Section 2 PlanningToT - SAIDEGettingPractical

Section Two
Planning to teach
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Introduction
What have we learnt?
What will we learn in Section Two?
2.1 Education as an intentional activity

The nature of school learning as an intentional activity
Scaffolding the learning experience
The importance of planning
2.2 Purpose-driven planning: How do we decide what and how to

teach?
Making decisions about our teaching, learning and assessment
A positivist realist approach to teaching, learning and assessment
A contextualist approach to teaching, learning and assessment
A relativist approach to teaching, learning and assessment
Learning theories that underpin these approaches
Making decisions about our teaching, learning and assessment
2.3 Planning with national aims in mind

Planning in terms of national educational purpose
Designing down from South Africa’s national goals
Planning a logical curriculum sequence
Developing depth and breadth
2.4 Developing teaching plans

Whole-school planning
Copyright 2012. Oxford University Press Southern Africa.
Phase-level planning
Grade-level planning
Lesson-level planning
Introduction
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/21/2022 4:11 PM via UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL
AN: 948947 ; T Mays, M Grosser, L de Jager, L Long.; SAIDE: Getting Practical: : A Guide to Teaching and Learning 3e
Account: s7246381.main.ehost 26
What have we learnt?
We introduced you to the experiential learning cycle in Section One. This is a process of thinking that teachers can use to begin
developing these reflective habits. Thinking in a cyclical rather than a linear way is an idea carried through the module. Notice,
for instance, that we talk of a planning cycle.
In Section One, we learnt that teaching is changing rapidly in South Africa and worldwide. Among the many changes, three
are particularly significant:
First, teachers are being challenged to produce citizens who are competent rather than simply knowledgeable. They need to
teach in a manner that enables learners to do things with the knowledge they learn at school rather than simply memorise it.
You will recall that we defined teaching as the practice of organising systematic learning.
Second, teachers are professionals who need to make professional decisions about how to enable systematic learning,
taking due cognisance of national curriculum guidelines on the one hand, and the realities and needs of their own learners
and learning context on the other.
Third, teachers will need to learn how to use learner-centred and active teaching methods in their classrooms rather than
the didactic, teacher-centred methods that characterised schools in the past.
These changes are both exciting and frightening. They all point to the need for more careful planning by reflective, creative
teachers.
What will we learn in Section Two?

In Section Two, we will continue to explore the ways in which teaching is different from other professions. Taking our cue from
the key role of a teacher as a knowledge worker concerned with enabling systematic learning, we will consider how teachers
make decisions informed by teaching intentions on the one hand and underpinning assumptions about the nature of learning on
the other. We will then consider what good planning is, and why it is so important in a learner-centred and competence-based
education system. We will explain how to use goals or outcomes to plan a curriculum within your phase or subject
specialisation and how to design extended work plans for a phase, a year or a term. Finally, we will show you how to draw up
lesson plans and plans for units of lessons that exemplify a resource-based and learner-centred approach to teaching and
learning. By the end of this section, you should have developed the competences described in the checklist that follows.
Understood, but Understood and Don’t
not practised practised really
understand
Explain why planning is important (Section 2.1)
Justify your planning decisions in terms of an appropriate theoretical framework (Section

2.2)
Make sure that your planning ensures depth and breadth of learning, logical sequencing
and addresses the needs of diverse learners (Section 2.3)
Identify and implement different levels of planning in increasing detail (Section 2.4)
Plan for appropriate assessment from the start of the process (Section 2.4)
Although we will introduce the planning of assessment in Section Two, assessment is such a central issue that we will go on to
explore it in some depth in Section Three. In addition, an understanding of learners and learning is vital in a learner-centred
pedagogy and must be part of any planning process. We will develop this in Section Four.
2.1 Education as an intentional activity

This module is about how teachers can help learners to learn. But surely children learn things all the time anyway, so why do
they need teachers?
EBSCOhost - printed on 7/21/2022 4:11 PM via UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 27
The nature of school learning as an intentional activity
The activity that follows is designed to help you think about why we need schools and teachers.
Activity 1
1. Spend about fifteen minutes on this activity. It will help to start you thinking about the main ideas in this section.
2. Ask a few people around you what they think the difference is between school learning and everyday learning. What do they
think is the role of the teacher in the school learning process?
The people around you probably said that everyday learning is what you do when you don’t really think about what you are
doing, such as learning a new name or a new route to get from A to B, but that school learning is about education. It’s more
formal. It requires more thinking. It doesn’t deal with everyday things ... The teacher’s job is to help learners to become
educated. Teachers have to think about what to teach and how to teach it.
Did you get responses like this? What do you think?
You would probably agree that school learning is about the kind of learning that requires careful thinking, and that teachers
therefore need to make important decisions about what to teach and how to teach it.
Now consider the scenario described in the next activity.
Activity 2
1. You do not need to write down answers. Just spend a couple of minutes thinking about the scenario described below and how
you would answer the questions that follow before reading further.
John teaches children. He teaches them how to steal. He finds children who are homeless, and he takes them to his
house and looks after them. First, he teaches them how to take things from shops. Then he teaches them how to work
in groups, in order to steal from people in the street. Then he teaches them how to unlock cars and to steal radios from
them. Lastly, he teaches them how to break into people’s houses so that they can steal more valuable things. John is a
very successful teacher. His children hardly ever get caught and they steal many valuable things.
a. Is John a good teacher?

b. In what ways is John’s work as a teacher different from your work as a teacher?
The former Natal College of Education (NCE Unisa 1997: 6 –10), from whom we have borrowed this example, argues that the
kind of work we do in schools as teachers involves an intentional process that teaches people in a respectful manner so that they
change in a worthwhile way. In particular, the work we do changes the way people think.
Compare these ideas with yours. Would you agree that key aspects of the work we do as teachers are captured in this
description? Is there anything you would add or remove?
Clearly, the kind of learning we try to facilitate in schools is different from other kinds of learning. Yet many teachers find it
hard to explain how their classes achieve their learning outcomes or how their learners learn. Moll, Bradbury and Winkler
(2001: 75) asked a group of experienced teachers to identify ways in which learning happens at school. They came up with the
long list in the figure below.
Activity 3
1. Spend about twenty minutes on this activity.
2. Which of the activities in this list would you do in everyday life as well as at school? Write down a few examples.
3. Which activities would you do at school only? Write down a few examples.
4. Now try to explain in your own words how school learning differs from everyday learning.
5. Identify and write down some of the implications of this difference for your work as a teacher.
Moll et al . (2001: 78–84) identify some ways in which school learning is different from everyday learning. Compare their ideas
with yours.
Schooling extends everyday experience. Schooling provides an opportunity for us to interact with other people’s
knowledge about the world, and to share and compare their experiences. This helps us to broaden and deepen our own
understanding.
School-like knowledge is often text based. Because school knowledge reflects many people’s ideas, it tends to be written
down. This means we need to use spoken and written language to understand and make connections with their new ideas.
School-like knowledge helps us to generalise and think conceptually. Stuart (1990 in Moll, Gultig, Bradbury and Winkler
2001b: 121) explains that concepts are tools for thinking about the world. They are abstractions that help us to discuss
events and ideas in general terms, without having to refer to examples all the time. Thus, the concept of industry enables us
to bring together, for example, different kinds of factories, workshops and activities for making goods, and permits us to
discuss how, in general, this helps development.
School-like knowledge is systematic. Sometimes our everyday experience of the world contradicts what we know to be the
case from the more systematic study of the world that we can gain from school learning, as illustrated in the figure
alongside.
School knowledge is networked. Consider, for example, that you experience the rising and setting of the Sun each day.
Consider also that there are differences in time in different parts of the world. We can only understand the connection
between these two pieces of information if we understand the concept of the solar system and how it works. And that is not
something we will learn from everyday experience.
Scaffolding the learning experience

We have established that there are some differences between everyday learning and school learning. Teachers make intentional
choices about what to teach and how to teach it so that learners can engage with new ideas in a meaningful way. Some teachers
use the term scaffolding to describe the process through which a teacher can structure and support learning in this way. We will
explore this notion in the activity that follows.
Activity 4
1. Spend about 30 minutes on this activity.
2. Look at the two drawings below.
3. Think about the influence of the teacher on each learning situation. Then write down your responses to the questions that
follow.
a. Which drawing shows the better learning environment? Why?
b. How does the design of each task influence the experience of the learner?
c. How does the relationship between the teacher and the learner influence the feelings of the learner and his chances of
success?
What did we think? All learning is about

bridging gaps.
The cartoon illustrates very clearly that all learning is about bridging gaps. When it comes to school Scaffolding by
learning, teachers not only set up these gaps for the learners, but they also structure the learning task and teachers enables
choose the level of support the learners will receive. As noted, some teachers use the term scaffolding to learners to extend
describe this process of supporting learners, but not every kind of help is a scaffold for learning. their knowledge and
try something that
Scaffolding refers to the help that teachers give learners that enables them to extend their knowledge and they would
to try something they would otherwise not manage on their own. In other words, scaffolding is concerned otherwise not
with qualitative leaps in the performance of learners. manage on their
In the second lesson shown in the cartoon, both the teacher’s encouragement and the counters are own.
scaffolds because they help the boy to complete a sum he couldn’t manage on his own. And here is
another important point. If the gap is too big between where he is and where he needs to be, we will only
confuse the learner. But if there is no challenge, he will not learn anything new at all. So we need to set a goal that is
challenging, but manageable with our scaffolded support.
Scaffolding is particularly important when teachers introduce learners to new ideas or new ways of solving problems. The ways teachers
In addition, good scaffolding requires a particular kind of relationship between teachers and learners, and adequate time and space for com
Learners must build
their own tower of
knowledge, but if
the teacher does not
provide the scaffold,
they cannot extend
their knowledge
beyond what they
The already know.
importance
of planning
Remember Mac, one of
our fictitious teachers?
Now that we have
identified the need for
planning, read through
Mac’s lesson and see
whether you can
identify ways in which
a bit of planning might
have improved it.
Activity 5
1. This is an important activity. It aims to convince you that planning is important, but it also tries to develop your ability to do a
reflective analysis of teaching. Take your time. Initially do the activity on your own, then discuss your answer with a fellow
learner. Spend at least an hour on the activity.
2. Read through the cartoon of Mac’s lesson again. Then write an analysis of the lesson. Focus on the weaknesses in Mac’s
lesson.
3. Organise these weaknesses into categories. For instance, group all the weaknesses that have to do with problems of purpose,
content or method, or classroom management, or some other category of problem. You could use the table format given below
to organise these weaknesses. We have included some examples.
Problem Examples of problems Prevention through planning
Purpose No clear outcomes. Mac didn’t really know why he was ?

(What are my desired learning teaching the poem. He also did not tell learners why they
outcomes?) should learn it.
Content Mac wasn’t sure of what had to be taught. He hadn’t Had he known it was poetry, Mac would have known of
(Is the content I have chosen prepared, so didn’t understand some of the language class resistance and could have thought of ways to
appropriate to achieving my used in the poem. overcome this.
purpose?)
Method ? ?
(Am I teaching in a manner
appropriate to achieving my
purpose?)
Classroom management Too rigid. Maybe insecurity led to Mac’s inability to use Had he prepared, he could have used Vijay’s question
(Was learning managed learner comments to develop interest in the poem. to get a debate going.
appropriately?)
? ? ?
What were some consequences of Mac’s poor planning?

Wasted time
Mac may have saved an hour by not planning, but then he wasted many hours of learners’ time because he taught so badly that
nothing was learnt! There were 35 learners in Mac’s class. If each wasted a half-hour in this lesson, then 35 × 30 minutes were
wasted. In other words, Mac wasted 17½ hours!
He failed to complete his lesson and achieved no useful learning outcomes. This is a problem as time is a scarce commodity
in schools (as all teachers know!). A crucial reason for planning is so that we can fit what we have to do into the limited time we
have available.
Aimless teaching
Mac’s lesson had no clear purpose. Although Mac had divided his week’s lessons into different topics, he had not planned with
a clear set of learning outcomes in mind. He also hadn’t made his purpose clear to his learners. As a result, the class remained
demotivated. Planning is about carefully deciding on the kinds of learning competences we aim to develop, why and how. Mac
should, in his planning, have asked (and answered!) questions like:
What is this poem about? What is its purpose?
Why am I teaching this poem?
How can I link it to my learners’ lives?
How does it contribute to the development of systematic learning?
Choice of inappropriate teaching strategies

Mac’s teaching strategies are predictable (note Vijay’s sigh), erratic (he changes them all the time without any reason other than
his panic) and inappropriate (he asks a poor reader to read, thus destroying any possible joy learners could have got from the
poem). Planning would have given him time to think more carefully about the range of teaching strategies he should use to
achieve his particular outcomes.
Mac is unsure of what he wants to achieve and he didn’t really understand what he was teaching. This lack of understanding
could be the consequence of an inadequate teacher education, but better preparation would have given him the time to study the
poem and then think about how to link it to learners’ lives.
Increased disciplinary problems

The aimless nature of this lesson probably deepened the negative attitude the class had towards Mac as a teacher. Learners were
bored, confused and irritated. This would make future lessons even more difficult, as Mac would have to deal with the
inevitable disciplinary problems that would arise.
This attitude would probably also frustrate Mac and make him even less confident in his own teaching. This could well lead
to more defensive teaching in future. Mac probably won’t experiment and learners could become even less enthusiastic.
What could Mac have done differently?

Many of the problems identified could have been avoided or at least reduced through an hour or so of planning. Mac actually
knows quite a bit about the forthcoming lesson. He knows, for instance:
Which class is coming (Grade 10) and something about that particular group (Vijay is trouble and the class doesn’t like
poetry).
What he will need to teach (poetry, Wordsworth, difficult English). What he hasn’t done is use that knowledge in advance
to plan more precisely. He also hasn’t thought carefully enough about these things.
He knows he will teach poetry, but doesn’t really know why; he isn’t clear about his purpose.
He knows Vijay is difficult to handle, but doesn’t know why this is so; he hasn’t thought about how to find out or about
alternative strategies for managing the situation.
He knows the class doesn’t really like poetry, but isn’t sure why; he hasn’t given much thought to ways in which he might
attract and keep their interest.
He knows the class struggles with ‘poetry English’, but, again, doesn’t really know why. He hasn’t thought about ways to
find out where their problems lie, or how to deal with them.
Remind yourself of some of the initial questions that teachers ask themselves while planning. Also look
at the cycle. We can see that there is always room for improvement. Planning is a cyclical rather than a Move away from a
linear activity. We always return to question our original assumptions and goals. linear approach to
planning and
Planning provides the time we need to think about these many different things that influence the
towards a reflective
success (or otherwise) of a lesson. Teaching in a learner-centred way means we need to understand the action-planning
learning preparedness of our learners, and their background and interests. cycle.
Planning cyclically and reflectively
There isn’t one model for planning. Simply implementing a set of procedures without thinking isn’t good planning. Planning
isn’t a linear and mechanical process where we have a clear beginning and end. Instead, it is an ongoing cycle where every end
is a new beginning, and where every activity is an experiment to reflect on and learn from.
First, cyclical planning regards assessment as an ongoing part of the teaching cycle rather than as the end of a process. It is
both the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. An analysis of mistakes and strengths – by teachers and learners – is
used to guide a new cycle of planning and teaching. We use assessment diagnostically; it is used to shape teaching and learning.
Second, cyclical and reflective planning values flexibility. While it is important to think carefully of what we want to do, we
must be alert to unplanned learning opportunities. Good planning makes this possible. We can use comments from learners to
shape and reshape teaching as it occurs. But this is not the same as not planning! Mac’s lesson is a good example of how not
planning destroys the possibility of creative teaching. Rigid planning destroys good teaching because the teacher becomes a
slave to the plan. We are too scared to depart from the plan, even when a detour may improve learning. But casual (or no)
planning destroys good teaching because the teacher gets lost. We aren’t clear about what we want to do, how we will do it,
why it needs to be done and with whose assistance we will do it.
Reflective and flexible planning suggests that we ensure we have a clear idea of the following three things:
Our destination, our outcomes or objectives (both teachers and learners should understand what they need to know by the
end of a lesson or series of lessons and why learning this is important)
Our starting point, the nature of our learners and the context in which we are teaching (this builds on a careful analysis of
the strengths, weaknesses and interests of our learners and ourselves)
Our methods and how we will assess our learners.
Planning as a time for thinking about teaching
Experienced teachers sometimes say they don’t have to plan. ‘It’s something you do while you’re in training,’ they say. But
even these teachers plan … casually and poorly. Research suggests that the majority of teachers – and certainly those teachers
regarded by their peers and by learners as good teachers – do plan.
For many teachers, the most important benefit of planning is not the written plan we carry into class. Instead, it is the fact that
planning forces us into thinking about our teaching. This enriches our teaching. It suggests new and innovative ways to teach. It
gives us the confidence to experiment and it provides time to search out really interesting resources.
Planning does take time, especially when you are a new teacher. But it gets quicker as you become more experienced.
Experienced teachers can also reuse lesson plans. Good teachers, though, would adapt old plans on the basis of the previous use
of that plan, taking into account the different learners who will be taught. Experienced teachers do plan. They are just much
quicker and more efficient at planning their work than inexperienced teachers.
This section has introduced some of the important reasons for planning a lesson carefully and some of the things teachers
need to think about when planning. Good teachers, however, plan for more than one lesson at a time. They plan for a series of
lessons around a particular topic, with a particular purpose, and also for the whole year, and even for the years that make up a
phase. The key reasons why good planning is important are the same, whether the planning relates to a single lesson or a series
of lessons. Some of them are shown below. See if you can add others that occurred to you as you read the section thus far or as
you reflected on your own practice.
Why plans at phase, grade and lesson level are important

They provide a support or a scaffold for our teaching. They provide us with a safety net that gives us the confidence to experiment
with good teaching strategies.
The process of planning sharpens our thinking about exactly what we are doing. It enables us to think carefully about what to teach,
why we are teaching this and the sequence in which we should teach it.
It alerts us to possible problems and so allows us to act proactively. We can plan so as to minimise possible problems, such as the
weaknesses of learners or constraints of the school environment, rather than having to deal with problems as they occur.
It improves our time-management skills. This is one of the most difficult skills to develop, but it is vital if we want to ensure that we
do the important things in a year (rather than run out of time before we get to the major learning needs). Good time-management
skills will also prevent your lessons from descending into chaos as time runs out at the end of the period!
It enables us to teach in a learner-centred, learning-centred and resource-based manner. While teacher-talk can be done without much
planning, lessons that involve learners require that we ensure that resources are available when needed.
Building assessment plans into the structure from the outset ensures that there is a balanced and comprehensive assessment strategy,
which allows all learners the opportunity to show what they have learnt.
It enables us to plan team and theme teaching in advance. Co-operative work with other teachers and the organisation of teaching into
themes that cut across subjects are only possible if teachers plan the use of time, space and resources (including teachers) early.
If we plan together, we can ensure that work covered in subsequent weeks, terms and grades builds on what has gone before, creating
a bridge for learners from one learning experience to another.
A clear understanding of the purpose or purposes we have in mind is central to the planning process. We have said that teaching
is an intentional activity that involves the practice of organising systematic learning, and we have pointed out that teachers make
professional decisions about how to interpret and implement national curriculum guidelines in their own classrooms. However,
we have also noted that our professional decision-making is influenced by our own theoretical assumptions, whether explicit as
theory espoused or implicit as theory-in-use. In the next section, we will therefore explore in a little more detail how our
embedded theoretical assumptions can impact on our purpose-driven planning decisions.
2.2 Purpose-driven planning: How do we decide

what and how to teach?
Teaching in a learning-centred way, making appropriate use of both learner-centred and teacher-centred approaches, is
extremely challenging. In order to assist you in coping with this challenge, this section will explore the following aspects:
The basis on which we make decisions about teaching, learning and assessment
The theoretical frameworks that underpin teaching, learning and assessment in
teacher-centred and learner-centred classrooms
The influence of the theoretical frameworks that underpin the planning and implementation of
teaching, learning and assessment
The importance of being flexible by balancing a teacher-centred approach with a
learner-centred approach during teaching, learning and assessment to achieve different
learning purposes.
Making decisions about our

teaching, learning and
assessment
The activity that follows will help you to identify how we as teachers
make decisions about our teaching.
Activity 6
1. Spend about fifteen minutes on this activity. Do the activity with
one of your peers or colleagues.
2. Examine the photographs of different teaching and learning situations in a classroom alongside.
3. Discuss the following question with a peer or colleague:
a. What do you think are the assumptions held by each of the teachers who teach in these classrooms concerning:
What it means to ‘know’ something
The role of the learner during teaching
The role of the teacher during teaching.
What did we think?

