This study investigated the conceptual learning of the Business Studies Curriculum Recovery Plan (BSCRP) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crisis resilience pedagogy requires teachers to incorporate resilience and flexible strategies to enable learners to cope with unexpected events (Chow, et al., 2020). Informed by qualitative research methodology, data were collected from document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. Thirteen participants, including teachers, departmental heads, principals, subject advisors, and curriculum designers, were purposively chosen for the study. Crisis resiliencepedagogy attributes adaptability, creativity, connectivity, diversity, and endurance were evident to different degrees. Redesigning the DBE website, trimming the curriculum, and amending instructional materials showed adaptability. Video, podcasts, interactive quizzes, and monitoring Google Forms demonstrated creativity. Connectivity between learners, parents, teachers, principals, and subject advisors was enabled through WhatsApp groups. Microsoft Teams and Zoom were used for meetings. Text, voice, and videobased instruction were employed to meet the diverse needs of the learners. Participants indicated hardships in continuing work duties amidst trauma and bemoaned insufficient and inadequate psychological support during the pandemic. This study extends the crisis resilience pedagogy model by including what learners did and should be doing.

Research on epistemological beliefs has been a prominent focal area of study across the globe. Perry, who did the earliest research on this topic, defined epistemological beliefs as an individual's assumptions about the nature of knowledge, its boundaries, its accuracy, and its acquisition and emphasised its relevance in classroom practices. Business Studies literature on epistemological beliefs is scarce, particularly in South Africa. Given the current Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the government has implemented a curriculum recovery plan (CRP) that prioritises the restoration of learning lost in the 2020 academic year. The primary objective was to investigate participants' epistemological beliefs and practices in relation to the Business Studies CRP. The data was obtained from 13 purposively selected participants through the methods of document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. The findings of this study indicated that the crisis conditions did shift participants' epistemological beliefs and practices. The participants accepted to remove topics that were redundant and deterrent to future careers. The teachers' pedagogical practices experienced transformation, with the implementation of novel teaching methodologies. The findings also suggest that the study participants learned to construct and use creative assessment methods like baseline activities to identify learning gaps and interactive quizzes to test knowledge acquisition.

Social constructivism is the dominant pedagogical theory endorsed in educational discourse today. This study set out to examine teaching and learning in Grade 11 business studies classrooms from a social constructivist perspective. The data were obtained through document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. While the teachers were positive towards social constructivist pedagogy, they were not familiar with the epistemology that underpinned its emergence. The learning of multiple perspectives through discussion, a key tenet of the social constructivist theory of learning, was not evident. Teachers indicated that they preferred direct instruction, as it enabled curriculum coverage and better control over learners. Teachers viewed social constructivist approaches as slowing down syllabus coverage and leading to loss of control in overcrowded classrooms. Limited time and higher workload due to larger classes were common deterrents.

The initial primary teacher education (IPTE) curriculum policy was revised in 2016 and implemented in 2017 in Malawi (Ministry of Education, 2021). This study investigates teacher educators' (TE) understanding and experiences in two teacher training colleges. The study is informed by the cognitivist theory of Spillane et al. (2002). Following a qualitative research design, data were collected through face-to-face interviews with teacher educators and principals. Classroom lesson observations were used to triangulate interview data. Data analysis showed that teacher educators' superficial understanding of the espoused goals, content, and pedagogy of the IPTE impedes effective teacher education. The study found that the implementation of the revised IPTE curriculum is constrained by ineffective re-education and orientation of lecturers to the revised curriculum; unavailability of qualified lecturers; the duration and mode of training; the lack of teaching and learning resources; and TEs that are not being supported by the Ministry of Education officials. The study also shows that superficial understanding and ineffective implementation of the IPTE policy by educational stakeholders, such as lecturers, also comprises the quality of primary teacher education in Malawi. Based on the findings, several recommendations are made to improve the implementation of the IPTE in the country. These recommendations have implications both in Malawi and beyond.

