The National Curriculum Statement setting

Curriculum 2005 (C2005) was launched in 1997, framed in a discourse of hope and aspirations. Whereas the apartheid curriculum was rooted in segregation, inequality and racism, C2005 framed education in relation to the transformation process and goals such as equity, democracy and redress. However, several contextual factors limited the potential of C2005: these included unemployment and poverty in many communities, as well as very high learner-teacher ratios and levels of teacher education. In contrast to most schools in poor communities, fee-paying schools were able to access additional funds to employ more and better trained teachers, thus keeping teacher-learner ratios low and ensuring better quality teaching. There were thus substantial and continuing inequalities among schools, reflected in differential abilities to implement an outcomes-based curriculum. During a curriculum review process in 2000 it was highlighted among other things that C2005 was vague on content and disciplinary knowledge and that this had a detrimental effect on the learning and cognitive development of learners, particularly those at disadvantaged schools (Curriculum Review Committee, 2000). After this first review, teachers had to work with an interim document, the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS, 1997) that became the finalized version of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS, 2003).

The NCS builds on Curriculum 2005 which foregrounded Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) as the “foundation for the curriculum in South Africa”. This OBE approach advocated the importance of learning programmes with clearly stipulated outcomes that needed to be relevant and appropriate to the current and anticipated future needs of the

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individual, society, commerce and industry. This is a move away from the apartheid curriculum built on a syllabus-oriented view: here, by contrast, the teacher not only takes responsibility for the mediation of content but promotes critical thinking and problem solving in real life contexts and measures learners’ progress in such skills. The NCS thus continued the promotion of this learner-centred approach, drawing on constructivist teaching approaches (see NCS, 2003, pp.1-4). However, like C2005, the NCS takes successful implementation for granted, because teachers in general and even more so those on the margins in disadvantaged contexts were required to implement it unquestioningly with or without theoretical knowledge of constructivist teaching and pedagogy.

Language and discourses in the NCS

The NCS policy document was published in 2003 at a time when stakeholders were beginning to evaluate the successes and failures of the new outcomes-based policies implemented after 1994, including Curriculum 2005. Thus, unsurprisingly, the purpose of the NCS policy document was to introduce and provide content information on the new curriculum after the first curriculum review (2000). The NCS dealt with issues of curriculum change, learners, teaching and learning, and was intended for teachers, school managers, district and provincial education officials, publishers, parents, academics and teacher training institutions as well as the general public. The lay-out of the policy document (see NCS, 2003) consisted of a title page that was followed by information on how to read the policy, a contents page, an overview and background that contained definitions, followed by a chronological chapter by chapter sequence. Consistent with other documents related to state legislation, the language was formal, technical and impersonal, with many definitions and explanations that explicitly included purposes, motivations, and provisions summarized in various sections of the policy. For this reason, the policy can be seen as a macro genre incorporating several social purposes: to provide information about the changes and explanations on how to implement them; to persuade stakeholders of the necessity and the value of the changes; and to provide procedures on ways to ensure implementation.

However, there were no acknowledgements of the information sources informing NCS (2003): few in-text references and no bibliographical details were present. In fact, the only two in-text references in the policy were the Constitution (1996) and the DBE (see the National Curriculum Statement, 2003, pp.1 and 5). This portrayed the DBE as the custodian

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of knowledge, and thereby- even more importantly - portrayed the information in the policy as accurate and incontestable knowledge from above. Therefore, teachers’ agency was represented as minimal, undermining their identity as qualified professionals of education and pedagogy. This subtext projected positive affect for bureaucratic knowledge as hierarchical, factual and able to be implemented without problems in local school contexts.

A second feature of the introduction of the NCS (see 2003, p. 1) was its framing in discourses of democracy, social transformation, human rights, social justice, unity and quality of life for all South Africans. “The adoption of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996) provided a basis for curriculum transformation and development in South Africa” (NCS, 2003, p.1). Framing the new curriculum as politically committed towards the promotion of redress, equality and equity was an indication of positive appreciation for qualities associated with democracy and a positioning of education as the pivotal point from which to alter the consequences of the past. However, this document projected a mono-vocal stance that was not to be contested, indicative of the power relations between role-players that contributed towards framing policy, as well as how policy from the top should be interpreted and acted upon. This approach made the NCS a site of discursive struggles between competing but unequal interests such as curriculum advisors, teachers and teacher unions.

In relation to language education, the NCS included a significant transformation, from traditional language teaching towards embracing a progressive theoretical underpinning that combined diverse theories such as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), as well as Process and Text-based approaches to teaching and assessing language (pp. 46-47). The NCS emphasizes the importance of texts (“Texts are, therefore, the main source of ‘content’ and ‘context’ for the communicative, integrated learning and teaching of all languages,” p.46), and thus the framing of text-based approaches repositions and reconfigures pedagogical discourse in relation to language teaching as a new set of specialized rules and skills for language teachers. However, the NCS provided policy direction but lacked guidance about the underlying linguistic theory and the associated metalanguage to enable explicit talk about language in relation to content, contexts and method. Therefore, the NCS approach addressed the extent that teachers’ understanding of text-based approaches could and would be supported to assist with implementation; but it disregarded the skills-based approaches that most teachers had been trained in and the instructional habitus they would

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thus have developed, and expected that the NCS would automatically lead to change in pedagogical practices. As a result, the NCS as the official reform document contained two types of discourses: one that focused on institutional regulations for implementing the curriculum effectively, and another that centred on the new pedagogy and methods for teaching language. It drew on history, political convictions and current democratic rhetoric to promote agreement around change, while preserving and renewing hegemonic power relations. The next section draws together the patterns that developed in relation to institutional positioning of power in policy formulation.