We noticed that different roles were attached to the teachers and learners in each of the
photographs and that the classroom environments were either learner centred or teacher centred.
We felt that in the second photograph, knowledge was transmitted to the learners, while it was
independently constructed by the learners in the third photograph. In the first photograph,
knowledge was collaboratively constructed between peers and educators.
Based on these differences, it could be argued that teachers make decisions in different ways
about the ways in which they teach. The different ways in which teachers approach classroom
teaching, learning and assessment are called teaching frameworks or teaching paradigms.
Teaching frameworks or paradigms

A teaching framework comprises a certain approach, beliefs or theories about the following issues:
The way in which knowledge is acquired
The role played by the teacher during teaching, learning and assessment
The role played by the learner during teaching, learning and assessment
The role played by peers during teaching, learning and assessment
The type of teaching methods or strategies, learning activities, and assessment methods and strategies employed during
teaching.
Adopting different teaching frameworks or paradigms could be compared to putting on different pairs of glasses and looking at
the teaching and learning situation from different perspectives. Let’s listen to a staffroom discussion among our group of
fictitious teachers, Joe, Cynthia, Devi and Mac.
In searching for answers to the questions raised by these teachers, we will look at three teachers who approach their work with
completely different teaching frameworks or paradigms. These examples will allow us to explore some of the major theoretical
frameworks that underpin teaching, learning and assessment.
A positivist realist approach to teaching, learning and

assessment
CASE STUDY: Mrs Adams
Mrs Adams has been a high-school English teacher for 25 years. She firmly
believes that the way in which she was taught all those years ago when she was at
school is the most appropriate way to achieve success with learners. According to
her, knowledge (facts) must be transmitted to learners by the teacher, an authority
or expert who actively disseminates knowledge to learners. Her first concern is
that learners should always arrive at correct answers. The knowledge needed by
school children has already been determined by society. It is her job to make sure
that learners master this knowledge. She is of the opinion that knowledge is
objective and universal, independent of the knower and relatively unchanging.
Mrs Adams comments that she normally leads discussions in the class and sets
the rules. In describing successful students in her class, she highlights the
importance of being good at listening, following instructions and accepting
explanations.
Her classroom activities are characterised by monologue classroom
interactions, limited learner contributions, the use of prescribed textbooks,
limited social interaction during teaching and learning, and transmission of
knowledge through lectures, drilling, explanations, questions, presentations,
demonstrations, homework exercises and frequent classroom tests and exams.
Her learners do not engage in academic discussion with her or their peers, and do not contribute to knowledge
construction during teaching and learning. The teaching in her classroom is mainly centred around voice-based learning,
and occurs through talking, reading aloud, listening and watching. When teaching, she presents the learning material in
small steps, provides examples, re-explains difficult points, reviews what has been taught, does frequent checks for
comprehension and provides guided practice with corrective feedback. She believes in reinforcing good performance to
motivate the likelihood of the performance reoccurring. On the other hand, she regards punishment of bad performance
necessary to avoid that performance being repeated.
After completion of a topic, her learners write tests. At the end of the term, they write
exams. Her classroom tests and exams focus on recognising facts rather than on generating
original answers. She admits that the product of assessment is more important to her than Recommended further
the process. Her tests mainly focus on assessing content with no focus on the skills, values reading:
Schraw, G. & Olafson, G.
and attitudes learners have acquired. After tests or exams, she compares learners’ scores in (2003). Teachers’
order to determine how many of them were successful and how many failed. She firmly Epistemological World
believes in praising students who do well in order to motivate them to continue performing Views and Educational
Practices. Journal of
well. Cognitive Education and
Psychology , 3(1), pp.
178–235.
Cross, F. (1997). The
In contrast to the positive realist approach adopted by Mrs Adams, some teachers take a critical Positivist/Realist
realist approach to teaching. A critical realist believes that knowledge is non-prescriptive and perspective. Journal of
Legal Studies Education ,
fallible, and that people interpret and experience reality differently. Understanding this will 12(15), pp. 10–13.
help you to understand the views of the teachers we will explore in the next two sub-sections. Recommended further
reading on the critical realist
approach:
What did we think? Jeppesen, S. (2005).
Critical Realism as an
We thought that the teaching approach of Mrs Adams is very teacher centred and inflexible, Approach to Unfolding
Empirical Findings. The
and might only address the learning needs of a small group of learners in her class. Some of us Journal of Transdisciplinary
felt that her approach might be good for introducing a new topic to learners or explaining Environmental Studies ,
difficult concepts. 4(1), pp. 1–9.
In the next activity, you will consider what is useful about this approach as well as some of
the problems that teachers may encounter when only approaching teaching, learning and assessment from a positivist realist
perspective.
Activity 7
1. Spend about 45 minutes on this activity. Discuss the following questions with three or four other teacher-learners:
a. How similar or different is your own approach to teaching, learning and assessment to the approach of Mrs Adams?
b. Reflect on the suitability of this approach for addressing a variety of learning-style needs.
c. Consider the type of goals or outcomes that could be achieved when using the positive realist approach to teaching,
learning and assessment.
d. Evaluate the suitability of this teaching approach for teaching English and other subjects.
e. Do you think Mrs Adams might change her approach to teaching? If so, under what circumstances do you think she might
do so?
A contextualist approach to teaching, learning and

assessment
CASE STUDY: Mrs Smith

Mrs Smith is a high-school teacher who has taught Grade 9 and Grade 10 Life
Sciences for ten years. Many of the teachers who taught her when she was at
school subscribed to the realist approach. However, she feels that this is not the
correct approach to take. She believes that knowledge is situational in nature and
is important to the extent that knowledge is necessary to survive and succeed in
one’s immediate environment. She also believes that knowledge and knowing are
consensual and can change over time, and that learners should be exposed to
multiple perspectives during their engagement with new learning. According to
her view, learners can construct knowledge collaboratively.
Mrs Smith believes that the curriculum should be problem based, and should
contain inquiry activities and exposure to a variety of sources of information. She
acknowledges that there is essential knowledge and skills in Life Sciences that
learners should acquire, but maintains that learners should also be able to make
the knowledge their own and apply that knowledge in the real world.
In her classroom, Mrs Smith advocates for a transactional approach in which
learning takes place collaboratively between peers. It is important to her that she
acts as a collaborator and co-participant in the teaching and learning process. She
makes use of scaffolding, modelling and coaching to support the learners’
understanding. To her, it is more important to model the collaborative
construction of knowledge than to transmit pre-digested knowledge uncritically. Thinking and doing during teaching
and learning occupy central places in the teaching approach of Mrs Adams. She also focuses on inquiry and
communication rather than drill and practice during teaching. The learners in her class are involved in thinking and
doing activities, co-operative learning, collaborative problem solving, brainstorming activities and team presentations.
Mrs Smith is more likely to make use of alternative forms of assessment such as
individual or group-based portfolios and performance-based assessments that are criterion
referenced. Her assessment results indicate what a learner has learnt as well as what he or Recommended further
she has not yet learnt. She also involves learners in self-assessment and peer assessment. reading on the critical realist
approach:
She makes use of continuous, informal, formative assessment. She does not only assess Jeppesen, S. (2005).
her learners after completion of a topic by setting them a test or an exam at the end of a Critical Realism as an
term. She is in favour of learners generating their own answers rather than responding with Approach to Unfolding
Empirical Findings. The
selected information from textbooks. She admits that the process of assessment is more Journal of Transdisciplinary
important to her than the product. Her assessment activities or tasks focus on assessing the Environmental Studies ,
content, skills, values and attitudes that learners have acquired. It is important to her that 4(1), pp. 1–9.
learners reflect on their own performance in comparison to their previous performances to
determine their own strengths and weaknesses. In this way, she believes that learners will grow and develop holistically.
What did we think?
We noticed that Mrs Smith’s approach was more learner centred than the approach of Mrs Adams. Recommended further
We felt that learners are more actively involved during teaching, learning and assessment in her reading on the
learning-style needs of
classroom. We wondered how Mrs Smith deals with the teaching of facts and concepts in her thinkers and doers:
classroom if she only makes use of active and interactive learning. Kramer, D. (2006). OBE
Teaching Toolbox . Florida,
Roodepoort: Vivlia
Activity 8 Publishers & Booksellers
(Pty) Ltd., p. 181.
1. Spend about 45 minutes on this activity. Discuss the following questions with three or four other Arends, R.I. (2009).
teacher-learners: Cooperative learning. In
a. How similar or different is your own approach to teaching, learning and assessment to the Arends, R.I. Learning to
approach of Mrs Smith? Teach . (8th ed.). Boston:
b. Reflect on the suitability of this approach for addressing a variety of learning-style needs. McGraw-Hill, pp. 350–382.
c. Consider the type of goals or outcomes that could be achieved when using the contextualist approach to teaching, learning
and assessment.
d. Evaluate the suitability of this teaching approach for teaching Life Sciences as well as other subjects.
e. Is it possible that different subject areas predispose teachers to particular ways of teaching and assessment? For
example, is teaching Life Orientation similar to or different from teaching Languages or teaching Mathematics?
A relativist approach to teaching, learning and assessment
CASE STUDY: Mr Dlomo

Mr Dlomo is a high-school teacher who has taught Life Orientation
to Grade 8 and Grade 9 learners for the past three years. He firmly
believes in autonomous, individual-centered learning, and discards
approaches to teaching that focus on transmission and reception as
well as collaborative, participative teaching.
He believes that knowledge is subjective and particular, and must
be self-constructed. He shares Mrs Smith’s belief that knowledge is
highly changeable. His beliefs about curriculum centre on learner
development and social reform. To Mr Dlomo, good learning is
self-learning. His main aim is to nurture independent thinking.
As a relativist teacher, he believes that all learners have different
learning needs and styles, and should be assessed in accordance with
their preferred learning styles. He therefore presents his learners with
diverse assessment activities through the use of written, numerical,
oral, visual, technological or dramatic media. In his assessment
activities, the focus is on process as well as product. He advocates
for learners to challenge external knowledge and assumptions
actively, and to construct their own knowledge and beliefs after
reflecting on them. He emphasises problem identification and
authentic problem solving in classroom activities, assignments and
exams.
Mr Dlomo sees himself as a facilitator and not as a transmitter of
privileged knowledge. It is important to him to provide resources and
scaffolding to his learners to enable them to construct knowledge on
their own. During teaching, he makes use of strategies such as modelling of cognitive skills and reflective practices,
open-ended discussions, research projects, worksheets that learners must complete, equipment-assisted learning
(computers), questioning and providing detailed feedback to learners during teaching. He has created a centre of
learning in one of the corners of his classroom where he keeps magazines and journals related to topics on Life
Orientation. Learners may utilise these resources to obtain information they need to complete activities or projects.
Learners have to become self-regulated by setting their own goals, monitoring the attainment of these goals and
evaluating the effectiveness of the outcome of their learning. He downplays the role of peers during teaching and
learning, as according to him, peers do not promote autonomous construction of knowledge.
Recommended further
What did we think? reading on the
learning-style needs of
We noticed that the teacher functions primarily in the background in this teaching approach and thinkers and doers:
that a huge responsibility is given to learners to take control and responsibility for their own Kramer, D. (2006). OBE
Teaching Toolbox . Florida,
learning. However, we thought that some learners might not cope well in classrooms where this Roodepoort: Vivlia
approach to teaching was used. Publishers & Booksellers
(Pty) Ltd., p. 181.
Arends, R.I. (2009).
Activity 9 Cooperative learning. In
Arends, R.I. Learning to
1. Spend about 45 minutes on this activity. Discuss the following questions with three or four Teach . (8th ed.). Boston:
other teacher-learners: McGraw-Hill, pp. 350–382.
a. How similar or different is your own approach to teaching, learning and assessment to
the approach of Mr Dlomo?
b. Reflect on the suitability of this approach for addressing a variety of learning-style needs.
c. Consider the type of goals or outcomes that could be achieved when using the relativist approach to teaching, learning
and assessment.
d. Evaluate the suitability of this teaching approach for teaching a wide variety of subjects.
Each of the teachers in the three case studies above had specific beliefs about teaching, learning and assessment that they
believed to be correct. The beliefs of the three teachers respectively focused on a teacher-centered, learner-centred or
individual-centered approach to teaching, learning and assessment.
Mrs Adams has a teacher-centred approach to teaching, learning and assessment.
Mrs Smith has a learner-centred approach to teaching, learning and assessment.
Mr Dlomo has an individual-centred approach to teaching, learning and assessment.
Each one of these approaches appears to hold advantages as well as disadvantages for teaching, learning and assessment.
Activity 10
1. Spend about 45 minutes on this activity.
2. Study these pictures. Each picture represents a learning situation from one of the teaching and learning frameworks you have
learnt about.
3. Identify the teacher (Mrs Adams, Mrs Smith or Mr Dlomo) whose beliefs are best represented by each learning situation. Name
the teaching and learning framework that he or she subscribes to.
4. Motivate your choices by looking at the following aspects in each learning situation:
a. The role of the teacher
b. The role of the learner
c. The type of learning activities
d. The way in which knowledge is acquired or created
The next activity will help you to identify the different kinds of decisions that teachers make about teaching, learning and
assessment.
Activity 11
1. Spend about fifteen minutes on this activity. Do the activity with one of your peers or colleagues.
2. From the descriptions of Mrs Adams, Mrs Smith and Mr Dlomo, you will have noticed that teachers make different decisions
about the way teaching, learning and assessment take place in their classrooms. These decisions are based on their beliefs.
Reflect on what you learnt from the three examples as well as your own experiences.
3. Use this information to complete the table below. The example provided illustrates the decisions of a teacher whose teaching
practice is framed within a positive realist belief or approach. Now add examples of how other beliefs about teaching, learning
and assessment inform the decisions that teachers make about these activities.
Decisions Decisions Decisions Decisions about Decisions about the choice of teaching Decisions about ways in
about the role about the role about the the choice of methods and the types of learning which learning-style needs
of the teacher of the learner choice of assessment outcomes or purposes to be achieved can be addressed through
teaching methods and teaching and assessment
methods and strategies
strategies
1. Teacher 1. Learners 1. Lecturing is 1. Tests are 1. I want learners to define concepts on 1. I will make use of
can can be used to used to their own and will therefore make use demonstrations to
dominate involved in clarify determine of indirect teaching strategies where accommodate learners
classroom the concepts factual learners can do some discovery on who enjoy visual
instruction construction knowledge their own learning
of
knowledge
In the next sub-section, we will focus on the learning theories that underpin the different teaching and learning frameworks.
Learning theories that underpin these approaches

After completing the table in Activity 11, you should have a good understanding of three of the frameworks or paradigms that
inform teachers’ decisions about teaching, learning and assessment in the classroom: the positivist realist framework, the
contextualist framework and the relativist framework. Each of these approaches is framed within a specific theory of teaching,
learning and assessment, which we will explore below.
The three learning theories that we will discuss are:
Behaviourist theory
Cognitive approaches (Piaget, Bruner, Ausubel and Vygotsky)
Constructivist approaches:
Cognitive constructivism
Socio-constructivism.
As you read about the different theories, see if you can determine which one of the approaches to teaching, learning and
assessment discussed above is framed within each theory.
Behaviourist approach to teaching, learning and assessment