While there have been several calls for decolonising the curriculum in South Africa, more needs to be done at the level of policy development and especially its implementation. The curriculum decolonisation impetus gained a few years back has abated somewhat, and there is a need to reinstate its significance amidst other imperatives we face in the current troubling times. There appears to be a reluctance to continue the decolonising journey, not least of all because of the continuing dominance of European hegemony in almost all facets of the lives of decolonised people, especially evident in the education sector, and specifically through the curriculum. The paper argues that without the decolonisation of the predominantly Eurocentric curriculum, the achievement of justice for the colonised remains elusive. This entails focusing the decolonisation debate from the objectification of the colonised to centring the African being, a reconceptualisation of epistemology as pluriversal and greater visibility of the colonised and coloniality as pre-conditions for decolonising the curriculum. The article reviews the South African response to decolonial insights and considers their implications for higher education curriculum development and practice. It identifies changing attitudes of, and ownership by, academic staff as a key challenge in the implementation of a decolonised curriculum and concludes with tabulating the implication of key concepts of decolonial theory for the curriculum.

The 21st century has ushered in accelerated new technologies, new knowledge and new information and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) – causing rapid changes in the way humans live and work and resulting in an outcry for educational reforms globally. Many frameworks and debates centred on rethinking and reshaping the curriculum including what knowledge, skills, values and attitudes should be taught to prepare learners to thrive in the 21st century, have been developed. This study examined the students’ conceptions of 21st century education in four diverse schools in Zimbabwe. The study is framed by the powerful theory and the complexity theory. The study used a quantitative non-experimental correlation design to collect data from four secondary schools, three of which follow the ZIMSEC syllabus and the other, a private school that follows a Cambridge syllabus. The questionnaire was adapted from the Partnership for 21st century framework (P21) and (Ravitz, 2014) to fit the Zimbabwean context. A total of 236 students and 93 took part. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and ANOVA were used to analyse the data. The results showed that the students’ conception of 21st century skills is defined by three factors: the learning of self-management, learning skills and values and learning process. Students most strongly endorsed self-management. It is envisaged that the proposed model of Zimbabwean students’ conceptions of 21st century skills will act as a baseline for theory, policymakers, head teachers, teachers and teacher education colleges to realign the current teaching to fit the 21st century curricula.

While three million youth in South Africa are not in education, employment or training (NEETS), not much is known about their schooling experiences nor their aspirations for the future. Eighty-seven post-school youth (PSY) were enrolled at a youth development and organisation (IYDO) centre in a Black township to the south-east of Johannesburg. This paper analyses the perspectives of these post-school youths of their formal schooling experiences and their aspirations for the future. The paper is framed by Willis’s (2000) theory of the basic educational paradigm at the heart of the teaching relationship and intentional resistance from working class boys. Analysis of data showed the failure of the schools attended by the participants in providing a reasonable standard and quality of education as the main cause of dropping out of school. In spite of challenging structural constraints both historical and current, these post-school youth are not disaffected nor disengaged from quality education. Contrary to the literature, they aspire for a better life and for educational opportunities that would enable them to access professional and managerial jobs and upward social mobility. Appadurai’s (2004) theory of culture of aspiration enabled making sense of participants’ aspirations. The issue of post school youth requires not only alternative post school programmes but also attention to schooling practices within formal secondary school education.

Purpose: This study sought to investigate the challenges which schools are facing in implementing inclusive education in mainstream primary schools in Zomba district. Methodology: Qualitative research method which employed a case study design was used. Thirty-four participants were involved in this study. These were purposely sampled. Data was collected through interviews, documents review and classroom lesson observations to provide methodological triangulation. Data was analyzed using thematic content analysis method inductively. Results: The results of the study indicated that the implementation of inclusive education is facing a number of challenges such as ineffective orientation of head teachers and teachers to inclusive education, unavailability of teaching and learning materials for special needs learners in the mainstream schools, lack of special needs specialist teachers and lack of infrastructure suitable for the diverse special education needs learners. Unique contribution to theory and practice: The study recommended, that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology officers, that is the District Education Managers and the Primary Education Advisors involved in the implementation of inclusive education need to ensure that there is effective orientation training of the head-teachers teachers and teachers on inclusive education. The Ministry of education, Science and Technology should provide teaching and learning materials for the special education needs learners in the mainstream schools.

From a cognitivist theory stance, domain-specific subject knowledge is necessary for deep learning and cognitive advance. What opportunities for deep learning and cognitive advance are provided in geography classrooms? This analysis of teaching in geography classrooms is framed by the concepts of deep learning, pedagogic discourse, and a curriculum of engagement. This article draws on Grade 10 and 11 lessons observed, recorded, transcribed, analysed and qualitatively interpreted. Analysis of pedagogic discourse shows diminished opportunities for deep learning and cognitive advance. Geography is being taught in less elaborated ways and more for compliance, thereby hindering deep learning of the epistemic structure of geography. Furthermore, surface features of the curriculum including knowledge as "given" have displaced attention to underlying principles and conceptual meanings. These practices deny learners access to deep learning of powerful knowledge. Implications for social equality and teacher education are raised.

Initial tests of the curriculum design coherence model (McPhail, 2020) indicate that teachers face challenges in relation to engaging deeply with the epistemic structure of their subject. In this study, we discuss the additional difficulty that teachers have in identifying appropriate content and examples that will provide opportunities for students’ concept formation. The key question guiding this study was: “What opportunities for deep conceptual learning and cognitive advance are provided in business studies classrooms?” This analysis of the pedagogic practices of teachers is framed by the curriculum design coherence model (CDC) that is informed by deep learning from the cognitivist theory perspective. This article gives an account of observations of grade 11 business studies lessons in two schools. The lessons were observed, recorded, transcribed, and deductively analysed according to an analytical framework based on the CDC model. While there was evidence of concepts that were taught, appropriate subject content necessary for understanding the concept was not evident in most of the lessons. The dominant pedagogy of direct instruction, reading definitions, and copying notes amounted to giving students the definition of concepts and their basic components in a skeletal way. Content that requires students to analyse and infer meanings and make generalisations was lacking. The absence of appropriate content and examples, such as case studies in the textbook, curtailed opportunities for deep conceptual learning and cognitive advance. These practices deny learners access to the formal academic knowledge of the discipline.

There is sufficient evidence to suggest that post-apartheid curriculum reform has failed to produce the desired equity in performance for South African learners. Research on classroom practice preceding the current Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS; see Department of Basic Education, 2011), showed very slow pacing of knowledge as a cause of poor performance. Among other complex changes the CAPS regulates the pacing of knowledge. Adherence to prescribed CAPS pacing has been enforced in schools via monitoring tools by hierarchical management structures. In this study, I sought to investigate the impact of the new pacing regime on teaching and learning. The study is framed by Bernstein's theory (2004) that pacing carries invisible social class assumptions, and cognitivist theory (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002) that teachers' individual cognition is influenced by situated cognition and policy signals. I ask two questions: "How does the new pacing regime impact the pedagogic code and pedagogic discourse in lessons?" and "What are teachers' views on how the new pacing regime impacts teaching and learning?" Based in a qualitative research design, in-depth interviews with teachers and classroom observations provided the main data sources. Data analysis shows that the strong pacing of knowledge has unintended consequences: the pedagogic code is lexicalized and hence impoverished and pedagogic discourse contains far too little elaboration for slower learners to facilitate acquisition. The curriculum policy on pacing and hierarchical monitoring of enactment of pacing distracts teachers from the pedagogic goal of supporting learning. Furthermore, teachers are focusing solely on keeping up with the prescribed pacing although they doubt that average and slower learners are learning at that pace. These learners are being left behind and excluded from acquiring the elaborated pedagogic code, its abstract orientation to meaning, and the specialization of their identity. It is highly possible that the current curriculum reform will fail to produce the desired social justice and equity in performance.

Studies of the representation of sexualities in textbooks have tended to focus on inclusion and coverage of diverse content through thematic analysis. This analysis of a sample of LO textbooks is framed by the systematic linguistic framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), specifically Fairclough’s (2001) theory of discourse as ideological meanings encoded in text. The sections on sex education in three popularly used LO textbooks have been analysed to make explicit the heteronormative meanings conveyed through language used. This article provides insight into how the language in the LO texts function to legitimate the dominant discourse of a particular type of heterosexuality: monogamy for the primary purpose of reproduction. The implications of this bias are raised and recommendations for fair representation of LGBT sexual orientations are made.

The national government in Malawi implemented a new Curriculum: the Primary Curriculum and Assessment Reform in 2007. The purpose of this study was to investigate the enactment of one of the Learning areas, Expressive Arts in three urban and three rural schools in Zomba district where teachers were first trained to teach Expressive Arts. The study is framed by the Productive Pedagogies framework (Lingard, Hayes, Ladwig, Mills, Bahr et al., 2001). Following a qualitative research design, data were collected through observation and post-observation interviews. Data analysis showed limited productive pedagogies in most lessons. The majority of lessons were predominantly characterised by lower intellectual quality, a focus on instrumental knowledge, integration at a superficial level, dominance of communalising and gendered practices rather than ‘engagement with difference’, prevalence of localising discourses ‘rather than connectedness to the world’ and a pedagogy aimed at national examinations. It appears that dominant pedagogic practices in the Expressive Arts classroom serve to position learners in parochial orientations and issues. There was an obvious disjuncture between the intended curriculum and enacted curriculum. The overall findings is that the enacted curriculum gave students limited opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge and development of skills, values and attitudes required for them to actively participate in the changing Malawian context and to be able to compete successfully in other contexts.

The national government in Malawi implemented an outcomes-based curriculum reform in 2007. To facilitate implementation, new textbooks were developed for the primary school curriculum. This study intended to explore teachers’ use and perception of the new Expressive Arts textbooks. The participants consisted of 192 Expressive Arts teachers, grades 5–8, selected by purposeful sampling. Data were collected through questionnaires and semistructured interviews. It was found that teachers believed that the textbooks were poorly designed, contained factual inaccuracies, did not support higher-level thinking of the learners, did not represent the lived experiences of the children using them and reinforced gender stereotyping. The study therefore suggests that there is need for review of the textbooks and that it is necessary to provide textbooks timely and in adequate quantities according to the needs of each school to ensure an effective implementation of a new curriculum.

This article examines the pedagogic boundaries in two grade 10 History teachers' lessons, with the aim of analysing their effect on making the epistemology of History evident in the classroom. The study is framed by Bernstein's conceptualisation of pedagogy as the experiencing of instructional and regulative boundaries. The article offers a quantitative assessment of the frequency of stronger and weaker instructional and regulative boundaries in the pedagogic discourse of the teachers and a qualitative interpretation of the effectiveness of the boundaries for making the epistemic nature of History explicit. Data analysis showed markedly differing pedagogic boundaries that enabled or constrained visibility of the epistemic criteria of History. It shows that creating conditions for the learning of the epistemic attributes of History is facilitated by pedagogic boundaries that are purposively instantiated for the mediation of the epistemic attributes of History. This analysis has also shown that it is crucial to not only identify the strength and type of boundary but to also relate them to making evident the epistemic attributes of the discipline being taught. It suggests that teachers' meta-cognitive awareness of instructional and regulative boundaries as conditions for making explicit the epistemic nature of History would assist teachers in creating conditions for epistemic access to History.

Against the background of vast changes in doctoral education and the emergence of non-traditional doctoral programmes, this paper investigates the habitus of non-traditional PhD students at a South African university. Bourdieu's conceptual tool of habitus informed the study. In-depth and open-ended interviews were conducted with 10 non-traditional students. Data analysis indicates non-traditional students' complex and multifaceted habitus. Non-traditional PhD students' dispositions and experiences include tenacious self-motivation and self-regulation in the face of severely constraining conditions, diverse epistemologies, hybrid goals, more communal orientations, perplexedness about 'produce new knowledge' and other requirements of the PhD, vulnerability regarding funds, complex self-change ranging from elation and affirmation to humiliation and confusion and exclusion and non-recognition at the department and faculty levels. These findings indicate greater challenges for non-traditional doctoral programmes that would respond to the academic and social needs of non-traditional students.

