Teacher challenges experienced during indigenous knowledge integration

Natural Sciences (NS) teachers in South Africa have struggled to cope with the introduction and implementation of a number of new policies and curricula within a short time after the first democratic elections (Cronje, 2011). Gouws and Dicker (2007) found that science teachers felt inadequately trained, and lacked the necessary knowledge and skills to meet the new curricula demands. As such, the South African education system was regarded as being in disarray in that respect (Antoniou, De Beer & Ramnarain, 2014).

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In South Africa, the NS curriculum divides the teaching and learning of science into four main strands: Life and living, Planet earth and beyond. It is important to note that this fragmented approach to integrating IK in these strands as observed by Khupe and Keane (2014) provides a surface understanding and deprives the learners of an in-depth understanding of IK, considering the privileged status of WK (Snively & Corsiglia, 2001). This approach is viewed as contributing towards the lack of IK-integration into science teaching and learning.

Research shows that most science teachers do acknowledge that IK needs to be incorporated into the science curriculum (Msimanga & Shiza, 2014; Sjoberg & Schreiner, 2010; Aikenhead & Ogawa, 2007). However, this is still not evident in their lessons, as they still lack the know- how of how to integrate IK (Cronje et al., 2015; Cronje, 2011; Hlanganani & Motlhabane, 2014) and the motivation to do it.

Mothwa (2011) conducted an explanatory, mixed method research study where she focused on the Life Sciences teachers’ lived experiences in incorporating IK in their science teaching in the classroom. The teachers responded to the questionnaire, which was commissioned by GDE, in the first part of this study. Based on their responses, an individual interview protocol was then set up, conducted, recorded, transcribed and then analysed. In addition to this, the researcher also did classroom observations and looked at the teachers’, as well as the learners’, portfolios, together with the Grade 12 examination scripts. The findings in this study revealed that teachers are facing a number of challenges related to the integration of IK in their lessons. Her findings are in line with a number of challenges that have been exposed by the literature (Mothwa, 2011; Sakayombo, 2014; Sheya, 2014; Visagie, 2016; Akerele, 2016), thus explaining why teachers are still struggling and still seem to resist or ignore the call to incorporate IK into their lessons in classrooms.

Based on the above findings, the integration of IK in NS SP classrooms still remains, to this end, a challenge, and there have been a number of multiple teacher challenges for integrating IK revealed by the literature despite the fact that teachers have received a number of professional developments on this aspect from their subject facilitators. Most of these teachers still do not attempt to integrate IK into their teaching and research is still ongoing on what could be the cause (Onwu & Ogunniyi, 2006).

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This study conceptualises the various challenges derived from the literature (Mothwa, 2011; Reddy, De Beer & Petersen, 2017; Sakayombo, 2014; Visagie, 2016; Akerele, 2016; Sheya, 2014), that teachers are facing in the integration of IK in their lessons by grouping them into three levels: personal level, classroom level and integration level. The teacher challenges grouped at a personal level entail those challenges that emanate from the teachers’ personal circumstances. This level includes challenges like teachers’ views, teachers’ schooling and training programmes, and teachers’ lack of confidence. One major challenge stems from the inadequate views about the nature of indigenous knowledge that teachers harbour. In Ogunniyi’s (2004) study, the findings revealed that most teachers struggle to understand the nature of science and that of their own IK. The teachers themselves have not been exposed to this type of training that includes IK. When teachers were attending school and also undergoing their teacher training, IK was never mentioned, and it was not part of their learning.

Those teacher challenges like the teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), teachers’ use of instructional strategies, teachers’ capacity to elicit learners’ IK, a lack of resources and poor textbooks are grouped as teacher challenges at classroom level. These are challenges that teachers experience inside the classroom that hinder the integration of IK.

The integration level challenges encompass the many curricular reforms, the teachers’ fear of being accused of teaching pseudo-science, the department’s top-down approach, a lack of support from school management teams and district officials, and the poor professional development programmes. Integration challenges are those challenges that involve the process of IK-integration. The many curricular reforms that South African, including other African countries’, science education has undergone has contributed to teachers’ lack of understanding of what is expected of them and the resultant hurdles associated with the successful implementation of IK-integration in science classrooms. Most of the perennial problems as a result of these challenges have been orchestrated by the fact that curricular change is a difficult and problematic process (Davis, 2006). The findings from Sethole’s (2001) study revealed that teachers were unsure of what their focus should be during the IK-integration in the classroom. To make matters worse, the policy directives stipulating the IK-integration in science classrooms lack a comprehensible guiding framework on how to bring about this integration, thus making curriculum interpretation difficult and almost impossible to achieve. This has led to many teachers losing confidence and the motivation to integrate IK into their science classrooms.

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