Behaviourist theories of learning were developed around the beginning of the twentieth century. These theoretical approaches
emphasise the predictable role of the environment in causing observable behaviour change. Behaviourists concerned themselves
only with external behaviour, and ruled out internal intellectual experiences and feelings. This approach mainly relies on direct
whole-class teaching, where the learning-style needs of learners who mainly like to learn by seeing, hearing and observing are
addressed.
Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B.F. Skinner and Edward Thorndike were behavioural psychologists
who became famous for their experiments on behaviour change in the mid-1930s. They formulated
the theory of classical conditioning, according to which a response to a stimulus is elicited after
repeated association between the response and the stimulus. They also came up with the theory that Recommended further
if behaviour is rewarded in a manner pleasant to the person who manifested it, the behaviour is reading on behaviourism:
likely to be repeated. This was subsequently and appropriately termed operant conditioning. Eggen, P. & Kauchak, D.
(2004). Educational
Operant conditioning implies voluntary responses made stronger by reinforcement. Reinforcement Psychology: Windows on
in the teaching and learning situation is essential if a desired outcome is to be displayed. Classrooms . Upper Saddle
Reinforcement serves to encourage and motivate the repetition of the behaviour. River, NJ: Pearson, Merrill,
p. 200.
Reinforcement could be in the form of a token, incentives, rewards, good grades, praise and a Mwamwenda, T.S. (2004).
cordial relationship between a learner and a teacher. Negative reinforcement such as bad grades, Educational Psychology: An
punishments and loss of privileges are used to discourage undesirable behaviour or performance. African Perspective .
Sandton, South Africa:
There are two important lessons to the teacher accruing out of this theory. The first (and most Heinemann, pp. 175–179.
important) lesson is that of reinforcement. Reinforcement, especially positive reinforcement, can be Ormrod, J.E. (2008).
used by teachers to cultivate and nurture a desired outcome. The second lesson relates to the Educational Psychology:
Developing Learners . (6th
inherent stimulus potential of the teacher. This plays a role in that it evokes different reactions from ed.). New Jersey: Merrill
different learners. The teacher’s code of dress, pitch of voice, choice of words, mood and so on are Prentice Hall, p. 312.
in themselves stimuli that can influence learners to react or behave in various ways. Woolfolk, A.E. (2004).
In essence, the theory of behaviourism emphasises the importance of motivation and Educational Psychology .
Massachusetts: Allyn &
reinforcement. An understanding of conditioning theory can help to make teachers sensitive to the Bacon, p. 204.
importance of classroom climate and the associations that learners form. For example, if new
learners who might feel uneasy about being in unfamiliar surroundings are consistently treated with warmth and caring by their
teachers, they will develop positive feelings towards their school and the task of learning. The teacher’s displays of warmth
operate as unconditioned stimuli; the school or classroom become conditioned stimuli when they are associated with the warmth
and caring attitude of the teacher. They then elicit positive emotional responses (conditioned responses) similar to the responses
(conditioned responses) elicited by the teacher’s initial display of warmth.
The early behaviourist learning theories are important for classroom teaching. These theories claim that a simple process,
conditioning, is responsible for causing learning to take place. If this is true, it would be possible for teachers to establish,
control and modify the behaviour of learners. They would simply have to make use of carefully chosen stimuli to elicit or
establish appropriate behaviour.
Assessment of learning and norm-referenced assessment are favoured by teachers who have a behaviouristic approach to
teaching, learning and assessment. (Norm-referenced assessment measures a learner’s performance against that of his or her
peers.) A key problem with the approach is that it does not engage learners in learning activities characterised by creativity and
originality, but rather relies on memorisation and regurgitation of facts. Thus, these assessment principles confine the learners’
development to the attainment of lower-order thinking and reasoning capabilities. Assessment of learning focuses on the
achievements of learners as reflected in test and examinations scores. Its main purpose is to inform the stakeholders in education
of the extent to which learners have progressed. The test and examination scores also reveal whether the standards have been
met or not. Finally, they provide information that indicates whether the educators have done the work they have been hired to
do.
Assessment of learning promotes rote learning. The teaching, learning and assessment activities
taking place within this context are easy to construct, teach and assess, but do not promote
meaningful learning. The traditional assessment approach can be judgmental and discriminative, Recommended further
might not motivate learners in the same way and could be characterised by a sense of failure, defeat reading on assessment:
Stiggins, R.J. (2002).
and hopelessness. Although this approach is useful for teaching facts, concepts and rules, teachers Assessment Crisis: The
would have to opt for alternative approaches in order to nurture higher-order thinking. Absence of Assessment for
Learning. Phi Delta Kappan
, 83, 758–765.
Activity 12 Black, P., Harrison, D.,
Marshall, B. & Wiliam, D.
1. Spend about ten minutes on this activity. Work on your own. (2004). Working inside the
2. Which of the three teachers and teaching frameworks described in the previous sub-section is Black Box: Assessment for
underpinned by the behaviourist learning theory? Motivate your answer. Learning in the Classroom.
3. The ideas embedded in the theory of behaviourism are effective for teaching concepts, facts and Phi Delta Kappan , 9–21
September.
formulas that need step-by-step understanding. In what other ways do you find the behaviourist
approach useful?
4. In what ways is this approach problematic? (For example, you could say it has limited potential for building higher-order
thinking skills.)
Cognitive approaches to teaching, learning and assessment

We can distinguish four main influences on cognitivist approaches:
The Piagetian approach
The cognitive development theories of Bruner and Ausubel
The socio-cultural perspective to cognitive development of Vygotsky
The socio-cognitive theory of Bandura.
We will discuss each of these approaches in more detail below.
Piagetian approach
Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development describe the intellectual development of children from infancy to early adulthood.
Piaget believed that children are not less intelligent than adults. They simply think differently. He also proposed a number of
stages and concepts to explain how children process information, stressing that teachers should take cognisance of this when
planning their teaching. The sensorimotor stage (from birth to the age of two) is characterised by a repetition of reflex
behaviours. The pre-operational stage (from two to seven years of age) is characterised by an increase in playing and
pretending. Characteristics of this stage include no logical reasoning, egocentrism and difficulty understanding the concept of
conservation. During the concrete operational stage (between the ages of seven and ten), children begin thinking logically about
concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts. During the formal operational stage of
cognitive development (from the age of twelve to adulthood), skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning and systematic
planning begin to emerge.
Important concepts in Piaget’s stages of cognitive development include assimilation, accommodation and equilibration of
information. Assimilation refers to the incorporation of new information into an existing cognitive structure. Accommodation
implies the modification of existing cognitive structures to incorporate new information. Equilibration implies striving for a
balance between assimilating and accommodating information. When difficulty is experienced in accommodating new
information into existing cognitive structures, an uncomfortable state of disequilibrium is experienced (Papalia, Wendkos Olds
& Duskin Feldman, 2008: 34).
Cognitive development theories of Bruner and Ausubel

The theories of Bruner and Ausubel, which are regarded as information-processing theories, attempt to explain cognitive
development by analysing the mental processes involved in perceiving and handling information (Papalia, Wendkos Olds &
Duskin Feldman, 2008: 35).
Bruner’s theory of cognitive development
Bruner’s theory of cognitive development involves three distinct stages:
Stages of cognitive development
Discovery learning Recommended further
Theory of teaching and instruction. reading on key concepts in
the theories of Piaget and
Bruner:
Cognitive development takes place according to an enactive (motoric, action-based), iconic Mwamwenda, T.S. (2005).
(learning through images and pictures) and symbolic phase (learning through symbols, ideas and Educational Psychology: An
concepts). Discovery learning supports an inquiry-based, constructivist learning theory that takes African Perspective . Cape
Town: Heinemann, pp.
place in problem-solving situations where the learner draws on his or her own past experience and
84–98, 192–194.
existing knowledge to discover facts, relationships and new truths to be learnt. Students interact
with the world by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies or performing experiments.
Students may be more likely to remember concepts and knowledge discovered on their own (in contrast to a realist approach to
teaching).
Ausubel’s theory of cognitive development

Ausubel’s theory of cognitive development consists of three distinct components:
Reception learning
Meaningful learning versus rote learning
Conceptualisation.
According to Ausubel, people acquire knowledge primarily through reception rather than through discovery. Concepts,
principles and ideas are presented and understood, not discovered. The more organised and focused the presentation, the more
thoroughly the individual will learn. Ausbel stresses meaningful verbal learning. Rote memory, for example, is not considered
meaningful since memorisation omits the connection of new knowledge with existing knowledge.
Ausubel also proposed his expository teaching model to encourage meaningful rather than rote
reception learning. In his approach to learning, teachers present material in a carefully organised,
sequenced and finished form. In this manner, students receive the most usable material in the most
efficient way. Ausubel believes that learning should progress deductively – from the general to the Recommended further
specific – and not inductively, as Bruner recommended. reading:
With regard to conceptualisation, Ausubel argues that a learner first learns a representative image Mwamwenda, T.S. 2005.
Educational Psychology: An
and later on learns the verbal representation of a concept. African Perspective . Cape
Town: Heinemann, pp.
The socio-cultural perspective to cognitive development of Vygotsky 194–197, 292–293.
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development comprises four major

components.
The social/cultural context and thinking

Recommended further
Vygotsky investigated child development and how this was guided by reading:
the role of culture and interpersonal communication. Vygotsky Woolfolk, A. (2004).
Educational Psychology .
observed how higher mental functions developed historically within (9th ed.). Boston: Pearson
particular cultural groups as well as individually through social Education, pp. 44 –47.
interactions with significant people in a child’s life, particularly Patterson, C. (2008). Child
Development . New York:
parents, but also other adults. McGraw-Hill, pp. 299 –302.
Chaiklin, S. (2003). The
Language and thinking Zone of Proximal
Development in Vygosky’s
Perhaps Vygotsky’s most important contribution concerns the
Analysis of Learning and
inter-relationship of language development and thought. Vygotsky Instruction. In Kozulin, A.,
highlights the explicit and profound connection between speech (both Gindis, B., Ageyev, V.S. &
silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental Miller, S.M. Vygotsky’s
Educational Theory in
concepts and cognitive awareness. Cultural Context .
Cambridge: Cambridge
Zone of proximal development University Press, p. 39.
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is Vygotsky’s term for the
range of tasks that is too difficult for the child to master alone, but that can be learned with the guidance and assistance of adults
or more skilled children. The lower limit of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently. The upper
limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor. The ZPD captures the
child’s cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing and can be accomplished only with the assistance of a more skilled
person.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding is a concept that is closely related to the idea of the ZPD. It refers to temporary support and guidance to help a
learner master a task that is beyond that learner’s current level of development.
The socio-cognitive theory of Bandura

According to this theory, people learn, develop and acquire knowledge, a range of skills, rules,
strategies, beliefs and emotions by observing others. This process of learning takes place within a
social context and is guided and facilitated by the ‘knowing others’, in other words, the educator, Recommended further
peers, parents or anyone involved with learners in the learning situation who is willing to help them reading: Pintrich, P.R. and
Schunk, D.H. (2002).
in developing all the positive qualities of an effective learner. Motivation in Education:
The theory goes on to say that people also learn about the appropriateness of modelled actions by Theory, Research, and
observing the consequences of their behaviour. As a result, socio-cognitive theorists contend that, Applications . (2nd ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ:
during the process of learning, the presence of the knowing other is crucial for effective facilitation Merrill Prentice Hall,
and promotion of learner development and advancement. The educator models the behaviour that Chapter 4.
he or she wants learners to learn and develop. Learners observe the educator and begin to imitate
and practise his or her behaviour and actions.
In his analysis of observational learning, Bandura (1986: 51) contends that the provision of a model of thought and action is
one of the most effective ways to convey information about the rules for producing new behaviour.
Another important concept in the socio-cognitive theory is self-regulation. Learners themselves initiate and sustain cognitive
actions and behaviours toward attainment of a goal or learning outcome. They exercise self-judgement regarding the quality of
the outcome, and identify the strengths and weaknesses that contributed to their successes or failures.
The approach to assessment utilised by teachers who teach according to a socio-cognitive or socio-constructivist approach is
usually characterised by assessment for learning and criterion-referenced assessment. (Criterion-referenced assessment
measures a learner’s performance against criteria or set levels of performance.) Assessment for learning does not only focus on
the intellectual development of learners, but also focuses on their other attributes such as motivation, productive and
collaborative skills, values, attitudes, self-confidence, self-esteem and emotions. The main purpose of this new assessment
approach is to enhance, promote and achieve the complete process of development and functioning of the learners’ being.
Assessment is continuous, formative, credible, motivational and fair to all learners. The assessment approach is open,
transparent, predictable and formulated on the basis of explicit criteria. Assessment for learning is characterised by a variety of
assessment strategies and techniques, including the use of journals, exhibitions and portfolios. These assessment techniques and
strategies enable learners to develop skills for constructing and transferring knowledge. Assessment for learning goes beyond
retention of knowledge to transferral of knowledge, and leads to meaningful ways of learning. Peer assessment and
self-assessment strategies are used. Each learner monitors his or her contribution as well as the contribution of other learners to
a particular task, for example, by assessing the ability of each learner in the group (including him- or herself) to understand and
accept the ideas of others during the performance of a particular activity. Learners set personal goals for themselves and monitor
their progress, using informal methods. For example, learners may assess their prior knowledge (what they already know about
a particular aspect).
Activity 13
1. Spend about ten minutes on this activity. Work on your own.
2. Which of the three teachers and teaching frameworks described in the previous sub-section is underpinned by the cognitive
learning theory? Motivate your answer.
3. The ideas embedded in the cognitive learning theory are useful in that they give teachers opportunities to develop learners’
cognitive skills. In what other ways do you find this approach useful?
4. In what ways is this approach problematic? (For example, you could say that it is time consuming.)
Constructivism
Constructivism stems from the theories of Piaget, Bruner, Ausubel, Vygotsky and Bandura as discussed in the preceding
sections. The constructivist learning theory is built on the premise that all learning is discovered. As their point of departure,
constructivists use the principle that learning is an active process, which involves construction of meaning and takes place
through interpersonal negotiation. Constructivism distinguishes between two main approaches: cognitive constructivism and
socio-constructivism.
Cognitive constructivism
The cognitive constructivist theory focuses on the internal and individual construction of
knowledge. Cognitive constructivism is based on the theory of Piaget, according to which certain
levels of cognitive development linked to age indicate what cognitive challenges learners can Recommended further
handle and which cognitive skills they will develop at various stages. reading:
Fraser, J.D.C. (2006).
Learning is regarded as the result of the meaning that is attached to new information based on Mediation of learning. In
experience and pre-knowledge. In this regard, new information is assimilated and accommodated Nieman, M.M. & Monyai,
within existing knowledge structures. Learners must discover and transform information R.B. (Eds). The Educator
as Mediator of Learning .
individually in order to make the information their own. According to this theory, learners are Pretoria: Van Schaik, pp.
constantly checking and verifying new information against old information, and revising or 1–21.
changing what is not applicable or does not work anymore. This view suggests an active role for Slavin, R.E. (2003).
Educational Psychology:
learners. The teacher must equip learners with the cognitive structures that they need to obtain,
Theory and Practice . (7th
verify and apply information successfully. The emphasis is thus on helping learners to discover ed.). New York: Pearson
their own meaning instead of providing information for them to memorise. Education, Chapter 8.
Socio-constructivism
The socio-constructivist theory has its roots in the socio-contextual theory of Vygotsky and the socio-cognitive theory of
Bandura. Socio-constructivism regards learning as a social process. Learners thus acquire knowledge through interaction and
collaboration with their peers and people in their environment.
Activity 14
1. Spend about ten minutes on this activity. Work on your own.
2. Which of the three teachers and teaching frameworks described in the previous sub-section is underpinned by the
constructivist learning theory? Motivate your answer.
3. The ideas embedded in the constructivist learning theory are useful in that they teach learners to assimilate information from a
wide variety of sources. In what other ways do you find this approach useful?
4. In what ways is this approach problematic? (For example, you could say that gaps may occur in learners’ factual knowledge.)
We would like to stress that behaviourism, the cognitive learning theories and the constructivist approach all have much to offer
teachers. Instead of trying to apply any one theory or approach exclusively, consider the ideas proposed in all learning theories
that you encounter, here as well as in your own reading, and take what you consider to be the most helpful ideas from each one.
Making decisions about our teaching, learning and

assessment
You will remember that our examination of the different teaching frameworks and the learning theories that underpin each one
was a response to the questions raised by Mac, Joe, Cynthia and Devi:
Why do learners perform differently with different teachers?
Why do learners vary in their responses to different teaching and learning activities?
How do I address the needs of all learners in my classroom?
How do I become a reflective practitioner?
What did we think?

First, we concluded that different teachers teach and assess in different ways because they hold different assumptions about the
nature of teaching, learning and assessment. Similarly, it is reasonable to assume that learners will perform differently with
different teachers. Teachers might make choices about their instructional practice that do not cater for the individual and unique
needs of their learners. If the diverse needs of learners in terms of their learning preferences are not addressed, pedagogical
barriers are created. These barriers could lead to ineffective learning, frustration that is caused by being exposed to an
inefficient learning process, a lack of motivation and unwillingness to learn. Second, it appeared that Mrs Adams, Mrs Smith
and Mr Dlomo held different approaches towards teaching, learning and assessment, and possibly never talked to each other
about their teaching practice. If they had done so, they would have learnt from each other. Each of them could have adapted and
enriched their teaching practices to accommodate a greater variety of learner needs and learning approaches during teaching,
learning and assessment. Third, we realised that Mac, Joe, Cynthia and Devi’s teaching practices do not accommodate all of the
different learning-style needs of their learners, which is why some of their learners do not perform well. These four teachers
also know very little about each other’s teaching practices.
We felt that the teaching style of Mrs Adams resembled an inflexible, mechanical, teacher-centred process. Learners are seen
as empty vessels that have to be filled with content. Learning results in an uncritical intake of previously selected knowledge.
We felt that the approach of Mrs Adams would probably be most effective for teaching facts, concepts and principles. The
advantages of her approach are that learning material can be presented in small steps, difficult points can be re-explained and
learning material can be reviewed frequently. However, her approach does not have the potential for building higher-order
thinking and individual responsibility for learning, and does not address the teaching and learning needs of all learners.
Mrs Smith appears to be more flexible and learner-centred in her teaching approach, and she accommodates learners who
prefer learning by thinking and doing. Learners are actively involved in knowledge construction. She creates opportunities for
the development of thinking skills and social skills as she allows learners to work together and think together. Her assessment
approach does not rely solely on the regurgitation of facts, but allows learners to grow and develop individually through
continuous, formative self-assessment and peer assessment. Although Mrs Smith allows independent learning in her classrooms,
she remains a facilitator who monitors the learners carefully and mediates, models, coaches and scaffolds learning when
learners are in need of assistance or when they lack the skills needed to continue with their learning. What bothered us about
Mrs Smith’s approach is that learners might not acquire facts, rules and concepts effectively in her classroom as the main focus
is on active and collaborative learning. However, her approach provides many opportunities for learners to develop thinking
skills and social skills.
Mr Dlomo’s approach also places the learner in the centre of the teaching and learning situation with the teacher acting as a
facilitator. However, in contrast with the approach of Mrs Smith, learners undertake learning tasks without constant and close
management by the teacher. Mr Dlomo assumes that learners have the necessary skills to engage in learning. As a result,
learners have to be extremely self-reflective in order to plan, monitor and evaluate the outcome of their own learning, and to
make adjustments that would benefit their future learning. His approach addresses a wide variety of learner needs (written, oral,
visual and technological) and learners have the opportunity to work at their own pace. Mr Dlomo’s approach requires that
learners have well-developed cognitive skills that enable them to undertake learning on their own, which can be problematic if
learners do not possess these skills. His approach appears to be very individualistic and limits social involvement during
learning, which might not be beneficial to the development of learners’ social and thinking skills.
We felt that if Mac, Joe, Cynthia and Devi could work together sometimes and talk to each other about their teaching practice,
they could learn from each other, identify the strengths and weaknesses of their own practice, and make adaptations to improve
their teaching practice in a reasoned, systematic way.
Do you agree with our summary? What would you add or delete?
Example of application of these ideas

Devi expressed her awareness of the need for her to become a reflective practitioner and think about the needs of her learners.
Now read her ideas about how to use what she has learnt about the different teaching frameworks and theories of learning to do
this.
CASE STUDY: Becoming a reflective practitioner

I realise that in order to become a reflective practitioner, I have to think about a number of things that will guide the
decisions I make about classroom teaching, learning and assessment before I even start teaching. They are:
The aims and purposes I wish to achieve
The cognitive developmental level of my learners
The learning-style needs of my learners.
As an English teacher, I have to teach facts, concepts and rules to my learners. For example, my learners have to learn
vocabulary off by heart and know certain grammatical rules. For this purpose, I will adopt a realist approach and make
use of direct teaching methods such as lectures, presentations, drilling and demonstrations to teach. I will use tests and
exams to assess whether learners have acquired the concepts, facts and rules. As the use of direct teaching methods,
tests and exams will only test factual knowledge and accommodate certain learners in my classroom (those learners who
prefer learning by listening and watching), I know that I will need to vary my teaching strategies to accommodate other
learners in my classroom and to address a wider range of educational purposes.
The subject English also includes a literature component where learners should demonstrate understanding, interpret
information and express their opinions. I will use co-operative teaching strategies where learners can work together and
share their understanding and viewpoints with each other as well as with me to achieve this outcome. Together, we will
try to decide on the best possible interpretation of the text we are studying. In this way, I will accommodate learners
who enjoy learning by reflecting and thinking.
To ensure that I provide for the needs of learners who enjoy individual work, I will frequently structure activities that
call for individual efforts (for example, independently locating and presenting information in the form of debates,
completing work sheets and writing essays).
As most of the Grade 8 and 9 learners should be functioning on the formal cognitive operational level, I will be able
to choose the most appropriate of the three teaching approaches (the positivist realist approach, the contextualist
approach and the relativist approach) according to the demands of the teaching situation in which I find myself.
In short, I will adopt a flexible and pragmatic approach to decision-making about teaching and learning. In other
words, I will take what I feel to be useful and appropriate for a specific teaching and learning situation from each of the
three approaches. I will also remember to talk to my colleagues and share my experiences so that we are all forced to
question our own assumptions and practices. In that way, we’ll all be able to adapt and enrich our teaching practice.
There’s no right or wrong approach to teaching that works all the time in every situation. Teachers need to make decisions about
what to teach, how to teach, how learners should learn and how learners should be assessed on a daily basis. These decisions are
informed by the assumptions that teachers hold about the nature of teaching and learning. If we as teachers talk about our
assumptions and reflect on them more often, we should be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses in our own teaching
practice and make more informed choices in order to:
Determine the suitability of our teaching methods for achieving different learning aims and purposes, and accommodating
diverse learning-style needs
Justify assessment-design decisions as well as choices about assessment tasks and procedures
Understand the ways of thinking and doing that are involved in a specific subject or discipline, and how these may be
taught.
Activity 15
1. Spend about 45 minutes on this activity. Work on your own.
2. Do you agree with Devi’s approach? Motivate your answer.
3. Complete the diagram illustrating the main tenets or assumptions of Devi’s teaching approach that follows.
4. Come to a conclusion about the teaching, learning and assessment framework or paradigm and the learning theory or theories
that will characterise Devi’s approach to teaching, learning and assessment.
5. How is Devi’s approach similar to or different from the approaches of Mrs Adams, Mrs Smith and Mr Dlomo?
6. How is Devi’s approach similar to or different from your own?
The next activity illustrates how different conceptions of learning characterise the teaching and learning in a classroom. It will
help you to identify the main conceptions about learning that underpinned the teaching of Mrs Adams, Mrs Smith and Mr.
Dlomo. It could be done as part of an internal school professional development activity or during a contact session in support of
a distance learning programme.
Activity 16
1. Spend about fifteen minutes on this activity. Work in a group with three other teacher-learners.
2. Allocate a number (1– 4) to each member of your group. Each group member must examine the section in the table below that
corresponds with his or her number. The table gives four examples of different conceptions of how school-level learning
happens.
1. Montessori 2. Skinner
A child already possesses in its soul the faculty of speech, even though its external organs Learning is a change in observable behaviour. Even more precisely, we may define learning as
are as yet incapable of giving it proper expression. The infant must be given the names of all a change in the probability of a response, and to explain learning, we must specify the
things in his or her environment, not just ‘tree’, but ‘oak tree’, ‘blue gum tree’ and so on. The environmental conditions under which it comes about. To do this, we must survey the stimulus
child’s absorbent mind will learn these things naturally. The same can be said for all the variables of which probability of response is a function. The first step in designing school
various aspects of his or her mental life. In a child, there is a creative instinct, an active instruction is to define the terminal behaviour or response that we wish to bring about. What is
potency for building up a psychological world at the expense of his or her environment. the learner to do as a result of having been taught? Then we need to put in place arrangements
These are sensitive periods, special sensibilities that a creature acquires in its infantile state. that will strengthen the terminal behaviour through reinforcement. An educated person is
We, in our schools, discovered that they are also to be found in children and can be used in perhaps better able to adapt to his or her environment or adjust to the social life of his or her
teaching. We must have infinite trust in the child’s natural powers to teach him- or herself. group, but terms like adapting or adjusting do not describe forms of behaviour. They therefore
do not belong to discussions on educational method. The ‘mind’ is an explanatory fiction: to
make reference to thoughts, emotions or essential ideas defeats the business of good
instructional design and practice.
3. Piaget 4. Vygotsky
We can only know about things if we act upon them and reach some understanding of the Social relationships, especially teacher-learner relationships, create new mental formations and
mechanisms of these actions. The maturation of the organism by itself does not explain develop the higher processes of mental life. Learning is a social process. A child’s thinking (an
development, and hence learning. For example, the sophisticated logic of a mature thinker is internal matter) is the internalisation of a set of relationships in real activity between the child
obviously not pre-formed in the brain. Experience is essential to a person’s contact with the and more competent others (an external, social matter). The speech of adults around the child,
world, but it is inconceivable outside of its source in action. Knowledge derived from with its constant and defined meanings, determines the pathways of the development of
experience is not a static mental copy of the objects in view, but arises from the cognitive children’s thoughts and actions. The child finds his or her own mental complexes constructed in
operations carried out on them. The child actively constructs his or her knowledge of the the process of coming to understand others’ speech. Teaching is the social activity within which
world as part of his or her adaptation to the world. And learning follows development. The meaning is mediated to the learner, eventually to become his or her own internal thought
child can receive valuable information via language or via education only if the child is in a processes. Teaching and learning, which are inseparable, and which sometimes seem to wait
state where he or she can understand the information. This is why you cannot teach higher upon development, are in fact its decisive motive force.
mathematics to a five-year old. The child does not yet have the structures that enable him or
her to understand.
Source: Adapted from Moll, I., Bradbury, J. and Winkler, G. with Tshule, M., van Voore, M. and Slonimsky, L. and Gultig, J.
(Ed.). (2001). Learners and Learning . Learning Guide and Reader. Cape Town: OUP, p. 196.
3. Discuss the conceptions of learning that characterised each of the sections with your fellow group members.
4. Match the conception of school-level learning that you are responsible for to the classroom scenarios of Mrs Adams, Mrs Smith
and Mr Dlomo.
5. Which conception of school-level learning do you think underpins Devi’s teaching approach?
6. To what extent do you agree that the conception of learning according to Skinner is visible in the teaching approach of Mrs
Adams?
7. Would it be correct to argue that the Piagetian and Vygotskian conceptions of learning underpin the teaching approach of Mrs
Smith?
8. How true is it that the conceptions of learning according to Montesorri and Piaget are reflected in the teaching approach of Mr
Dlomo?
9. How does Devi’s conception of learning compare with the views of Montesorri, Skinner, Piaget and Vygotsky?
10. What is your view: should a teacher’s approach to classroom teaching, learning and assessment preferably be linked to
different teaching frameworks or paradigms and theories of learning, or to one dominant framework or conception?
The final activity of this sub-section proposes a few challenging questions to get you thinking.
Activity 17
1. Spend about one hour on this activity. Work with a fellow teacher-learner.
2. Discuss the following questions:
a. Explain why some teachers are in favour of a dominant teaching approach in their classrooms.
b. Under what circumstances (if any) do you think these teachers’ attitudes about classroom teaching, learning and
assessment could change? To guide your discussion, reflect on issues such as the following (as well as any others that
seem relevant to you):
The age of learners
Curriculum demands
Teaching intentions
Teachers’ own teaching experiences
Information technology and globalisation
The influence of democratisation
Identifiable needs of the society and/or the individual.
c. How applicable are the positivist realist, contextualist and relativist paradigms to teaching for
South African classrooms? Recommended further
d. Some teachers argue that it is impossible for learners to learn and work independently from a reading on factors that
teacher. What is your view? influence assumptions
e. What do you think of Mr Dlomo’s assumption that peers can negatively influence the about teaching, learning
development of independent knowledge? and assessment:
f. Reflect on the way in which the learning material has been presented to you in this Brownlee, J. & Berthelsen,
D. (2008). Developing
sub-section and in Section Two up to this point. Would you argue that one dominant teaching
relational epistemology
framework or paradigm and learning theory has underpinned the way in which the learning through relational
unfolded? Motivate your answer with practical examples from the material. pedagogy: New ways of
thinking about personal
You might have noticed that the approach of the authors of this book is similar to Devi’s new epistemology in teacher
approach: we adopt different approaches at different times. Sometimes we provide you with education. In Khine, M.S.
(Ed.). Knowing, Knowledge
information. At other times, we expect you to reflect and come to your own understanding of the and Beliefs:
learning material. We are of the opinion that talking to others is a useful way of identifying our Epistemological Studies
assumptions and becoming critical of our own beliefs. For this reason, we often ask you to talk to across Diverse Cultures .
Brisbane: Springer, Chapter
your colleagues when doing the activities. We think it is important that our professional decisions 19.
about what and how to teach flow from conscious, reasoned decision-making informed by clear
educational purposes, rather than from ad-hoc decisions made on the spur of the moment. We think we are more likely to
achieve what we set out to achieve if we consciously plan in this way.
2.3 Planning with national aims in mind

Planning in terms of national educational purpose
Many teachers seem to be afraid of working with notions like aims, objectives or outcomes. This fear is often the consequence
of an unnecessarily complicated debate about what learning aims, objectives and outcomes are, and how we, as teachers, should
make use of them. Yet we use the broad concept of a purpose-driven goal or aim often in everyday life. We say things like, ‘My
goal in life is to be happy’ or ‘I aim to be the best cook in this contest’ or ‘The object of this exercise is to improve the quality
of life of the residents’. These terms describe our intentions, our purpose. They describe what we want to achieve.
Specifying our broad national educational purpose

All good teachers, regardless of the kind of system they teach in, try to define their educational intentions clearly and precisely.
We saw in Section 2.2 that these intentions reflect particular theoretical assumptions, whether or not these assumptions are
articulated explicitly. Our purpose is named differently, depending on its level of detail (and how long we plan to take to
achieve it).
So, for instance, all countries have:
A set of broad national educational goals. These define the larger educational purpose that all education providers in a
country should be committed to achieving, regardless of what subject they teach or the level at which they teach.
Consequently, these goals or aims are spelt out in very general terms.
Sets of subject-specific goals. These are more precise and detailed descriptions of how particular subjects contribute
systematically to the realisation of our national goals. However, they are still relatively general in that they describe the
educational purpose of that learning over an entire phase of schooling.
Note the emphasis in the above sets of goals. Our focus is on organising systematic learning. First we need to be clear on what
learners must be better able to know or do, or what we hope they will feel differently as a result of their learning experience.
Only then can we think about what the teacher needs to do to try to encourage or assist this to happen.
Although national policy sets out overall national goals, teachers still need to be clear about their purposes and what they
hope to achieve within individual classrooms and lessons. In different systems, these intentions are expressed as aims and
objectives, or purposes and goals, or learning outcomes.
Here is an example of a ‘learning outcome’ from a primary-level subject. An English (or Literacy) teacher may well say that
the purpose of her teaching is to help learners to ‘use language to think and reason, and access, process and use information for
learning’. This learning outcome is a sub-set of the national aim ‘collect, analyse, organise and critically evaluate information’.
In ordinary language, this aim spells out our national goal of making sure that all our citizens can use language to explore issues
intelligently. In this way, the broad national aims are embedded in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS),
which will progressively replace the existing curriculum documents from 2012. In the primary school system, the CAPS
documents will be complemented by learner workbooks. (Digital copies can be downloaded from the website of the Department
of Basic Education at www.education.gov.za .)
Designing down from South Africa’s national goals

In all countries, national curricula shape teaching and learning. They suggest what we should learn, how we should teach and
learn, and how the system should be organised to support teaching and learning best.
The decisions made change constantly. Consider the comparative table of approaches to teaching and schooling in Nigeria,
England and South Africa that follows.
Table 1 Comparing school curricula: Nigeria, England and South Africa (based on Ajibola 2008, All Africa News 2011, Bitrus
2007, Curriculum Organization of Nigeria 2011, British Council 2011, UK DoE 2011, GTC 2011, Oates 2010, Osokoya 2010,
Rabiu 2007, United Kingdom Government 2011)
Aspect Nigeria England South Africa
System Universal Basic Education National Curriculum (1988), National Curriculum Statement (latest update 2010)
structure (1999), updated 2007 reviewed 1995, 1999, 2007
Nine years of basic A substantive review, which
education for all seems to be directed towards
identifying core concepts,
principles, fundamental
operations and key knowledge
(Oates 2010: 9) was announced
in January 2011
Nine-year curriculum plan: The curriculum defines four key Nine years of compulsory basic education for all:
Lower: Primary years stages and ten statutory Foundation Phase: Grades R–3
1–3 subjects: Intermediate Phase: Grades 4–6
Middle: Primary years Key stage one: Up to age Senior Phase: Grades 7–9
4–6 seven (school year group 1, Further Education and Training: Grades 10–12
Upper: Three years of 2) One to four years of tertiary undergraduate study.
junior secondary Key stage two: Seven to
schooling eleven (school year groups
Three years of senior 3, 4, 5, 6)
secondary schooling Key stage three: Eleven to
Four years of tertiary fourteen (school year
study. groups 7, 8, 9)
Key stage four: Fourteen to
sixteen (school year groups
10, 11).
Underpinning Discipline and content Four main purposes: Outcomes based and linked to National Qualifications
approach based. Establish entitlement Framework (NQF) since 1997
Establish standards However, 2010 reform organises required teaching
Promote continuity and more strongly around knowledge concepts; new
coherence CAPS documents, which come into play from 2012,
Promote public organise the curriculum around content or conceptual
understanding. knowledge, but still emphasise what learners should
achieve as a result of the learning experience.
Curriculum Core and elective Three core subjects: Foundation Phase: Two languages, Numeracy and
framework components English (Welsh in Wales), Life Skills
Primary = Ten subjects Mathematics and Science Intermediate Phase: Six subjects
Junior secondary schooling Seven other ‘foundation’ Senior Phase: Nine subjects
= Between eleven and subjects: Further Education and Training: Four core subjects
thirteen core subjects, Design Technology, History, (L1, L2, Life Skills, Mathematics or Mathematical
including pre-vocational Geography, Music, Art and Literacy) plus two or three electives.
subjects Design, Physical Education, a
Core subjects include modern foreign language
English Studies, (French, Spanish, German or
Mathematics, Social Italian) and ICT
Studies, Civic Education, Citizenship in Wales (Welsh is a
Computer Studies, Health foundation subject in non-Welsh
and Physical Education, speaking schools)
Religious studies and All children in key stages one to
French three must study the first nine of
Senior secondary schooling these subjects; in key stage
= Seven core + between three, they must also study a
one and three of 34 modern foreign language
electives Pupils aged fourteen to sixteen
Core subjects include must study the core subjects,
coverage of contemporary technology, a modern foreign
issues, for example, HIV language and physical
and ICTs. education, plus either history or
geography, or short courses in
both.
Dominant ICT-integrated, Contextual pedagogy: Learner-centred approach with emphasis on active

teaching community-oriented Aim 1: The school learning.
approach problem-solving approach, curriculum should aim to
expected but most teachers still in a provide opportunities for all
transmission paradigm. pupils to learn and to
achieve
Aim 2: The school
curriculum should aim to
promote pupils’ spiritual,
moral, social and cultural
development, and prepare
all pupils for the
opportunities,
responsibilities and
experiences of life
Programmes of study set
out what pupils should be
taught in each subject at
each key stage and provide
the basis for planning
schemes of work
The programme of study for
each subject sets out the
following in each key stage:
Knowledge, skills and
understanding (what has to
be taught)
Breadth of study (contexts,
activities, areas of study
and range of experiences
through which the
knowledge, skills and
understanding should be
taught).
Assessment National Policy on Four key assessment principles Continuous formative assessment emphasised
Education (1981, 1995, designed to help schools take a Inclusive education requirements encourage
2006) emphasises fresh look at their practice and alternative assessment strategies.
comprehensive and consider what the experience of
continuous education, but assessment is like for their
practice still dominated by learners:
preparation for examination The learner is at the heart
of content. of assessment
Assessment needs to
provide a view of the whole
learner
Assessment is integral to
teaching and learning
Assessment includes
reliable judgements about
how learners are
performing related, where
appropriate, to national
standards.
Language Multi-lingualism expected: English is the language of Additive multi-lingualism

Two Nigerian languages, learning and teaching Home language as language of learning and teaching
English and French or Learners are encouraged to (LOLT) in Foundation Phase
Classical Arabic. learn a modern foreign English as a subject at Foundation Phase from
language, but it is not required 2011/12.
that a foreign language be taken
to exit examination level.
System Ajibola (2008) notes: Declining performance in Recruitment and retention of teachers in rural areas,
challenges Itinerant teachers in international comparative Foundation Phase, Mathematics, Science and
rural areas studies. Technology, and Languages.
Teachers find it difficult
to adapt their pedagogy
Insufficient training in
teaching reading
Shortage of textbooks
and resource-based
learning approaches
High teacher-to-student
ratios (1:70–120 at
junior secondary school
level)
Osokoya (2010) notes:
Difficult to attract
high-quality candidates
for teaching
Many unqualified and
underqualified teachers
in system
Brain drain affects
quality of teacher
training
Low teacher morale
Teachers
underprepared for ICT
and globalisation
Teachers need more
training for continuous
assessment.
National Yes Yes Yes

teachers’
code of
conduct?
Teacher A: PhD plus Education Qualified teacher status (QTS) = QTS now at M + 4 level, for example, four-year BEd
levels B: M plus Education BEd or B plus Postgraduate or B-degree plus PGCE or Advanced Diploma in
C: B plus Education Certificate in Education (PGCE). Education (ADE)
D: National Certificate in No salary notch increases for higher qualifications.
Education (NCE).
It is useful to think about this as representing a continuum of practices, which can be illustrated as follows.
Arguably, South Africa’s apartheid-era school curriculum tended towards the left extreme of this
continuum while its initial attempts to introduce transformational outcomes-based education tended
towards the right extreme. Currently, we seem to be moving back towards the centre, although Recommended further
higher-education provision would tend towards the right end of the curriculum as students progress. reading: Christie, P. (2008).
Opening the Doors of
These changes reflect conscious decisions that are often hotly contested. Learning: Changing
Christie (2008) provides a stimulating and insightful discussion of the challenge to ‘open the Schools in South Africa .
doors of learning’ and change schools in South Africa to prepare learners better for meaningful Sandton: Heinemann
Publishers (Pty) Ltd.
participation in the global knowledge economy of the 21st century, while recognising that the
challenges of doing this vary from context to context.
Christie ends her discussion on the impact of globalisation by referencing the ‘four pillars of learning’ set out in the 1998
UNESCO report Learning: The treasure within (also known as the Delors Report). Read through the ‘four pillars’ set out below
and think about whether you agree with these statements, what the implications might be for the design of a school curriculum
and what the implications might be for classroom practice.
The ‘four pillars of learning’ are:
Learning to live together: The far-reaching changes in the traditional patterns of life require of us a better understanding of
other people and the world at large. They demand mutual understanding, peaceful interchange and, indeed, harmony – the
very things that are most lacking in our world today.
Learning to know: Given the rapid changes brought about by scientific progress and the new forms of economic and social
activity, the emphasis has to be on combining a sufficiently broad general education with the possibility of in-depth work
on a selected number of subjects. Such a general background provides, so to speak, the passport to lifelong education, in so
far as it gives people a taste – but also lays the foundations – for learning throughout life.
Learning to do: In addition to learning to do a job of work, it should, more generally, entail the acquisition of a competence
that enables people to deal with a variety of situations, often unforeseeable, and to work in teams, a feature to which
educational methods do not at present pay enough attention. In many cases, such competence and skills are more readily
acquired if pupils and students have the opportunity to try to develop their abilities by becoming involved in work
experience schemes or social work while they are still in education, hence the increased importance that should be attached
to all methods of alternating study with work.
Learning to be: In the 21st century, everyone needs to exercise greater independence and judgement combined with a
stronger sense of personal responsibility for the attainment of common goals. None of the talents, which are hidden like
buried treasure in every person, must be left untapped. These talents are, to name but a few, memory, reasoning power,
imagination, physical ability, aesthetic sense, the aptitude to communicate with others and the natural charisma of the
group leader, which again goes to prove the need for greater self-knowledge.
We have thus thought about some possible broad global goals. What, then, are South Africa’s educational goals? What are the
general aims South African society wants all of its educators – from Foundation Phase teachers through to university lecturers –
to develop in their learners? What kinds of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes does our society believe its citizens require in
order to live and work successfully in this society? What do you think these aims should be?
General aims of the South African curriculum

These aims are replicated in all CAPS documents. They are available on the website of the Department of Basic Education (
www.education.gov.za ).
The National Curriculum Statement Grades R–12 gives expression to the knowledge, skills and values worth learning in
South African schools. This curriculum aims to ensure that children acquire and apply knowledge and skills in ways that are
meaningful to their own lives. In this regard, the curriculum promotes knowledge in local contexts, while being sensitive to
global imperatives.
The National Curriculum Statement Grades R–12 serves the purposes of:
Equipping learners, irrespective of their socio-economic background, race, gender, physical ability or intellectual ability,
with the knowledge, skills and values necessary for self-fulfilment and meaningful participation in society as citizens of a
free country
Providing access to higher education
Facilitating the transition of learners from education institutions to the workplace
Providing employers with a sufficient profile of a learner’s competences.
The National Curriculum Statement Grades R–12 is based on the following principles:
Social transformation: Ensuring that the educational imbalances of the past are redressed and that equal educational
opportunities are provided for all sections of the population
Active and critical learning: Encouraging an active and critical approach to learning, rather than rote and uncritical learning
of given truths
High knowledge and high skills: The minimum standards of knowledge and skills to be achieved at each grade are
specified and high, achievable standards are set in all subjects
Progression: The content and context of each grade shows progression from simple to complex
Human rights, inclusivity, environmental and social justice: Infusing the principles and practices of social and
environmental justice and human rights as defined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa; the National
Curriculum Statement Grades R–12 is sensitive to issues of diversity such as poverty, inequality, race, gender, language,
age, disability and other factors
Valuing indigenous knowledge systems: Acknowledging the rich history and heritage of this country as important
contributors to nurturing the values contained in the Constitution
Credibility, quality and efficiency: Providing an education that is comparable in quality, breadth and depth to that of other
countries.
The National Curriculum Statement Grades R–12 aims to produce learners who are able to:
Identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking
Work effectively as individuals and with others as members of a team
Organise and manage themselves and their activities responsibly and effectively
Collect, analyse, organise and critically evaluate information
Communicate effectively using visual, symbolic and/or language skills in various modes
Use science and technology effectively and critically showing responsibility towards the environment and the health of
others
Demonstrate an understanding of the world as a set of related systems by recognising that problem-solving contexts do not
exist in isolation.
Inclusivity should become a central part of the organisation, planning and teaching at each school. This can only happen if all
teachers have a sound understanding of how to recognise and address barriers to learning, and how to plan for diversity.
The key to managing inclusivity is to ensure that barriers are identified and addressed by all of the relevant support structures
within the school community, including teachers, district-based support teams, institutional-level support teams, parents and
special schools as resource centres. To address barriers in the classroom, teachers should use various curriculum differentiation
strategies such as those included in the Department of Basic Education’s Guidelines for Inclusive Teaching and Learning
(2010).
Activity 18
1. Do this activity with fellow teacher-learners. Include an examination and vigorous discussion of old policy documents and
textbooks (in order to be clear about the goals of the previous system). Note that all curriculum policy documents spell out a set
of desired generic goals or aims.
2. Spend about an hour on this activity. When you have completed Section Two, come back to this activity and reassess your
answer using the new knowledge you will have gained by then.
3. Read through South Africa’s national aims. Work with a group of fellow teachers.
a. Discuss what kinds of individuals these aims suggest that we, as teachers, should develop. What kinds of attitudes and
values must they hold? What kinds of skills and knowledge are necessary for life and work in a 21st century
ICT-connected society? Where does this approach seem to fit in terms of the theoretical paradigms you learnt about in
Section 2.2?
b. Read through an old South African curriculum document or a curriculum document from another country and compare the
characteristics indicated in these documents with those discussed in Part a.
c. Discuss any ways in which the characteristics outlined in the national aims differ from the norm in your community. In other
words, think of how you are going to have to change your learners!
d. Then take one aim and think about how it would shape what you teach and how you teach a topic within your subject. In
order to do this:
First, choose an aim that seems closely associated with your subject. For instance, if you were a Mathematics teacher,
you could choose ‘to make decisions using critical and creative thinking’.
Second, from this, identify a specific aim or skill that you would like to help your learners to develop. For example, if
you were teaching Mathematics, you might want to help learners develop ‘a spirit of curiosity and a love of
Mathematics’.
Third, think of how you’d assess whether learners had achieved your specific aim or skill. This would require you to
break down the specific aim into smaller, more immediate learning goals or outcomes. One might be, for instance, ‘use
number rhymes and songs to count forwards in 5s from any multiple of 5 between 0 and 100’.
Fourth, think of the activities you would use to teach this knowledge. How are they different from the way you currently
teach?
What did we think?

We felt that South Africa’s national goals influence our teaching in a number of ways:
They shift the focus from content recall to the demonstration of competence, and from teacher inputs to learner outputs.
What learners can do when they leave school is the measure of our success or failure, rather than the marks that learners
achieve in examinations.
They prioritise aims that spell out a vision of a future society populated by democratic, tolerant, co-operative and critically
thoughtful citizens (rather than citizens who are obedient or ruthlessly competitive, for instance).
We also thought that our national goals thus shape both what we teach (curriculum content) and how we teach and assess
(educational methods). For instance, a method such as group work only becomes appropriate because of the kinds of
purpose we have in mind: it assists in the development of co-operative, tolerant citizens who can think critically. If
obedience and competition were the chosen aims, group work would not be an appropriate method, but individual rote
learning might be.
The broad aims are very generic. They will manifest differently in different disciplinary areas. In subject planning, we will need
to be aware of the internal logic of the different disciplines as well as the possibilities of multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary
knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in tackling complex real-life challenges.
We didn’t think we were ever supposed to teach the aims directly. Instead, we regarded them as a list of good habits that
would assist all our learners to develop. As we know, habits develop unconsciously through the kinds of experiences we have in
our lives. As teachers, we can use national aims to guide us about the kinds of learning experiences we will construct for our
learners within the broad knowledge areas identified nationally.
Using specific aims to plan learning programmes

Some of you may have felt really confused and irritated when you tried to do the last activity. Others may have loved the
freedom this approach offered you. You may have thought: ‘Now I can really use my own imagination and initiative … this is
what teaching is all about!’
As noted previously, in recent years we have experimented with this more open-ended approach in which teachers needed to
exercise a great deal of professional autonomy in deciding what and how to teach. In general, teachers did not enjoy the
experience and struggled to give effect to the national vision. Currently, we have moved back towards providing more explicit
guidance on what should be taught and how it should be taught. In developing the new CAPS curriculum documents, however,
it was still necessary for the curriculum teams to go through the kind of process we asked you to engage with in Activity 12.
They needed to think about what needed to be learnt and why, how we would know whether learners had indeed learnt what
was intended and how to break down the learning into manageable steps.
You will recall that we spoke of teaching as involving an intentional process of organising systematic learning. Clearly we
need to set out with some idea of our intended future goals (although we need to be flexible enough to recognise and build upon
worthwhile but unintended learning that may occur), but we also need to take cognisance of where we are starting from. We
then need to plan how we can get from where we are to where we need to be. Consider the following extracts from the CAPS
documents for First Additional Language (since all teachers use and require learners to use language effectively) as examples of
where we want to get to by the end of schooling and taking cognisance of where we are starting from.
Where we want to get to

The curriculum is organised according to the skills, content and strategies specified in the table that follows.
Table 2 Extract from CAPS First Additional Language Grades 10–12

Overview of language skills, content and strategies
Listening and speaking Reading and viewing
Listening process: Reading and viewing process:

Pre-listening: Pre-reading: Strategies to prepare learners for reading, for
Strategies to prepare learners for listening, for example, activating example, activating background knowledge, predicting,
background knowledge, predicting, getting physically prepared skimming headings
During listening: Reading: Close reading of text supported by teacher’s
Listening for specific information and comprehension questions; development of strategies, for example, inferencing;
Listening for critical analysis and evaluation focus on word choice, use of language, imagery and so on
Listening for interaction Post-reading: Interpreting the text as a whole using strategies
Listening for appreciation such as synthesising, summarising, comparing and contrasting,
Post-listening: Answering questions, reviewing notes, using information inferencing, evaluating, drawing conclusions, expressing
(for example, to label a diagram), summarising, drawing inferences and opinions.
conclusions, evaluating, responding critically.
Speaking Writing and presenting

Informal speaking , for example, conversations Process writing strategies:
Formal speaking and presenting: Selecting a text type and topic
Planning, researching and organising ideas and information Planning/pre-writing: Analysing the structure and language
Practising and presenting: Showing awareness of audience, purpose features of the text type
and context; using appropriate and accurate language structures and Drafting, revising, proofreading, editing, presenting.
conventions; clear delivery, using appropriate verbal and non-verbal
techniques.
Oral text types: Written text types:

Informal: Discussion, conversation, dialogue, group work, unprepared Cognitive academic: Information report, procedures,
reading aloud explanation, persuasion or argumentative,
Formal: Prepared speech, unprepared speech, reading aloud, interview, reflective/discussion/discursive, review
panel discussion, debate, giving directions and instructions, introducing a Creative: Narrative, descriptive
speaker, offering a vote of thanks. Personal/interpersonal: Diary or journal, personal letter,
personal recount, invitation, obituary
Business: Business letter, pamphlet, brochure, CV, form-filling,
agenda, minutes, flyer, advertisement.
Language structures and conventions

Language structures and conventions are taught in the context of the above skills and also as part of a systematic language development
programme. This should include word choice, spelling, sentence construction, punctuation, paragraph writing, revision of grammatical structures
taught in earlier grades and the introduction of new language structures (see reference list).
Source: Department of Basic Education (DBE). (2011). Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, Grades 10 –12, English First Additional Language. Pretoria: DBE, pp.
12–13.
Where we start from

The main skills for the First Additional Language in the Foundation Phase are set out in the table that follows.
Table 3 Extract from CAPS First Additional Language, Foundation Phase

Listening and
speaking
Reading and Thinking and reasoning and Language structure and use, which are integrated into all four language skills (listening, speaking,
phonics reading and writing)
Writing and
handwriting
Source: Department of Basic Education (DBE) (2011). Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), Foundation Phase, First Additional Language Grades R–3. Pretoria:
DBE, p. 11.
Planning a logical curriculum sequence

When we did the previous activity, we realised how important it is to start with a clear purpose in mind. Deciding on the content
area and what we hope to help learners to do with that content is the first step in planning. Once our purpose has been defined
and agreed upon, all other planning decisions follow because all teaching is then directed at helping learners to achieve the
planned purpose. Thus, decisions about what to teach, in what order and through which activities flow on from the clarification
of purpose.
If you were to try to design a 40-minute lesson, you’d notice that a curriculum made up only of a list of content areas and
learning outcomes or objectives lacks detail about both content and level. We began asking questions like these:
Exactly which process skills must my learners learn about and use at this grade level?
What phenomena must they investigate? What knowledge and concepts must they understand at this level?
How detailed must my teaching of these concepts be at this particular level?
Curriculum documents provide teachers with guidance for their curriculum planning. They give guidance about:
What they should teach within a particular learning area or subject area
The order in which they should teach learning-area content and skills
The level at which they should teach particular grades.
In South Africa, as noted, the various curriculum documents developed in the period 1996 to 2010 have been consolidated into
single Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS), organised by phase and subject. At the primary school level,
these documents are complemented by learner workbooks. Both kinds of curriculum document can be downloaded from the
website of the Department of Basic Education ( www.education.gov.za ).
The content of curricula in all countries is constantly changing as new ideas about education and learning are developed. This
module aims to assist you in developing an approach to designing learning programmes that you can use regardless of such
changes.
The important job for teachers is to study these different documents, to understand them, and then – within their schools – to
begin making phase plans, year plans and lesson plans that reflect reasoned responses to national curriculum imperatives on the
one hand and the realities of different contexts of teaching and learning practice on the other. These plans should:
Interpret curriculum aims and purposes precisely and in a manner that teachers can use at a lesson level in the classroom
taking contextual realities into account
Describe an assessment process that links clearly with these purposes and assesses them appropriately
Describe curriculum progress.
The description of curriculum progress should include descriptions of how teaching should proceed both in terms of more
content (breadth) and greater difficulty (conceptual depth or progression). Even where workbooks are provided for learners, it is
likely that teachers will need to supplement these with additional learning experiences (for example, to accommodate
particularly slow or particularly gifted learners and/or to address a wide array of possible barriers to learning).
Developing depth and breadth

From what we have said thus far, it is clear that planning happens at different levels of detail: for the school system as a whole,
for the phase, for the year and for the lesson. Lesson plans must fit into a plan for the year and a plan for the phase. Without the
broad level planning for the phase and the grade, there is a risk that important skills and concepts will not be included. Certain
knowledge and skills might receive a great deal of attention and others too little. Some topics might be dealt with over and over
again, or learners might not be encouraged increasingly to demonstrate greater levels of understanding and skill. In other words,
it is essential that our broad plans ensure that there is progression, depth and balance in the learning programme. More detailed
lesson plans must support this overall framework. So, if you think back to the list of reasons why planning is important, perhaps
you could add that planning should ensure logical progression and breadth in the curriculum.
2.4 Developing teaching plans

We have learnt about how clear statements on what we want to help learners to learn should guide what we teach and how we
teach. We have also learnt that we need to develop subject curricula that provide much more detail about core learning content,
logical sequencing and appropriate conceptual depth than what is generally provided in national curriculum policy documents.
In this sub-section, we will learn how to develop:
Longer-term teaching plans (for a three-year phase and a year)
Shorter-term lesson plans (for a single lesson, or a unit of lessons).
In other words, we are beginning to highlight time. But we will look at time in two ways:
How it limits how much we can do in a lesson, a week, a year and so on
How it suggests the order in which we do our teaching.
As we work through the levels of planning, we will refer to the work of a particular educator. Joe is a head of department
(HOD) in his school and he teaches Social Sciences in Grade 7. However, before we introduce you to Joe, we need to think a
little bit about the planning that must happen at whole-school level to make Joe’s work possible.
Whole-school planning
Curriculum planning should be based on a very clear teaching and learning vision of the school. As
instructional leader, the principal is expected to help the school community to develop a shared
vision for the school. This vision guides or influences the institutional vision. The institutional You can find more about
vision reflects the views of a much larger and more diverse group. By its nature, vision is future this research in the
following books:
directed. It projects a desired future state for the school and this implies that the school is striving to Roberts, J. and Roach, J.
attain something different from its current state. In response to its vision, the school develops what (2006). Leadership Styles
we normally refer to as a school development or renewal or improvement plan. In this manner, all and Practices in Effective
Schools . Johannesburg:
teaching and learning activities are guided by the vision. Research indicates that shared vision and Gauteng Department of
staff co-operation feature high amongst the key factors that have been associated with effective Education.
schools (Roberts and Roach, 2006; Fidler and Bowles, 1989). Fidler, B. and Bowles, G.
A school with a meaningful shared vision is always working towards improvement. Curriculum (Eds) (1989). Effective
Local Management of
development should take place within the parameters identified in whole-school planning and in Schools: A Strategic
particular in terms of the school’s improvement plan (SIP). The SIP should provide some guidance Approach . Harlow:
Longman.
on targets and strategies for achieving improved learner performance. It will also help to identify
possible contexts or themes for learning. These themes should address specific issues considered to be important by the school
and its community. The themes should support the realisation of the school’s vision and mission, so they will differ from school
to school. It is important to ensure that curriculum planning is guided by the whole-school plan, which is based on the SIP.
Activity 19
1. You need not write anything for this activity. Just spend a couple of minutes thinking about each of the questions.
a. What scope is provided by national curriculum documents to tailor teaching to context?
b. Which issues in your SIP will guide the decision on themes to be addressed in your subject and phase planning?
c. Are there any areas of the school curriculum in which you are aware that your school is underperforming? What strategies do you have in
place to correct this situation?
d. What contexts help to shape (or should help to shape) the overall curriculum in your school?
The themes to be addressed will depend on the context of a school. School A, for example, might highlight the following issues:
HIV/Aids
Unemployment and entrepreneurship
Overcrowding
Pollution
Substance abuse
Multi-culturalism and tolerance.
School B might highlight the following issues:

