and handle AIDS curriculum topics in a way that prevented psychological harm being caused to infected or affected pupils. It can be argued that while this particular school policy would seem to mean well in its intentions, to implement it in the context of deficient teacher capacitation is a matter of contention.

6.6.2.3 Characteristics of the curriculum

The influence of the characteristics of a curriculum on a teacher’s cognitive sense-making and mutation, with regard to the intrinsic nature of the curriculum and its specifications, has so far been established in this study. Evidence shows that in some important ways, the extent of the clarity and the complexity of the AIDS curriculum played out on Ellen’s interpretation of policy messages from this curriculum, as well as her actual teaching practice.

Data from the interviews conducted revealed that, while Ellen found the AIDS curriculum specifications to be generally clear, she did not clearly understand how to operationalise some of the topics into teaching. She said that she rated the clarity of the curriculum at “50%”, as only some of the topics and teaching methods were clear to her. Her sentiments to this effect were: