This study evaluates the effect of the Read Liberia intervention that provided teacher training, coaching, and teaching and learning materials, reaching 57,600 grades 1 and 2 students across 640 schools. Exploiting the randomized assignment of schools to the program, we find that Read Liberia improved students’ ability to read a paragraph, doubling oral reading fluency in intervention schools relative to control schools (an effect size of 0.60 standard deviations), and increased their ability to comprehend that paragraph (oral reading comprehension) by 12–13 percentage points, corresponding to an effect size of 0.47 standard deviations. On the basis of the analysis of the program implementation data, teachers’ and students’ surveys, and in-depth classroom observations, we argue that the improvements in reading performance are driven by the availability and utilization of Read Liberia reading materials and not by improved teaching practices in schools. Good-quality reading materials combined with improved instructional practices have the potential to generate even higher effects.

This article documents curriculum and assessment policy changes over four years (2020 to 2024) in South Africa in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures. Early on, some changes were made to the national CAPS curriculum documents in the form of trimming content (2020), identifying "fundamental" knowledge (2020), and reviewing subject content (2022). The focus was on retaining the curriculum while allowing for flexibility in coverage through weakened controls over moderation, assessment, and promotion requirements, ceding most curriculum and assessment decisions to the school and classroom levels. Given a very unequal system, this meant that curriculum coverage and learning losses mapped onto and deepened pre-COVID-19 patterns of educational disadvantage. Post-COVID, a similar approach of devolution of curriculum decision-making to school and teacher level was taken. There were no attempts to recoup time in order to remediate learning losses, apart from later attempts in one province. Post-COVID, the Department of Basic Education tightened controls over coverage again but maintained leniency with respect to assessment and progression. During the pandemic the Department of Basic Education claimed remote solutions as a key mechanism for addressing curriculum coverage, despite very few learners having access to these. There were few mechanisms to address the severe educational impact of the pandemic, especially on learners in the poorest communities. The article argues that rather than address learning losses directly government strategies have masked them.

This chapter provides a conceptualisation of different curriculum models that underpin current shifts between subject-based and competency-based curriculum (CBC) reforms. In reference to local and global political pressures, the chapter takes South Africa's curriculum reform path over 30 years as a case to illustrate these reform shifts and their implications especially in a developing country context, but also in reference to other countries. The chapter argues for the need to explore the possibilities of generative curriculum hybrids, combining a rich notion of skills, framed by conceptual understanding and carefully selected subject content. In this way we might find the curriculum goals of qualification, socialisation, and subjectification are not mutually exclusive but realisable in new non-binary curriculum forms.

‘Structured pedagogy programmes’ (SPP) have recently become a dominant approach in interventions across low and medium-income countries (LMICs) to address the so-called ‘reading crisis’. SPPs entail a range of interventions including reading materials, lesson plans and teacher support aimed at changing instructional practice. This paper considers the impact of SPPs on pedagogy. As part of evaluations of the Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity (LARA) and the Read Liberia programmes, observations of 188 early grade reading lessons in Uganda and Liberia were conducted between 2017 and 2022. These included programme (treatment) classrooms and comparator (control) lessons. Both programmes aimed to improve the reading abilities of early grade learners through the training and coaching of teachers and the provision of materials, including daily scripted teacher guides. The article considers the intended curriculum of the two programmes and analyses the differences between treatment classrooms implementing the programmes, and control classrooms. The paper argues that while the ‘what’ of the SPPs (the textual base and curriculum content) is clearly defined and impacts pedagogy to some extent, the ‘how’, or interactive aspects of the pedagogy are diffuse in programme intensions and show little impact on instructional practice. The distinction between the what and the how of pedagogy highlights the need for a more developed theory of pedagogy underlying SPPs. Further, the analysis draws attention to the sociocultural aspect of pedagogy in shaping instruction, arguing for experimentation in contextually-sensitive pedagogies that work more with the grain of teachers’ local, existing practices.

Most learners in South African schools missed at least three-quarters of a school year over the course of 2020 and 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns, school closures and rotational timetables that were introduced to maintain social distancing in classrooms. These lost school days are known to have affected learning, but lack of data has thus far limited attempts at measuring learning losses. The only two studies measuring learning loss thus far were limited to fairly small samples of learners in relatively poor schools, to reading and only to the lower grades.This study considers a much larger sample, virtually all public schools in the Western Cape, across Grades 3, 6 and 9 in both Language and Mathematics, comparing 2021 performance with that in 2019. It thus offers a more comprehensive picture of learning losses that also has relevance in other parts of South Africa, particularly when also considering patterns across quintiles and schools with different language policies.The findings are indeed extremely concerning: Losses in Mathematics tend to be the largest (consistent with international experience), and even when using a relatively conservative measure (assuming that a year's learning is as much as 40% of a standard deviation in primary and 30% in secondary schools), the losses indicate that learners in 2021 had fallen more than a year of learning behind learners in the same grade in 2019. In Language, losses are smaller, around three-quarters of a year equivalent in terms of learning.Most South African learners are taught in their home langue in the Foundation Phase (up to Grade 3), but then transition to being taught through the medium of English for all subjects (except their home language) in Grade 4 and beyond. The pandemic has made this difficult language transition even more difficult. In Grade 6 Language, learners are tested in the school's LOLT (Language of Learning and Teaching), which could be either English or Afrikaans. Performance declines in Language in Grade 6 between 2019 and 2021 are much larger in schools that experience this language transition. These same schools also experienced the largest learning losses in Mathematics performance in Grade 6, perhaps because poor language skills also limit learning in Mathematics.Two policy areas require special attention: The first is to find more time for Mathematics, to overcome the deficit that has accumulated during the Covid years. For instance, Grade 9 learners in 2021 were performing more than a year behind Grade 9 learners two years earlier, so they must catch up a full year before they write matric. This requires that they progress more than four years in the three years before they write matric. In Language, the big challenge is to ensure that reading has been mastered in the Foundation Phase, while at the same time giving urgent attention to ease the language transition. Weak reading skills and English vocabulary can inhibit all further learning for the majority of learners who have to make this language transition.

We set out to address the question-what does it mean for educational knowledge to be 'powerful'? We compare the Anglo tradition of curriculum studies with the Didaktik tradition through the lens of an analysis of curriculum structure in postgraduate courses in South African universities rooted in either the Anglo or Didaktik tradition. This analysis of curriculum structure affords a view of each tradition that we argue is 'powerful', but in different ways. While Didaktik provides a humanities-based curriculum coherence in teacher education, curriculum studies offers social scientific possibilities for empirical inquiry. We make the argument that a strategic entente cordiale, or pedagogic compact, would strengthen the professional position of teachers and education academics in the respective countries. This is particularly so in the context of threats posed by instrumental trends driven by educational sciences underpinning TIMSS, Pisa and the like.

The Curriculum JournalVolume 30, Issue 2 p. 99-104 EditorialFree to Read After the knowledge turn? Politics and pedagogy Ursula Hoadley, Corresponding Author Ursula Hoadley [email protected] University of Cape Town, South Africa[email protected]Search for more papers by this authorAlka Sehgal-Cuthbert, Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert Independent scholarSearch for more papers by this authorBrian Barrett, Brian Barrett State University of New York College at CortlandSearch for more papers by this authorJohn Morgan, John Morgan Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New ZealandSearch for more papers by this author Ursula Hoadley, Corresponding Author Ursula Hoadley [email protected] University of Cape Town, South Africa[email protected]Search for more papers by this authorAlka Sehgal-Cuthbert, Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert Independent scholarSearch for more papers by this authorBrian Barrett, Brian Barrett State University of New York College at CortlandSearch for more papers by this authorJohn Morgan, John Morgan Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New ZealandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 April 2019 https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2019.1601844Citations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume30, Issue2Special Issue: After the knowledge turn? Politics and pedagogyJune 2019Pages 99-104 RelatedInformation

This paper suggests that advocates of the 'knowledge turn' have been united in their opposition to Young and Muller's (2010) Future 2, but that this 'union' has masked very different views of the relations between Young and Muller's Future 1 and Future 3. Whereas some who subscribe to the 'turn' see a 'weak boundary' between Futures 1 and 3 (and therefore consider them similar), others construe these Futures as very different and strongly bounded. We argue that these positions are often underpinned by irreconcilable political persuasions and conceptions of education, society and the curriculum. In order to illustrate the argument, we discuss the political project of the UK-based Academy of Ideas, many of whose members have been involved in advocating implicitly or explicitly for a weak boundary between Futures 1 and 3. This position is then contrasted with those in the UK who are more strongly committed to exploring a distinctive Future 3, and the situation in South Africa, where the tensions between different educational Futures are acutely visible due to the social, cultural and political context and academic and policy debates around the curriculum. We conclude with some implications of our arguments for the Future 3 principles of disciplinarity and sociality.

This paper explores methodological insights from a mixed methods study that aims to understand how school leaders promote literacy development in their schools. The study findings consider both the complementarities and the challenges of the qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring leadership practices and their linkages with learning across schools. We begin by identifying a conundrum in school leadership and management (SLM) research – strong effects found in qualitative studies and weaker effects in quantitative studies. From the literature we identify some of the central challenges that account for these differences. We then show how these challenges were and were not addressed in the mixed method research we conducted in an SLM study of South African primary schools in challenging contexts. We consider why the central aim of the study – to develop a scalable instrument for measuring SLM – remains elusive.

This chapter explores how political and institutional constraints influenced education policymaking and implementation in South Africa at national, provincial, and school levels. Stark differences between the Eastern and Western Cape provinces offer a natural experiment for exploring how context matters. The Eastern Cape’s socio-economic, political, and institutional legacy resulted in a low-level equilibrium trap—one where multiple political patronage networks were mirrored by a factionalized, fragmented bureaucracy. The Western Cape, by contrast, enjoyed a more supportive environment for the operation of public bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy need not be destiny. The research also found that strong hierarchy can result in formal compliance and a low-level equilibrium of mediocrity. Participatory school-level governance potentially can improve outcomes. Whether this potential is realized depends on the relative strength of developmentally oriented and predatory actors, with the outcomes not foreordained by local context, but contingent and cumulative.