HIV/Aids
Subsistence farming
Access to clean water
Indigenous knowledge systems and practices
Community development.
Activity 20
1. Spend about twenty minutes thinking about the scenario described below.
Mr Ramano is a newly appointed HOD in charge of the Intermediate Phase at Buhlebethu Primary School in Gauteng province. The school has five Grade 4
classes, five Grade 5 classes and four Grade 6 classes.
It is the beginning of November and the principal, Ms Mokoena, has asked the HODs to complete their curriculum planning for the following year before
schools close for the summer holidays. As a new appointee from a school outside South Africa, Mr Ramano does not know exactly how to tackle this
assignment.
2. Drawing from your experience, how would you guide him? You may consider the following questions (and/or others):
a. What curriculum planning needs to be done?
b. Why is it necessary?
c.
2.
c. What is he expected to plan for?

d. How does he organise the planning process?
e. What resources will he use?
f. Who should be involved and what roles should they play?
g. What is the relationship between curriculum management, curriculum planning and curriculum development?
Having helped stakeholders to develop a meaningful shared vision for the school, the principal has to lead and manage
curriculum planning through the school management team (SMT). This team consists primarily of instructional leaders. Each
subject or phase head leads a subject group that covers the entire phase.
As instructional leaders, the HODs are responsible for taking the lead in putting the curriculum into practice and improving it.
Among other things, the HODs will:
Oversee the curriculum planning
Ensure that teaching time is used effectively
Ensure that classroom activities are learner paced and learner centred
Develop and use team-planning and team-teaching techniques.
One of the functions of the HOD as instructional leader is to ensure that time is managed and used effectively. Therefore,
timetabling is one of the most important aspects of curriculum planning.
Time is a very important resource for learning and teaching. We must manage it carefully in order to avoid chaos and to
ensure that learning purposes in a given learning subject or phase are achieved. Timetabling can be a very complex exercise,
especially at a big school. Many schools fail to start on time at the beginning of the year because the school timetable is not
ready.
Care has to be taken that all subjects are covered. The school must allocate time to each subject as stipulated in the policy
statement. Remember that learners in the General Education and Training (GET) band are required to study a range of
prescribed subjects and subject combinations, whilst learners in the Further Education and Training (FET) band have to make
subject choices. We often overlook a number of questions raised by subject choice. It is an aspect of curriculum planning that
must be managed carefully in a way that is in line with the SIP.
Enough time must be set aside for the detailed curriculum planning that is required at the level of classroom teaching. Once
plans have been made, the principal and HODs must ensure that these plans are implemented, monitored, reviewed and
resourced.
Joe, as both an HOD and a classroom teacher, needs to work within this context when doing his own planning.
We will follow Joe as he plans his teaching for the year. As HOD, he has decided to teach Social Sciences to Grade 7s. He
has many resources to draw from in his planning: a pile of curriculum policy documents from national and provincial
departments, a selection of new Social Sciences textbooks, a file of printed resources collected over the years, his fellow
teachers and some big ideas of his own. What are the key decisions he has to make in his planning process?
What do my answers to these questions reveal about my own underpinning theoretical assumptions about the nature of
teaching and learning (Section 2.2)?
Phase-level planning
What will I teach? Deciding on content and concepts
How did Joe’s team decide what to teach during the Senior Phase (three years) and in Grade 7 (one year)? Logically, they
looked at official national curriculum documents. But then they also looked at provincial curriculum plans (learning programme
guidelines, subject assessment guidelines, pacesetters and so on) and compared them with ideas from other parts of the world by
visiting websites such as www.tessafrica.org and by looking at textbooks. Finally, they used their own knowledge and training,
and brainstormed what they believed were the key concepts that learners at a Grade 7 level should learn.
We’d like you to go through the same process that Joe’s team did.
Activity 21
1. This is quite a long activity. You will need an hour or two of individual thinking before you will be ready to engage with your
colleagues. Set aside about five hours over a few days to do this. We want you to become familiar with the various curriculum
resources and to practise some curriculum planning. You might like to read about how Joe tackled this task before you begin.
a. Choose a subject and phase with which you are familiar.
b. Brainstorm what should be taught, making notes of any crucial concepts and strands of linked or related concepts.
c. Organise these concepts and strands into a logical sequence. Which will you teach first? How will you then develop depth
and breadth?
d. Then, with a few other teachers, refine your ideas. Select the concepts that you think are crucial. Finally, decide on the
content you will teach in order to develop an understanding of these concepts. Write these up as a plan for a three-year
phase of teaching.
This is the Senior Phase plan for Social Sciences that Joe’s group developed. You will notice that they haven’t yet developed
much detail about assessment and the selection or sequencing of assessment activities.
Social Sciences concept Grade 7 Grade 8 Grade 9
Key Social Sciences skills Using sources Using sources Using sources
(these skills and approaches will be revisited and Understanding cause and effect Understanding Understanding
consolidated in the programme contexts that follow) Making informed judgements cause and effect cause and effect
Being able to learn Making informed Making
co-operatively judgements informed
Being able to problem-solve Being able to judgements
Graphicacy skills (using maps, learn Being able to
graphs and diagrams) co-operatively learn
Picture interpretation. Being able to co-operatively
problem-solve Being able to
Graphicacy skills problem-solve
Picture Graphicacy
interpretation. skills
Picture
interpretation.
Settlement and shelter (social organisation) Ancient civilisations in South African Migrant
Africa and other parts of the kingdoms/ workers
world states/empires Formal/informal
Buildings Settlement settlements
Rituals patterns Apartheid laws.
Problems Population
Cities distribution
Resources. Urban/rural
settlement.
The use of natural resources Investigating resources: Using our land: Ensuring our future:
Renewable/non-renewable Land Appropriate
Distribution Pollution technology
Environmental issues Tourism Environmental
Imports/exports Heritage sites. issues
Waste – consumerism. Alternative
energy
Nuclear power
Sustainability
Global warming
Heritage sites.
Colonisation Exploring the world (15th, 16th and Winner takes all (18th Breaking the chains
17th centuries): and 19th centuries): 19th and 20th
Journeys of exploration Colonisation centuries):
Renaissance – culture Trade – Scramble for
Atlantic slave trade inequalities; Africa
Slaves – a feature of African games Decolonisation
society Slavery? Effects/legacies
The Dutch at the Cape Apartheid.
Khoikhoi resistance.
We hear you say: ‘Ah! This looks a lot more like a syllabus’. And it does. It provides more detail about the content to be taught,
but also organises the content in terms of key Social Sciences concepts. Some concepts are clearly related to the discipline of
Geography (settlement and shelter, for instance), while other concepts come from History (colonisation, for instance).
(Remember that Social Sciences is an amalgam of History, Geography, Sociology and so on). In an integrated subject, links will
be drawn between settlement and colonisation. Teachers will begin asking questions like, ‘What influence did colonisation
(formerly History) have on settlement (formerly Geography) in South Africa?’
What does this process teach us about curriculum planning?

Let’s listen to Joe explain his experience of this process.
CASE STUDY: Curriculum development
This was a time-consuming but really exciting curriculum development experience. We
brainstormed a range of possible Social Sciences concepts and skills that we thought our
learners should and could learn over the three years. But then we had to prune these ideas to fit
into the time we had estimated we would have available for teaching in the three years.
This selection proved really difficult. We all had our favourite topics and argued strongly for
these. But one teacher kept his head. He said we must make reasoned decisions guided by the
following principles:
Choose concepts that are fundamental to an understanding of Social Sciences before
choosing other concepts, which might be interesting but not crucial.
Turn these into competence-based learning statements for the phase (and the year) similar to this: ‘The learner
must be able to develop a simple plan for water usage in his or her community that demonstrates an understanding
of the key concepts learnt’.
Only then decide on the particular content and methods we would use to develop these competences. Again, relate
them strongly to the level at which we want to teach, and note that this must be appropriate to the age and
intellectual development of our learners.
A number of important planning points emerge from this:

Organise content into concepts. Don’t teach lots of fragmented bits of information without Later, we discuss the
demonstrating how they fit together to provide schemata, or concepts, with which learners question ‘What do we
can think about the subject and the world. teach?’ in relation to lesson
planning.
Make sure that you teach those concepts that are critical to a subject, rather than being
motivated entirely by your own interests or the interests of your learners. In other words,
reading is a crucial part of Languages and must be taught, regardless of whether this is an interest of your learners or not!
Limit what you teach. Instead of overloading learners with information, limit the information and get learners to use the
concepts taught in real-life and learning contexts. Get learners to apply knowledge and so deepen their understanding of it,
rather than getting more and more information.
How do we decide on time allocations?

You will have noticed that Joe’s team has already had to think about time planning, something that often doesn’t appear in
much detail in broad national curriculum documents. But they did this in a vague way at first. They wanted to develop their
ideal phase and year plans first. Then they went back to these and adapted them, taking into account time and other constraints.
They allocated particular topics to particular grade levels and pruned down a long list of desirable teaching ideas into a list of
what is possible in three years. How did they do this?
First, they looked at the school calendar. This showed them that 192 days had been set aside for school in that year.
Second, they realised that this was an ideal, and that every school year was likely to lose teaching days through a variety of
disruptions. So they tried to predict how many days would be spent on athletics meetings, choir competitions,
examinations and so forth. They also assumed a couple of days for other disruptions, such as teacher or learner strikes! In
the end, they decided that they could rely on having 180 days (or 36 weeks) of learning.
Their third step was to convert these days into school hours. They found that, on average, a school day contained five hours
of teaching time. This converted into 900 hours of teaching time per year.
Finally, they had to work out what percentage of this time was going to be allocated to Social Sciences in the Senior Phase.
They found out that the national Department of Education had recommended that schools allocate 10% of the total
teaching time to Social Sciences. This worked out to just 90 hours a year for Social Sciences. In other words, they now
knew that their ideal curriculum had to be taught in 36 weeks with only two-and-a-half hours per week.
Activity 22
1. This activity should only take about one hour to write up. However, it requires that you plan a schedule that allows you to spend
a couple of weeks doing research at a school.
2. Teachers virtually always overestimate the amount of time they think they have available for teaching. The exercise that follows
2.
might make you more realistic in your planning of time.

3. Find out when teaching should begin (the first day of term) and end (the last day of term), and compare this to the reality.
a. How many days are lost?
b. What other activities take away days of teaching in an actual year? (Ask about sports events, choir competitions, strikes,
administration and so on.)
c. Observe each day and a couple of lessons. How many minutes are lost by late arrival at school and at class?
d. What does your research suggest you should do when planning to make the best possible use of time?
Using time efficiently

What did Joe’s team think? How much change did they have to make to their ideal plan? Let’s listen to Joe again.
CASE STUDY: Allocating time

At first we simply went back to our phase plan and divided these 90 hours per year into
four: in other words, 22,5 hours for settlement, 22,5 for Social Sciences skills and so on.
But I immediately raised three important considerations that changed our group’s
thinking. I asked:
Can’t we teach Social Sciences skills as an integral part of the other three content
sections? For example, when we teach colonisation, we could teach the skill of using
primary and secondary historical sources at the same time.
Are all these concepts equally difficult for learners? Are any of these concepts more
fundamental than others? We need to consider these questions. If we believe that, for
instance, settlement is either more difficult or more fundamental, then we should
allocate more time to it.
What about adding homework into learning time? After all, we want a learner-centred pedagogy, so why don’t we
plan and conceptualise homework as part of an integrated learning process? We could give increasing amounts of
homework as learners get used to the idea.
These questions forced us to look at our planning in a new way.
By integrating skills into the everyday teaching of Social Sciences concepts, Joe’s team created more time for teaching. At the
same time, they encouraged a skills-focused teaching style. The more systematic use of homework also created more time for
teaching and encouraged independent work by learners. The reason for limiting the amount of homework at first and increasing
it later was probably for one or both of the following reasons:
The teachers understood that they needed to teach learners how to work independently before giving them large amounts of
independent work.
The teachers planned more research projects, which require learners to move outside of the classroom and into their
neighbourhood, in later sections.
We would suggest that Joe’s team provide more detail about the nature and complexity of the skills and Social Sciences
concepts they’d teach at each level. For example, their plan lists ‘Using sources’ in Grades 7, 8 and 9, with no sense of
progression in using this skill.
Let us try to sum up what we have learnt in this section. Phase-level planning requires school management to make time
available for teachers to meet together in phase groups to plan for learner development across the phase. Even where workbooks
are provided, teachers must have time to reflect on areas where they needed to work more slowly or more quickly than the
national documents suggested as well as areas in which they needed to supplement the workbooks or substitute more
contemporary resources, for example, more up-to-date news articles.
Steps for phase-level planning

With some variations, planning for a phase will normally follow the four steps given below.
Step 1: Clarify the core knowledge and skills assessment requirements
The learning programme design begins with a reflection on the core concepts, the learning outcomes and their related
assessment requirements. These are the foundations upon which work schedules, lesson plans and workbooks are built.
The essential question when planning at phase level is: ‘What core knowledge and skills do learners have to master by the end
of the phase, and what assessment evidence should they produce to show that they are on their way to mastering the planned
learning?’
All learning, teaching and assessment opportunities must be designed down from what learners should know, do and produce
at the end of a particular grade, and ultimately by the end of the phase.
Step 2: Clarify the kind of evidence required and ensure progression

This step helps teachers to plan what they will teach and assess in each grade, while taking progression across the three grades
in the phase into account. This requires the planning of the following:
The contexts in which learning, teaching and assessment will take place in each of the grades for each subject
The knowledge that learners will acquire, understand and demonstrate in each of the grades for each subject
The skills that learners will learn and practise in each of the grades for each subject
Clear conceptual progression across the phase.
Step 3: Consider the assessment plan

This step helps to create a general plan for assessment in each grade or subject, while taking progression across the three grades
in the phase into account. Teachers should start considering the instruments to be used for assessment at this level. This will
ensure that assessment remains an integral part of the learning and teaching process in the learning area or subject.
Step 4: Consider resources

This step helps to create a general plan for the utilisation and requirements of resources in each grade for the subject, while
taking the resources spectrum for the three grades in the phase into account.
Teachers should start considering the resources to be used for learning, teaching and assessment at this level. This will ensure
that the relevant resources are utilised and available for the learning, teaching and assessment process in the subject.
As noted in the Department of Education’s module, on Leading and Managing a Subject, Learning Area or Phase, in the
Advanced Certificate of Education (ACE) for School Management and Leadership (visit the Thutong website at
http://www.thutong.doe.gov.za /, click on the link to Education Management and then click on the tab ACE), schools will need
to ensure that:
Phase-level planning is completed or revised before the start of a new school year.
All teachers participate and contribute.
Selected contexts are appropriate for the level of learning. These contexts must address concerns of the school and the
school community. They should not violate any rights or core values. It must be possible to resource these contexts
adequately.
The plans indicate progression across the phase in terms of contexts. For example, learners might first be asked to discuss
the topic ‘HIV/Aids: What is it?’. After this, they might be asked to discuss the topic ‘HIV/Aids: Supporting families
living with the virus’ and finally ‘HIV/Aids: Exploring the socio-economic impact’. Each context involves progressively
more complex issues that are increasingly removed from learners’ everyday experience.
The plans indicate progression across the phase in terms of the challenge implicit in activities. For example, learners might
first be asked simply to present information on HIV/Aids in a factually correct, non-judgemental way. As their skills
develop, they might be asked to present and sustain opposing arguments on HIV/Aids treatment or to participate in a
formal debate where they have to think on their feet.
In most schools, the actual task will be delegated to an HOD. However, it is important for the SMT to provide space, time,
resources and a guiding template. The SMT must also monitor and evaluate the development of the final product of the
phase-level planning process.
Even where workbooks are provided, it is necessary to think about pacing, supplementing, substituting and resourcing based on
reflective experience.
Activity 23
1. This activity will require a few hours.
2.
2. How you complete this activity will depend on whether you are planning to implement new curriculum requirements for the first
time or reviewing your plans from a previous year.
Option A: Planning for the first time
a. Get hold of a copy of the new curriculum document/s.
b. Evaluate the curriculum document/s against the criteria outlined above in terms of clarity of purpose, progression, time
allocations, assessment guidelines and resources required. Note any gaps or additions in terms of knowledge and skills.
Consider whether you have the resources implied by the curriculum document/s. If not, think about how you could get
them or whether alternative resources might be used.
c. Now consider your phase-level plans from the previous year. What worked and what did not work? What could be retained
or adapted to meet the new curriculum requirements and what needs to be jettisoned? What new work needs to be done,
by when and by whom?
Option B: Reviewing phase-level curriculum planning
a. Check whether there have been any updates or revisions of the curriculum document/s.
b. Evaluate the additions or changes against the criteria outlined above in terms of clarity of purpose, progression, time
allocations, assessment guidelines and resources required. Note any gaps or additions in terms of knowledge and skills.
Consider whether you have the resources implied by the curriculum document/s. If not, think about how you could get
them or whether alternative resources might be used.
c. Now consider your phase-level plans from the previous year. What worked and what did not work? What could be retained
or adapted to meet the new curriculum requirements and what needs to be jettisoned? What new work needs to be done,
by when and by whom?
3. As you complete the activity, make sure that you address the following issues:
Who should be involved?
How long will it take, when should it happen and what resources will you need?
What do you like or dislike about the templates offered in the examples? If necessary, design a template that works better
for you.
4. Now complete at least one level of your revised phase-level plan, using different ideas from those given in the examples.
You will note that while the CAPS documents made available in South Africa by the Department of Basic Education from 2011
provide more detailed insight into what must be taught, how it might be taught, in what sequence it might be taught and how
much time should probably be allocated, there is still a need for teachers to make professional decisions based upon experience
and context about what will actually happen in their schools and classrooms. How will the classroom be organised? What topics
or contexts will be explored? What activities will be most suitable? What resources will be used? How can the planned learning
approaches be adapted to suit different learning needs?
Your attempt to engage with this activity should have made the following points very clear:
Planning takes time.
You need access to the relevant policy documents.
You need a process to check that all the required knowledge, skills and assessment requirements will be covered over the
phase.
You need a process to check that there is a logical sequencing and progression from one grade to another in terms of
contexts and typical activities.
In practice, both top-down and bottom-up strategies guide the planning process.
It would be much easier to keep track of all these variables if phase educators worked together in teams within the school.
Where possible, educators could even work together in school clusters.
You will note from the CAPS documents that the range of subjects covered in succeeding phases has increased. The
Foundation Phase (Grades R–3) comprises the following subjects:
Home Language
First Additional Language (an addition from the 2010 curriculum reform)
Mathematics
Life Skills
Beginning Knowledge
Creative Arts
Physical Education
Personal and Social Well-being.
The Intermediate Phase (Grades 4–6), which was limited to six subjects in the 2010 curriculum reform, is made up of the
following subjects:
Home Language
First Additional Language
Mathematics
Natural Sciences and Technology
Social Sciences
Life Skills
Creative Arts
Physical Education
Personal and Social Well-being.
The Senior Phase (Grades 7–9) consists of the following subjects:

