Taking Responsibility for Adapting Assessment Practices in the Context of COVID-19 in Economic Education

• In Event: South African Teacher Education's Response to the Pandemic: A Critical Reflection!

Abstract

The unprecedentedness of the COVID-19 pandemic is having telling consequences globally. Developing nations like South Africa, with highly variegated education system and health systems are beginning to face particular challenges. This paper reports on a study that investigates how preservice economics teachers’ understand their roles as assessors in a rapidly changing South African school context that demands flexible and adaptive strategies that might respond to curriculum and assessment contingencies that COVID-19 has presented, especially for high differentiation as it relates to material dissimilarities across learning contexts. The study draws on neoliberal critique with particular reference to the measurement and performative framings that typify South African school assessment protocols. A qualitative case study research design was applied. In-depth interviews with twenty preservice teachers provided rich insights into how these participants understood their roles as curriculum and assessment ‘strategists’ as they contemplate the evolving contexts in which they find themselves. The study reveals that a year-long capstone course for teachers is inadequate to develop nuanced or rich conceptual understandings of both curriculum and assessment. Preservice teachers’ somewhat superficial understandings of curriculum and assessment renders the potential for the development of substantive and meaningful adaptive strategies somewhat constrained.
Compliance with normative curriculum and assessment protocols appear to supersede ambitions of creative adaptation imperatives. The findings are significant as it confirms how the neoliberal contouring of South African education has become reified, that is, the application of neoliberal principles and protocols in almost every aspect of school education to such an extent that it appears as normative even to preservice teachers who believe they have to comply.
It is thus the realisation that the debate as to what might constitute a response to the ‘new’ crisis (in education) is necessarily circumscribed within the contours of already well-demarcated parameters. This paper argues that although COVID-19 has refocussed attention on curriculum (overload), and elaborate neoliberal assessment regimes that have become normative over time, historical rigidities especially as it relates to assessment practices remain compelling inhibitions.

Author

• SURIAMURTHEE MOONSAMY MAISTRY, University of KwaZulu-Natal