The new Curriculum in Malawi: the Primary Curriculum and Assessment Reform (PCAR) designed on the principles of integrated learning areas; outcomes; learner-centred pedagogies and continuous assessment (CA) was implemented in 2007. The purpose of this study was to investigate Expressive Arts teachers' understandings, experiences and practices of continuous assessment in a selection of six state primary schools. Within a qualitative research design, and using the concepts of 'instructional system' and 'learning milieu' of Illuminative evaluation as postulated by Parlett and Hamilton (1976), data were collected through observations, interviews and document analyses. Teachers' practices were characterised by an informal, technical form of assessment that privileged rote recall of facts and meeting bureaucratic requirements. The teachers cited large classes, lack of material resources and insufficient time as constraints. This study recommends that attention be given towards developing teachers' understanding of CA principles and practice both at pre-service and in-service levels.

The review of textbook studies shows that cursory attention has been given to the representation of the nature and structure of the parent discipline in textbooks. This study focuses on how the discourse of geography, is recontextualised in four grade 10 textbooks: two state approved textbooks that support the new curriculum (CAPS), an older pre-1994 textbook and a UK textbook. The analysis has been framed, at a macro-theoretical level, by Bernstein’s concept of recontextualisation and Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic forms. At the micro analytical level the discourse of Geography as conceptualised by Wignell, Martin and Eggins (1993) has been drawn on. A qualitative approach enabled in-depth multidimensional analysis that uncovered explicit and implicit similarities and differences in the texts. This paper articulates and illustrates an analytical framework for analysing the representation of the knowledge structure of geography in textbooks. It illustrates this framework by analysing the same sub-section: the structure and composition of the atmosphere, in the texts. Data analysis shows that the textbooks recontextualise the discourse of Geography differently. Of the two textbooks developed to support CAPS, one recontextualises the discourse of Geography in a more coherent and differentiated way than the other. It is argued that greater divergence from the discourse of Geography increases possibility of gaps in knowledge and understanding. On the whole the paper points to paying attention in textbook studies to how the nature and structure of the parent discipline is recontextualised in textbooks.

To improve the quality of primary education in Malawi, the national government embarked on curriculum reform in 2001 and adopted an Outcomes Based curriculum in 2007. The new curriculum differs radically from its predecessors. This paper employs a historical approach to explore pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial curriculum change and development in Malawi. The origin and attributes of the present OBE curriculum is emphasized and an attempt is made to explain the forces and imperatives that shaped it. This conceptual paper focuses on the process and rationale that resulted in the decision to revive the primary curriculum in 2001 to come up with an outcomes-based curriculum, and the influence of the first post-apartheid South African curriculum (C2005, 1998) on the design features of the new curriculum in Malawi. It is based on primary sources such as curriculum documents and secondary sources on curriculum development in Malawi. The paper raises concerns relating to ‘unproblematic burrowing’ of curriculum policies from South Africa, given the review and revision of C2005 in South Africa in 2000. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p336

The Ministry of Education in Malawi introduced a life skills education program with the intention to empower children with appropriate information and skills to deal with social and health problems affecting the nation, including the fight against HIV infections. This study investigated factors affecting the teaching of the life skills education in four primary schools in the Zomba district, Malawi. Cornbleth's (1990) notions of the structural and social contexts and Whitaker's (1993) identification of key role players in curriculum implementation framed the study. Data was collected through interviews with teachers and principals and observations of teachers' lessons. Findings suggest that the teaching of life skills is constrained by a variety of social and structural contextual factors such as the poor conditions under which teachers are working; greater attention given to subjects such as maths and languages; the cascade model of training teachers and the short duration of training; the inaccessible language in teachers guides; hunger and poverty of learners; lack of community support for sex education; both teachers and learners being infected or affected by the AIDS/ HIV pandemic; teachers felt it is inappropriate to teach sexual education to 9 and 10 year old learners. The structural and social barriers to effective life skills education within the current framework indicate the need for alternative sex HIV/ AIDS education complementary to the primary school curriculum.