Home Language
Mathematics
Natural Sciences (now a separate subject)
Social Sciences
Technology (now a separate subject)
Economic and Management Sciences (a subject area that will be new for learners transitioning from the Intermediate Phase
to the Senior Phase)
Life Orientation
Arts and Culture (now a separate and more extended subject).
The Further Education and Training band (Grades 10–12) consists of the following subjects:
Home Language
Mathematics
Life Orientation (note that these first four subjects are carried across the entire schooling experience of learners)
A minimum of any three subjects selected from the prescribed list.
In this section, we looked at phase-level planning. In the next two sections, we will focus on grade and lesson planning.
Grade-level planning
Joe now had a good understanding of how his Grade 7 work would fit in with the work of other Social sciences teachers in his
phase. But let’s hear how he went ahead and put together his year plan.
CASE STUDY: Drawing up a year plan

You ask what I did next? Well, much of the thinking was similar to phase planning. A year
plan and plans for terms are simply more detailed phase plans. To start, I simply wrote down
the Grade 7 column from the phase plan with the details we had added about depth.
I had about 90 hours of Social Sciences teaching time (plus about 20 hours of homework
time) spread across about 36 weeks (at two-and-a-half hours per week). I wanted to teach in an
active and integrated way, so I realised that, instead of thinking in single-lesson units, I needed
to think in longer units. I decided to run each of my ‘lessons’ over five hours (or two weeks). In
this time, learners would do about an hour of independent study at home. So I drew up a table
on a large A3 sheet of paper (a friend did her plan on her computer). My plan looked like this:
Learning area Key learning Everyday ideas I will Methods, activities How long I will How can I link this to
concept and outcomes desired use to link content and resources take to teach other subjects?
content that and how I will with lives of learners these concepts
must be taught assess them (themes) and skills
Weeks 1 and 2: Understand Me, my family Learners Five hours Speak to Maths
Settlement and why people and my research when in class teacher about stats
shelter – early move community. their parents One hour of we need to do
settlement Understand arrived here home Find out if
how this Role-play research. Language teacher
region came to discussions is interested in
be settled about why doing literature on
Able to draw people move removals
up a Watch video on Check on what
questionnaire forced work they have
Able to draw a removals in done on
demographic South Africa report-writing.
map of the Individual
region reading about
Do assessment settlement
of written (textbook)
group-research Explanation
reports. (link family
experiences to
theory of
settlement)
In groups,
develop reports
on common
experiences of
parents.
I have only included the first two weeks, but basically the rest of my work plan looks like this. I tried to be as detailed
as possible (and so haven’t shown you all of my outcomes!), but realised that I’d add detail in individual lesson plans.
Weeks 1 and 2 No graphs
Weeks 3 and 4 Understand pie graphs and draw pie graphs to depict statistics
Week 5 No graphs
Weeks 6 and 7 Understand and draw bar graphs
Week 8 Understand and draw line graphs
Week 9 Interpret a combination of bar and line graphs, for example, climate graphs (temperature and rainfall)
Weeks 10 and 11 No graphs
Week 12 Extrapolating, comparing and analysing information presented as line and pie graphs
Notice that Joe kept the Social Sciences concepts at the centre of his teaching. Although he was committed to integrating his
teaching with other subjects and to the real-life experiences of his learners through themes, he didn’t allow these themes to
overshadow the concepts he had to teach. Notice also how his outcomes focus on concepts and skills. He has integrated the two
in his planning.
Activity 24
1. This activity should take about two hours to do. Share your ideas with another teacher. Discuss why you chose to use
particular themes, content or methods in your teaching.
a. Choose one of the grades from the phase plan you developed in Activity 16. Brainstorm how you will teach one of the
topics you have planned for this grade. Think about integration with other learning areas and how much time you will
allocate to this.
b. Fill in your topics in a table like the one Joe used. Obviously you can adapt it if you think it can be improved.
What does this teach us about developing a year plan?

We can learn the following:
Content planning and sequencing: Ensure that the knowledge you will teach builds from the previous year’s level and up to
the next year’s level. Ensure that you don’t duplicate content or the teaching of particular skills, but teach so that you
develop the sophistication of learner understandings by teaching new skills and reinforcing old concepts or skills. For
instance, notice how Joe develops graphing skills in all of his themes. He teaches new ideas and gets learners to practise
old ideas. So, by the end of the period, a learner will be more advanced and able to demonstrate higher-order graphing
abilities than at the beginning or middle of the period.
Time planning: Realistically work out how much time you have, and then use it well. So, for instance, use homework time
for learner activities that feed into class time. Notice how Joe kicks off one module with classroom work exploring why
people settle in different areas (sometimes by choice and sometimes because they have been forced to do so). He follows
this by teaching learners how to do research from books and primary sources, and then uses lots of homework time for
research.
Planning teaching methods and assessment: Joe doesn’t provide a great deal of detail in his year plan. Later we will see
that he does provide this detail in his module and lesson plans. But he thinks broadly about assessment and makes sure that
he mixes his assessment in order to get a well-rounded understanding of learning. He also indicates when the more formal
assessment will be done so that he isn’t overloaded with marking and administration.
How do we choose teaching methods, activities, resources and assessment?

Although teaching methods, activities, resources and details of assessment do not have to be specified in phase or year plans,
they are crucial in lesson planning. However, it is important to make decisions about some longer-term issues when preparing
phase or year plans:
Co-operating with other teachers: For instance, are there any skills or concepts that you want to work on as a school or as a
grade in a school? Perhaps the reading skills of learners are poor. Your school could then decide that all teachers should
prioritise reading as a method of learning. Or maybe you want to improve learners’ group skills. If all teachers co-ordinate
action, they will iron out contradictory messages about group work that are being sent to learners, which, in turn, will
improve learning.
Forward planning: Events or learning experiences that require forward planning, such as field trips, long research projects
or the ordering of learning, need to be planned in advance if they are to be successful.
Planning assessment: Some kinds of assessment – such as portfolios – require forward planning. Learners need to be told at
the beginning of a year or even a phase that they should collect particular kinds of activities in order to develop a portfolio
of work.
As before, let us try to link what we have learnt generally to the specific guidelines emerging from the Department of Education
in South Africa.
In our process of organising systematic learning, we first broke down the school curriculum into phases. The next step is to
plan the work in each grade within a phase. Again, much of the macro planning required has already been done in the new
CAPS documents made available by the Department of Basic Education in South Africa, but it is as well to understand the
process involved.
Recommended steps for developing a grade plan

After planning the work for a phase, it is necessary to plan in more detail what will happen in each grade. This is the second
stage in the design of a learning programme. It is the point at which theory becomes practice. Planning at grade level involves
the kind of process described below.
Step 1: Integrate core concepts, learning outcomes or objectives and assessment requirements for
the grade
This step helps determine the way in which the teacher will address the assessment requirements for each content area in a
particular grade during the learning, teaching and assessment process.
Integration should not be forced, but should flow naturally from the activities that have been designed. For example, in
preparing to write an essay, learners will need to draw on language competences from the reading, thinking, writing and
language domains, and probably also the speaking and listening domains. If teachers have planned together, it is conceivable
that the same essay could address assessment standards for languages as well as a subject area such as History or Economics.
However, this does not mean that it is necessary or desirable to try to force integration between subjects.
Step 2: Sequence and pace core concepts, integrated learning outcomes or objectives and
assessment requirements for the grade
This step helps determine the order in which skills, knowledge, values and attitudes (SKVAs) will be presented in a particular
grade, and the period of time that will be spent on the learning, teaching and assessment of each content area in that grade.
For example, the suggested time allocation per grade for a Grade 10–12 subject from Group B in a school year assumes 33
weeks per year and four hours per week. Curriculum developers then need to work out the number of weeks per term and
schedule teaching accordingly.
Step 3: Consider activities, resources and assessment instruments for the grade
This step assists the teacher in choosing the most effective types of activities, resources and assessment instruments to ensure
the achievement of intended learning as sequenced and paced in Step 2 above.
You should consider the following points when monitoring and evaluating grade-level plans:
Does the planning take inclusivity issues into account? In other words, do we make adequate provision for learners who
experience barriers to learning as well as for gifted learners? Is provision made for overcoming barriers to learning and
expanding opportunities?
Are the resource requirements realistic in terms of the school’s budget?
Is there sufficient variety in learner activity?
Is there sufficient variety in assessment strategies?
Do time allocations seem realistic?
Is the grade plan consistent with the phase plan?
Table 4 provides a useful checklist of additional points to consider when completing a plan for a grade.
Table 4 Checklist for a grade plan

Have we …
1 Checked policy documents for curriculum requirements?
2 Considered what core concepts and national aims are being addressed?
3 Covered all intended learning repeatedly in different contexts during the year?
4 Covered all assessment requirements repeatedly in different contexts during the year?
5 Integrated the different learning and assessment requirements in the course of our lessons?
6 Linked with other subjects where relevant?
7 Covered the knowledge required for the subject fully, supplementing the workbook where appropriate?
8 Covered the skills required for the subject fully, supplementing the workbook where appropriate?
9 Addressed attitudes and values through the choice of themes with particular attention to human rights and indigenous knowledge?
10 Ensured the development of higher-order thinking throughout the programme?
11 Ensured that the programme is at an appropriate level of difficulty, depth and breadth for the grade, age and level of development of learners,
particularly in terms of the texts chosen?
12 Ensured that our approach is participative and resource based?
13 Given due attention to assessment as an integral part of the teaching process?
14 Ensured that assessment is accompanied by appropriate criteria at all times?
15 Ensured that proper attention has been given to both the process and the product?
The extracts that follow are taken from the CAPS policy document for Physical Sciences Grades 10–12. Table 5 illustrates the
renewed emphasis on subject content knowledge and how this has been mapped across the grades within the phase. Table 6
illustrates the more detailed planning for each grade within the phase.
Table 5 Overview of topics for Physical Sciences Grades 10–12 (DBE 2011: 10)
Topic Content
Mechanics Grade Introduction to vectors and scalars ; Motion in one dimension (reference frame, position, displacement and distance,
10 average speed, average velocity, acceleration, instantaneous velocity, instantaneous speed, description of motion in words,
diagrams, graphs and equations); Energy (gravitational potential energy, kinetic energy, mechanical energy, conservation of
mechanical energy in the absence of dissipative forces) 30 hours
Grade Vectors in two dimensions (resultant of perpendicular vectors, resolution of a vector into its parallel and perpendicular
11 components); Newton’s laws and application of Newton’s laws (Newton’s first, second and third laws and Newton’s law of
universal gravitation, different kinds of forces: weight, normal force, frictional force, applied [push, pull], tension [strings or
cables], force diagrams, free body diagrams and application of Newton’s laws [equilibrium and non-equilibrium]) 27 hours
Grade Momentum and impulse (momentum, Newton’s second law expressed in terms of momentum, conservation of momentum
12 and elastic and inelastic collisions, impulse); Vertical projectile motion in one dimension (1D) (vertical projectile motion
represented in words, diagrams, equations and graphs); Work, energy and power (work, work-energy theorem, conservation
of energy with non-conservative forces present, power) 28 hours
Waves, Grade Transverse pulses on a string or spring (pulse, amplitude superposition of pulses); Transverse waves (wavelength,
sound and 10 frequency, amplitude, period, wave speed); Longitudinal waves (on a spring, wavelength, frequency, amplitude, period, wave
light speed, sound waves); Sound (pitch, loudness, quality [tone], ultrasound); Electromagnetic radiation (dual [particle/wave]
nature of electromagnetic [EM] radiation, nature of EM radiation, EM spectrum, nature of EM as particle – energy of a photon
related to frequency and wavelength) 16 hours
Grade Geometrical optics (refraction, Snell’s Law, critical angles and total internal reflection), 2D and 3D wave fronts (diffraction) 13
11 hours
Grade Doppler Effect (either moving source or moving observer) (with sound and ultrasound, with light – red shifts in the universe)
12 6 hours
etc.
We note here how the intended learning across the grades in the phase is organised systematically so that the new learning
builds incrementally on what was taught previously. In addition, we can note the attempt to estimate the likely amount of time
that will be needed to cover each topic adequately. From this broad level of planning, we can begin to work out more detailed
guidelines for classroom practice, as in the example that follows.
Table 6 Breaking intended learning down into more manageable units (extract from DBE 2011: 16, 31, 55)
Term 1 Grade 10
Grade 10 Chemistry (Matter and materials) Term 1
Time Topics Content, concepts Practical activities Resource Guidelines for

Grade 10 and skills material teachers
2 Revise Matter is made up of particles whose properties determine the observable Observing,
hours matter and characteristics of matter and its reactivity. describing,
classification classifying and
(from Grade using materials – a
9) macroscopic view
(do this in detail in
Grade 9 if
possible)
0,25 hours The Revise the Activity: An activity that The introduction of
material(s) properties of If you have a sand dune, the material out of which the classifies a the topic was
of which an material, for dune is made is sand. range of moved to Grade 9
object is example: 1. Look at the labels on the containers of food or on materials and and is only revised
composed 1. Strength medicine bottles, or the wrapper of chocolate. Note combines all in Grade 10.
2. Thermal and the ingredients of the material in the container. these Learners are
electrical What do the different compounds tell you about the properties encouraged to look
conductivity material in the container? Why do the could be useful at food additives
3. Brittle, malleable manufacturers give the ingredients of the material? to revise the and preservatives.
or ductile Use safety data to learn about the compounds content. This should be
4. Magnetic or contained in your food and medicines. contrasted with
non-magnetic indigenous ways of
5. Density food preservation.
(lead/aluminium)
6. Melting points
and boiling
points.
etc.
0,5 hours Indigenous

knowledge
systems
0,5 hours Detection of Indigenous IKS: Discuss
waves knowledge systems legends and
associated (IKS): folklores
with natural Discuss qualitatively about animal
disasters animal behaviour behaviour related
related to natural to natural disasters
disasters across at using any one of
most two different the following:
cultural groups and earthquakes,
within current tsunamis or floods.
scientific studies.
Assessment Term 1: Recommended Formal Assessment:

Term 1 1. Experiment (Chemistry): Heating and cooling curve of water.
2. Control test.
Term 1 Grade 11
Grade 11 Physics (Mechanics) Term 1
Time Topics Grade 11 Content, concepts and skills Practical Resource Guidelines
activities material for teachers
4 Vectors in two
hours dimensions
2 Resultant of Draw a sketch of the vectors (parallel and perpendicular) on the Cartesian Textbook Use
hours perpendicular plane. examples
vectors Add co-linear vectors along the parallel and perpendicular direction to obtain involving
the net parallel component (Rx) and a net perpendicular component (Ry). force
Sketch Rx and Ry. vectors.
Sketch the resultant (R) using either the tail-to-head or tail-to-tail method.
Determine the magnitude of the resultant using the theorem of Pythagoras.
Determine the direction of the resultant using simple trig ratios.
etc.
We note the following points:

The intended learning for the phase has been broken down further into the intended learning for each grade and for each
term (with the work for the year divided over four terms).
The learning in each grade is organised according to the broad content areas identified at the level of the phase, and then
broken down into smaller topics with suggested time allocations (sometimes as small as fifteen minutes).
The intended learning in terms of content, concepts and skills to be learnt is described primarily in terms of what needs to
be done with the knowledge, for example, draw, sketch, discuss. This emphasis will be familiar from both objectives-based
and outcomes-based curriculum approaches.
Practical activities are suggested. Teachers will need to think of alternatives if these practical activities are not possible in
their context of practice.
Resource materials are identified. At the Grade 10–12 level, textbooks are key resources. At the Foundation Level,
workbooks are key resources. Teachers will have to think about what other resources they will need to find to reinforce the
learning.
Note that opportunities to integrate IKS are included in the planning.
Note that suggestions for formal assessment at the end of each term are provided. Teachers will need to design appropriate
assessment tools within these guidelines.
Activity 25
1. If you are looking at the CAPS document for the first time, you will need to read through it carefully and try to identify whether
there is any new content that you have not taught previously or whether there is any content taught previously that is no longer
included.
2. Now think about how you have taught the content in the past. Do the suggested time frames seem realistic? Where, based on
your experience, might you need to spend more or less time? Are the suggested practical activities feasible? Do you have
access to the necessary resources? If you answered ‘No’ to the previous questions, what alternatives are possible?
3. You are now in a position to develop a specific grade plan of your own or to critique a grade plan that has already been
developed in your department. As you complete the activity, make sure that you address the following questions:
a. Who should be involved?
b. How long will it take, when should it happen and what resources will you need?
c. What do you like or dislike about the template offered in the CAPS document? If necessary, design a template that works
c.
better for you.

d. Now complete or revise at least one content area of your phase plan, using different ideas from those given in the
example. Make sure that there is a clear link between your phase plan and your grade plan.
As you experienced in Activity 22, your attempt to engage with this activity should have made the following points very clear:
Planning takes time.
You need access to the relevant policy documents.
You need a process to check that all the intended learning and assessment requirements will be covered over the phase.
You need a process to check that there is a logical sequencing and progression from one grade to another in terms of
contexts and typical activities.
At this level, it is useful to have available some of the resources that you might want to use.
It will be much easier to keep track of all these variables if grade educators work together in teams within the school. Where
possible, educators could even work together in school clusters.
Note that national planning documents and resources are necessarily generic in nature. Since teachers are familiar with the
context of practice and with the needs of individual learners in their own schools and classrooms, it is essential that they are
able to engage critically with national planning documents, and adapt, substitute and supplement as appropriate for particular
contexts of practice.
Lesson-level planning
Deciding what we teach: Giving detail to concept descriptions
Joe’s phase and year plans for teaching Grade 7 Social Sciences describe concepts such as settlement rather vaguely. But as he
plans his lessons, or units of lessons, he has to become a great deal clearer about:
What sub-concepts he will teach and how these will be linked together
What content he will use to teach these concepts and sub-concepts
How he will teach these concepts and sub-concepts
What kind of competences learners must demonstrate by the end of this particular learning process.
Let us see how he went about planning his lessons. We will follow the concept he has chosen to teach in weeks 1 and 2:
settlement.
Joe began by researching textbooks, curriculum documents and other interesting texts dealing with concepts such as
settlement, removals and population movements. He then sat down with his phase team and brainstormed these ideas.
This is what emerged from Joe’s brainstorm:
You will notice that this is really a jumble of disorganised ideas. Joe’s planning role was to organise these ideas. In other words,
he had to sequence them logically so that learners developed both a breadth and depth of understanding. This is when he went
back and looked at the curriculum policy documents again. They suggested the kinds of skills, knowledge and values that could
appropriately be developed as part of Grade 7 teaching. He then used this information and the results of the brainstorm to
organise his teaching into categories of knowledge, skills, and values or attitudes.
Skills
Conduct a survey.
Classify the results of a survey.
Listen for specific information.
Access information from texts.
Compare information.
Acquire information from different sources.
Identify cause-and-effect relationships.
Write up information.
Knowledge
Understand why people move.
Understand why the local community formed as it did.
Identify different homes that people live in.
Describe a hunter-gatherer way of life.
Trace the evolution of settlements.
List factors that led to the development of permanent settlement.
Identify reasons that led to the development of urban areas in certain parts of the
world.
Attitudes
Reflect on the changing roles of men and women in a range of societies.
Express empathy towards people in different situations.
Recognise the detrimental effects of certain human activities on the environment.
Explore urban problems such as homelessness.
Explore their own attitudes towards homelessness.
One of the most useful ideas we heard at curriculum review workshops was that we need to deal with three aspects of a learner:
his or her head, heart and hands. In the old days, we were mostly concerned with head: knowledge, facts, dates and labels. But if
we see learners as rounded, whole people, then we also need to think about skills (hands), and attitudes and values (heart
outcomes). You will recall the four recommendations from the Delors Report, mentioned earlier, which suggested that we need
to learn to live together, to know, to do and to be.
Outcomes need to deal with three aspects of a learner: head, heart and hands.
Choosing resources and designing activities

Joe then looked for appropriate source material that could help him to design his lessons. His group identified and accessed
about twenty different resources that could be used to teach settlement. The kinds of resources used included:
Existing school textbooks
Reference books
Newspaper articles
Information on the Internet available as Open Educational Resources (OER) and licensed for use and adaptation
Personal experience and evidence, for example, photographs and fieldwork
Videos.
Let’s listen to Joe again.
CASE STUDY: Designing activities

Once we had found the resources that I would use in my lesson, I started to design specific
activities based on these resources. As a group, we also gave careful thought to how we would
assess whether learners had achieved the intended learning by doing these activities.
A structure for planning a lesson

At this point, the detail regarding content and skills should be very precise. But let’s think of a
structure for planning. Here is an excerpt from a lesson plan about halfway through Joe’s two-week focus on settlement. Notice
that this lesson plan actually refers to a lesson where he isn’t present: the homework session! But Joe leaves nothing to chance;
he even plans this!
Learning area: Social Sciences
Grade level: 7
Date: Wednesday 1 February, homework
Assessment: Learner identifies processes that affect population growth and change in various places (factors affecting the issue)
This lesson’s topic (Unit 1, Lesson 3): How our neighbourhoods were settled
Activity 1.3: Researching how our neighbourhoods were settled
What are the purposes of this activity?

