Working From Inside-Out and Outside-In: Radical Curriculum Reform in a Postcolonial South African Context

• In Event: “Knowing It All”: Conceptualizing the Curriculum for the Preparation and Practice of Elementary Teachers

Abstract

Purposes
The purpose of this paper is to explore the deep and radical (i.e. root) transformations that are necessary for genuine curriculum reform in teacher education. We look at the now two-year-long project of curricular and institutional reform in a post-apartheid, formerly white, all-Afrikaans university. We examine the many processes involved: from stories of a shared apartheid past, to courageous conversations, to generation of dreams, values, and beliefs about teaching, learning, research, learning to teach, and purposes. The paper explores the personal and societal reflections of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’ Faculty of Education as they examined the roots of their personal, societal and institutional beliefs about the purposes of education and teacher education.
Perspective
David Hansen (2008) emphasizes that teachers and teacher educators, must “cultivate a sense of purpose with a feeling for the larger human affairs of our time.” Part of that sense of purpose for the States, but also for emerging democracies like South Africa, is the ongoing growth of a democracy. Another, Hansen points out, is the cultivation of personhood (p. 12). These two prongs, a commitment to the public good and to personal growth, are not at odds, he argues but, as Dewey suggests, essential to the growth of a democracy.
If, as Dewey (1985) argues, a democracy is a mode of associated living and conjoint communicated experience (p. 93), then dialogue that grows out of inquiry into experience is essential. And a philosophy of education that starts from this premise must educate its students in ways that begin with their experience and expand into more abstract notions of subject matter, or what Hawkins (2000) referred to as “the stuff of the world.”
As the Faculty of Education engaged in the curriculum reform process, it went through an extended series of reflective exercises and dialogues that asked them to examine and share both their personal and political pasts, to consider the purposes of education as well as the purposes of a teacher education curriculum in a new South Africa. The “golden thread” that runs through these processes is inquiry. Hansen (2008) writes, learning from experience is premised on the notion that a “disposition of inquiry” should “saturate public affairs” (p. 20). A curriculum dedicated to “creating a vibrant and socially just democracy” (NMMU Faculty of Education Vision Statement, 2011) demands such inquiry into self, politics, past and present.
All processes have been documented through minutes, artifacts, and written reflections. In addition, the curriculum itself is an artifact. An upcoming retreat will analyze these various data through additional study and reflection.
Conclusions
Evident at this stage is that our work has provided a deeply grounded personal and philosophical (radical) foundation for each Faculty member. The vision, mission, and teaching, learning, and research principles serve as touchstones for curriculum development still in progress and lend coherence to Faculty schools, programs, and courses.

Authors

• Carol R. Rodgers, University at Albany - SUNY

• Noluthando Toni, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

• Denise Margot Zinn, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University