Institutional discourse as positioning of power

In the introductory sections, the NCS (2003, pp.1-6) is portrayed as an agent, receiving human-like agency through material and processes: “... it… lays a foundation…aims… seeks…adopts….specifies…..builds...” This positioning calls for some kind of reaction from teachers, because if the NCS ‘does’, then teachers need to play their part by actively participating and embracing the new curriculum. Furthermore, the NCS’s authority and power was further established through the use of declarative statements that were mostly devoid of attitude, affect and negotiation. This resulted in a faceless stance, portraying the NCS as firm in its pursuit of conveying impartial, neutral and objective knowledge. These declaratives were visible in definitions and explanations of new information and carried representational meaning of ‘what is’ as a means to reconstruct teachers and teaching practices from ‘what was’. This implicitly hinted at the DBE’s conscious judgement against ‘what was’: that is, against past structured values, beliefs and behaviours in the field. Moreover, the introduction of the NCS drew on a political discourse that attempted to create a sense of national unity in the field and foregrounded repetitive frames of democracy, social transformation, human rights and social justice. In this way, the new information regarding the curriculum received minimal resistance: consensus was crafted by strategically linking the Constitution (1996) and the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy (DBE, 2001) to the principles and foundations of the NCS. Framing the new curriculum in this way established common values and beliefs around implementing change, transformation, equality and equity but it also created an assumed relationship between the curriculum and the emotional rhetoric. The political overtones aimed at continuing the process of transformation in the field explicitly situated teachers and pedagogy at the forefront of changing the way society and schools operated. As a result,

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teachers were expected to think about teaching and learning in different ways and move away from apartheid education with its emphasis on transmission pedagogy, content and teacher-centred teaching. Similarly, the overtly political discourse, the absence of other voices and the presentation of the NCS as an object reinforced the implication that this text was not to be contested because it endorsed, recognized and sanctioned qualities of effective teaching and learning. The institutional discourses in the policy thus imposed pedagogy, content and assessment, rendering the new rules for pedagogy as natural and common-sense principles and practices.

Teacher script: Content and ways of doing

The NCS (2003) advocates a communicative approach together with a text-based approach and states that both should be dependent on the continuous use and production of texts. Thus the underlying view of language is that language is functional and that it is through language that society gets things done. The functionalist theory is rooted in the belief that language occurs in particular cultural and social contexts, that it is understood in relation to these contexts and that these contexts influence the language and word choices that occur in texts. It is therefore consistent with an explicit focus on genres and their associated textual and linguistic features. The NCS (2003, p. 47) states,

Texts are produced in particular contexts with particular purposes and audiences in mind. Different categories of texts have different functions and follow particular conventions in terms of structure, style, grammar, vocabulary and content. These are referred to as genres. Learners need to be able to understand and to produce a range of different genres.

Texts also reflect the cultural and political contexts in which they are created. The language used in texts carries messages regarding the cultural values and political standpoints of the persons who have written or designed them. Thus texts are not neutral. Learners need to be able to interpret and respond to the values and attitudes in texts.

Thus, in a text-based approach, language is always explored in texts, and texts are explored in relation to their contexts. The approach involves attention to formal aspects of language (grammar and vocabulary) but as applied in texts. In order to talk about texts, learners need a ‘meta-language’ – they need to know the words that describe different aspects of grammar, vocabulary, style, and different genres.

Through foregrounding and the repetitive theme of ‘text’ it was clear that the NCS advocated a text-based approach, where language is viewed as a tool for thought and

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communication, and in which a range of literacies are necessary so that learners can effectively participate in a democratic society, in the workplace and in the global economy. Also, the notion that “Different categories of texts have different functions and follow particular conventions in terms of structure, style, grammar, vocabulary and content” is rooted in Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory (SFL) that argues for an approach where learners develop the ability to use the language to get things done in real contexts as opposed to only teaching them grammatically correct statements. Furthermore, SFL text- based approaches see social purpose, language and context as interrelated in texts just as the NCS indicates in pointing out that “...in a text-based approach, language is always explored in texts, and texts are explored in relation to their contexts”. Therefore, teachers would need a theoretical grounding in SFL theory and its linguistic frameworks in order to scaffold language use in social contexts effectively; and language teachers in primary and secondary schools should therefore not only have English subject knowledge but also knowledge of a linguistically informed pedagogy such as SFL.

However, the policy did not explicitly refer to SFL or other contexts where the theory might have originated, nor to how the theory connected with previous behaviourist or ‘process approach’ language theories, nor to ways in which teachers needed to negotiate a new kind of identity in relation to text-based pedagogies and the associated discourses. Information about the theory was conveyed via declarative statements to teachers as key players accountable for implementing the language curriculum. The assumption in the policy was that teachers only needed information on the language theories in order to transform pedagogy and individual teaching values.

The next section analyses the latest curriculum change, the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement for Languages (CAPS, 2011) that was developed after a Review Committee (2009) recommended that the NCS be streamlined into one comprehensive document for every learning area as a support for all teachers and a means of addressing the complexities and confusion created by the NCS’s vagueness, lack of specification, and consequent document proliferation and misinterpretation.

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