Learners should be able to:
Understand why their parents and people like them who live in the neighbourhood settled in this area
Begin organising their findings (in the next lesson I will ask groups to classify the reasons for settlement into categories, such as
forced for political reasons and economic reasons)
Carry out a simple piece of research and make use of the findings.
What will be done to enable learners to achieve the intended learning?

Teaching organisation:
Learners spend afternoon’s homework (an hour) and use questionnaire they developed to research reasons why their parents and two
sets of neighbours settled in this city.
Methods:
1. As individuals, learners interview parents and two sets of neighbours.
2. They complete the questionnaire and collect pictures of the houses in which the people whom they interviewed live (either
photographs or sketches).
3. They bring these interviews to class tomorrow where they will discuss their findings in their groups.
Resources needed:
Copies of the questionnaire developed in class.
What will provide evidence of this learning?

Learners will have completed the questionnaires and provided pictures of houses.
Learners will participate in the group discussion that follows.
Later, I must assess their conceptual understanding, probably by getting them to analyse a case study of settlement similar to this, but
that occurs elsewhere in the world.
How could this learning be assessed?

At this stage, assessment would be informal and formative.
I will ask individuals and groups to report randomly on their findings in a whole-class session at the beginning of the next lesson.
I will observe discussions in groups and assist with their attempts to classify information.
A little later in this process, Joe wanted to develop both the depth and breadth of his learners’ understanding of settlement. You
will have noticed how he drew on the learners’ own experiences in the previous lesson. See how he now gets learners to:
Experience other people’s lives and their experience of settlement in order to help them generalise their understanding of
the concept settlement.
Progress from reasons why people move to how they settle and live. In order to do this, he begins looking at housing and
economic wealth, and how an understanding of these concepts helps us to understand the concept of settlement.
Learning Area: Social Sciences
Grade level: 7
Date: Thursday 9 February, last period of the day
Assessment: Learner identifies processes that affect population growth and change in various places (factors affecting the issue)
This lesson’s topic (Unit 1, Lesson 8): How other people live
Activity 1.8: Examining the kinds of homes other people live in
What are the learning purposes of this activity?

Learners should be able to:
Classify homes according to criteria they identify themselves
Link homes to particular forms of settlement.
What will be done to enable learners to achieve the intended learning?

Classroom organisation:
Learners sit in pairs with pictures of different kinds of homes.
Methods:
1. Question and answer, demonstration: I will ask learners to consider the different kinds of homes in which people live, such as flats,
shacks, small houses, large mansions and village huts.
2. I will show the class examples of different houses. I will find pictures in newspapers and magazines. I must remember to:
Take care to represent homes from a wide variety of contexts
Make sure the pictures reflect the kinds of homes that learners in my class live in
Remind learners that there is often a close relationship between the kinds of homes people live in and the types of settlements
that exist, for example, cities, villages, farms, mining hostels and informal settlements.
Resources needed:
Pictures of homes or neighbourhood dwellings collected earlier from newspapers and magazines.
What will provide evidence of this learning?

Learners will name and identify different kinds of homes from pictures.
They will be able to classify homes according to appearance.
Learners will be able to relate certain kinds of homes to particular forms of settlement.
How could this learning be assessed?

I will assess learners’ classification of homes and the criteria they devised informally through observation and by listening in to pair
discussions.
Through verbal feedback: learners compare their classification with other groups.
Activity 26
1. Work with a partner. Spend about one hour on this task.
2. You will see from the headings in Joe’s notes that he organised his planning around certain key questions and considerations.
a. Take note of what they are.
b. Suggest why each is important.
c. Suggest how they are linked to each other.
3. Choose a lesson you have planned and write about it under the headings Joe used. Discuss with your partner ways in which
you found the structure Joe used helpful or unhelpful. If you have ideas for improving the structure, discuss them with your
partner to see if, together, you can find a better way than Joe’s.
We are not going to discuss this activity with you in detail, but will rather make some key points about planning at this level
that Joe’s lessons illustrated. At this level of planning, it is important that you think about the following questions:
Exactly what do you want your learners to learn?
How will you help them achieve this learning? You need to think about what you and your learners will be doing in the
lesson to ensure that they have a chance to work towards and show achievement of the intended learning. Usually there are
many different activities that could be useful in this. Your choice will be influenced by your knowledge of your learners,
the resources you have and the time available. Whatever choice you make, be sure that it is appropriate for the learning you
have chosen. Joe’s learners couldn’t have achieved the learning purpose to ‘carry out a simple piece of research’ by
reading a book on research methodology!
How will you mediate their learning? You must think about when you will intervene to help and how. In other words, you
must give thought to what both you and the learners will be doing.
How will you organise the learners and the classroom? You also need to think about how you will manage time. How
much time will you allocate to each part of the lesson? This is something Joe did not pay much attention to in his planning.
How will you assess learners’ learning? What evidence will they produce to show you how they are getting on?
What do you need to do to be well prepared for the lesson? What resources do you need? Should you ask the learners in
one lesson to do anything in preparation for the next lesson?
And, of course, your learning activities must build in some way towards the broader purposes and aims of the curriculum.
In this way, you can be certain that your teaching is helping learners develop towards the big goals of the curriculum that
we discussed earlier in this section.
Lesson plans are developed after the grade plan has been completed and are based on this grade plan. At this level, each
individual teacher plans for his or her class, taking into consideration the needs of his or her learners, including individual
learners’ level of development, learning styles and possible barriers to learning. This does not preclude possibilities for team
planning and team teaching, if the timetable allows. This point takes us back to the advantages and disadvantages of team work
at this level of curriculum planning and development.
There are a number of different templates in use for planning a lesson. Teachers will need to work with whatever templates
are prescribed by their school, province or the higher-education institution with whom they might be studying.
The school will need to follow the same steps as indicated previously. The HOD must sign off the completed lesson-level
planning. Each teacher who is involved must have a copy of the relevant grade plan before work commences on individual
lesson planning.
Recommended method for developing a lesson plan

Each grade-specific plan must be divided into units of deliverable learning experiences or lesson plans. A lesson plan adds to
the level of detail for each aspect addressed in the grade plan. It also indicates other relevant aspects to be considered for
classroom practice when teaching and assessing.
Development of learning, teaching and assessment activities

This helps create a detailed plan of how to teach and assess the SKVAs as sequenced and paced in the design of the grade plan.
When developing activities for lesson plans, the individual teacher needs to address the following aspects:
The type of learning, teaching and assessment activities that would be most effective in addressing the intended learning as
identified and sequenced in the grade plan
What the teacher and learners will do at each stage of the activity
What will be assessed during each learning experience
What learning, teaching and assessment methodologies, strategies, instruments, tools and resources will be used
How much time is available for each activity or set of activities
The pre-knowledge of learners
Expanded opportunities that can be built into the activity, including options for learners who work faster or slower than
their peers and tasks that learners can choose to do in different ways.
Table 7 provides a useful checklist for evaluating a detailed lesson plan.
Table 7 Checklist for evaluating a detailed lesson plan

Have I …
1 Planned and prepared appropriate resources for each learning activity?
2 Sequenced the plan logically?
3 Allowed time for extended opportunities and scaffolding for learners experiencing barriers?
4 Referred to what learners already know (prior knowledge) and built on that?
5 Developed suitable learner-centred activities?
6 Ensured that the activities supply appropriate evidence?
7 Considered the type of assessment (formative, summative, baseline or diagnostic assessment)?

Chosen the most suitable assessment instrument (for example, assignment, aural test, case study, examination,
demonstration or role play)?
Developed tools for assessing learner performance (rubrics, checklists and rating scales) to assess evidence?
8 Used a variety of assessment methods, including self-, peer and group assessment?
9 Ensured that all assessment leads to a demonstration of learning in the form of evidence?
10 Balanced group and individual work?
11 Ensured that all learners read, speak, listen, write and improve their language?
12 Made reference to real-world contexts in which the learning will be used?
13 Catered in some way for different learning styles?
14 Structured homework, projects and other assessment meaningfully?
Table 8 provides another example of a possible lesson plan format, this time for an FET Language lesson. Compare it with the
example given in Table 6, as well as other examples in this module. Take the features you find useful from each template to
make your own lesson-planning template.
Table 8 Example of a lesson-planning form for a language

Lesson-planning form
Date: __________________ to __________________
Grade: ___ Language: __________________ Level: ___
Theme: __________________________________
Possible integration with other subjects:
Content area, topic and Period Process Assessment Product

aim, objective or
outcome Learning Resources Teaching and Assessment tasks, Tools for Assessment What is
activities and texts learning activities and assessing learner methods and who produced?
used strategies instruments performance assesses
Possible enrichment activities: Support to cater for needs of learners with barriers:
Reflection:
After lesson plans have been used to deliver the learning programme to the classroom, you must reflect on what worked, how
well it worked and what could be improved. You need to note these observations while the experience is still fresh in your
mind, so that you can adapt and change the affected part of the learning programme for future implementation if necessary. You
can record this reflection on the lesson-planning sheets.
Conclusion
In this section, we have learnt why planning is important in teaching. We have also learnt how to plan in a systematic manner.
The section was written in a style that tries to model planning and included many activities in which you could practise
planning.
Planning is obviously linked primarily to the teacher’s role as curriculum developer (refer to the diagram), but did you notice
that many of the other roles are also integrated in this process? For example, we cannot engage in a planning process without
thinking about how we will assess the outcomes we have identified, and what teaching and learning strategies we will need to
employ to scaffold the learning experience. We cannot identify appropriate contexts, anticipate and respond to learning barriers
or work with others without drawing upon our professional, pastoral and communal role. The very act of planning – getting
people together, identifying and marshalling resources, and recording our decisions – involves competences linked to leading,
administrating and managing. And of course we do all of this within a particular specialist area. All of these roles are integrated
in the practice of organising systematic learning. No wonder we feel so tired at the end of the day!
In the next two sections, we will return to planning and provide more models from which teachers can plan. We will also
begin focusing on learners and assessment. Before you continue, though, make sure you have understood this section by doing
Activity 27.
Activity 27
1. This activity should only take you about four hours if you have been doing the activities throughout this section. You should be
able to go back to the activities and simply adapt them!
2. Read through this section again. Then:
a. Draw up a plan for a year’s work in your subject. Remember to draw on the plan for the phase that you have agreed on
with your colleagues.
b. Plan a series of detailed lesson plans for about six hours of work (about two weeks).
c. Allow a fellow teacher to assess your plan and ask you to justify why you have planned in the way you have chosen to
plan.
Again, as noted previously, even where workbooks are provided, teachers need to:
Spend time thinking about how they will use the material provided
Consider what additional material may be needed
Reflect at the end of an individual period or lesson on how well the plan worked and what might need to be done
differently next time.
References
Ajibola, M.A. (2008). Innovations and Curriculum Development for Basic Education in Nigeria: Policy Priorities and Challenges of Practice and Implementation. Research Journal
of International Studies , 8, 2008. 51–58. [Online], Available: http://www.eurojournals.com/rjis_8_05.pdf Accessed 16 February 2011.
All Africa News. [Online], Available: http://allafrica.com/stories/200902060029.html Accessed 16 February 2011.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory . Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Bitrus, B.B. (2007). New curriculum’ll address education ills. New Nigerian . 19 November.
British Council. [Online], Available: http://www.britishcouncil.org/usa-education-uk-system-k-12-education.htm Accessed 19 February 2011.
Christie, P. (2008). Opening the Doors of Learning: Changing Schools in South Africa . Sandton: Heinemann Publishers (Pty) Ltd.
Curriculum Organization of Nigeria. [Online], Available: http://curriculumorganizationofnigeria.org / Accessed 16 February 2011.
Delors, J. (Undated). Learning: The Treasure Within . Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century.
Department of Basic Education (DBE) (2011). Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), Physical Sciences. Pretoria: DBE.
Department of Education, UK. [Online], Available: http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum/a0073149/national
-curriculum-review-launched Accessed 19 February 2011.
Fidler, B. and Bowles, G. (Eds). (1989). Effective Local Management of Schools: A Strategic Approach . Harlow: Longman.
General Training Council (GTC). [Online], Available: http://www.gtce.org.uk / Accessed 16 February 2011.
Moll, I., Bradbury, J. and Winkler, G. with Tshule, M., van Voore, M. and Slonimsky, L. and Gultig, J. (Ed.). (2001). Learners and Learning . Learning Guide and Reader. Cape
Town: OUP.
Oates, T. (2010). Could do better: Using international comparisons to refine the National Curriculum in England. With a foreword by the Secretary of State for Education. University
of Cambridge, Local Examinations Syndicate. [Online], Available: http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ca/digitalAssets/188853_Could_do_better_FINAL_inc_foreword.pdf
Accessed 19 February 2011.
Osokoya, I. (2010). Teacher Education in Nigeria: Past, Present and Future Challenges. Academic Leadership Journal , 8(4), Fall 2010. [Online], Available:
http://www.academicleadership.org/article/teacher -education-in-nigeria-past-present-and-future-challenges Accessed 16 February 2011.
Papalia, D., Wendkos Olds, S. & Duskin Feldman, R. (2008). Human Development . (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Rabiu, R. (2007). FG Launches New School Curriculum. [Online], Available: http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20071116210239zg/nigeria-watch/education-for-nigerians/fg
-launches-new-school-curriculum/ Accessed 16 February 2011.
Roberts, J. and Roach, J. (2006). Leadership Styles and Practices in Effective Schools . Johannesburg: Gauteng Department of Education.
United Kingdom Government. National Curriculum. [Online], Available: http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk / Accessed 16 February 2011.
University of South Africa (Unisa). (1997). The Teacher in the Classroom: An Introduction to Educational Theory and Practice for South African Students . Cape Town: Francolin
Publishers.

Section 2 PlanningToT - SAIDEGettingPractical

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Section 2 PlanningToT - SAIDEGettingPractical

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Section Two

2.1 Education as an intentional activity

2.2 Purpose-driven planning: How do we decide what and how to

2.3 Planning with national aims in mind

2.4 Developing teaching plans

What will we learn in Section Two?

Explain why planning is important (Section 2.1)

Justify your planning decisions in terms of an appropriate theoretical framework (Section

2.1 Education as an intentional activity

a. Is John a good teacher?

Scaffolding the learning experience

What did we think? All learning is about

Problem Examples of problems Prevention through planning

Purpose No clear outcomes. Mac didn’t really know why he was ?

What were some consequences of Mac’s poor planning?

Choice of inappropriate teaching strategies

Increased disciplinary problems

What could Mac have done differently?

Planning as a time for thinking about teaching

Why plans at phase, grade and lesson level are important

2.2 Purpose-driven planning: How do we decide

Making decisions about our

What did we think?

Teaching frameworks or paradigms

A positivist realist approach to teaching, learning and

A contextualist approach to teaching, learning and

CASE STUDY: Mrs Smith

A relativist approach to teaching, learning and assessment

CASE STUDY: Mr Dlomo

Learning theories that underpin these approaches

Behaviourist approach to teaching, learning and assessment

Cognitive approaches to teaching, learning and assessment

We will discuss each of these approaches in more detail below.

Cognitive development theories of Bruner and Ausubel

Bruner’s theory of cognitive development

Ausubel’s theory of cognitive development

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development comprises four major

The social/cultural context and thinking

The socio-cognitive theory of Bandura

Making decisions about our teaching, learning and

What did we think?

Example of application of these ideas

CASE STUDY: Becoming a reflective practitioner

2.3 Planning with national aims in mind

Specifying our broad national educational purpose

Designing down from South Africa’s national goals

Dominant ICT-integrated, Contextual pedagogy: Learner-centred approach with emphasis on active

Language Multi-lingualism expected: English is the language of Additive multi-lingualism

National Yes Yes Yes

General aims of the South African curriculum

What did we think?

Using specific aims to plan learning programmes

Where we want to get to

Table 2 Extract from CAPS First Additional Language Grades 10–12

Listening and speaking Reading and viewing

Listening process: Reading and viewing process:

Speaking Writing and presenting

Oral text types: Written text types:

Language structures and conventions

Where we start from

Table 3 Extract from CAPS First Additional Language, Foundation Phase

Planning a logical curriculum sequence

Developing depth and breadth

Date: to

Grade: _ Language: ______________ Level: _