Yesterday & today: 2018 No 20
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/33570
2024-03-29T11:23:08ZDifficult relationships: how will compulsory School History and an Ubuntu-based curriculum help nationbuilding in South Africa?
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/33584
Difficult relationships: how will compulsory School History and an Ubuntu-based curriculum help nationbuilding in South Africa?
Nussey, Reville
Despite South Africa’s shift to democracy, there are ongoing difficulties in relationships both in the broader society and schools. An official response to this situation was the establishment of the History Ministerial Task Team (MTT), which recommended: that history should be made a compulsory subject for learners in all phases at school; and, that the history curriculum should be revised using an African nationalist paradigm, informed by the framework of Ubuntu. This article uses the findings of a research project conducted in history classrooms at three primary schools in Johannesburg to illustrate some of the difficulties in relationships in the history classroom. It argues that compulsory history at school level will not necessarily be a panacea for South Africa’s social ills, especially as this proposal has reawakened fears of how history education was abused during apartheid. A strength of the History MTT’s report is that it emphasises the importance of multi-perspectives in history, while favouring an approach that uses an African nationalist paradigm, informed by Ubuntu, to assist with nation-building. However, the notion of Ubuntu needs to be reconstituted, and when applied in conjunction with reconciliation pedagogy, it provides an alternative way, during teacher development workshops, for in- service history teachers to reflect on their own residual prejudices about “the other”, so that, in turn, they are able to facilitate meaningful changes in relationships in the history classroom. This approach might be applicable not only in South Africa, but also to history teachers in post-conflict countries which experience similar problems.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZReflecting the 2018 History Ministerial Task Team Report on compulsory History in South Africa
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/33583
Reflecting the 2018 History Ministerial Task Team Report on compulsory History in South Africa
Van Eeden, Elize S.; Warnich, Pieter
The History Ministerial Task Team Report (MTT), published in February 2018, has been awaited by educators of History in South Africa for them to be informed on thoughts, trends and statuses of compulsory History Education in schools globally. Educators also hoped to be informed about other important aspects of History education, such as educators’ impressions of the 2011 Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for History and possibilities for revision. Other concerns on the table included the field of teacher training, as well as the financial and logistical implications of transforming History teaching into a compulsory subject. The major purpose of this paper is to reflect on the History MTT’s discussion of the status of, specifically, compulsory History in Africa and further afield, and to establish whether the MTT’s report can in this regard serve as a reliable indicator for making any informed decision on whether History Education in South African schools should indeed be compulsory up to the Grade 12 level. The authors contest the quality of the research conducted by the History MTT pertaining to compulsory History in other countries, which in turn questions the reliability of the Report in its entirety, but which unfortunately cannot be afforded attention in this paper due to lack of space. Given this contestation on quality pertaining to the first section of the History MTT report, the authors make some observations and propose recommendations to the Department of Basic Education, who commissioned the History MTT. The essence thereof is to strongly suggest that much more thorough research should be conducted than that received by the DBE in this Report, to ensure more responsible considerations and points of departure than those currently unfolding.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZThe dialectics of historical empathy as a reflection of historical thinking in South African classrooms
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/33581
The dialectics of historical empathy as a reflection of historical thinking in South African classrooms
Ramoroka, Daniel; Engelbrecht, Alta
The research explores the understanding of the concept Historical empathy as conceptualised by the two teachers sampled in this study. The article analyses the pedagogical practices of two Grade 12 History teachers who used the theme of the Vietnam War of 1954 to 1975, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This is one of the new themes included in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) to cultivate tenets of Historical empathy in their classrooms. The research utilises a qualitative research paradigm to enable the researchers to interview teachers at their schools and observe them interacting with the phenomenon being investigated in their natural environment in the classrooms. The article uses the dual theoretical framework designed by Barton and Levstik (2004) which embodies both elements of affective and cognitive domains to evaluate the perspectives of two teachers and their pedagogical practices in the classroom. According to the findings, both teachers used suitable and relevant primary and secondary sources during the lesson presentations. Teachers demonstrated characteristics of emotional and cognitive empathy during the interviews and these divergent elements were displayed during the teaching of the Vietnam War. Quite often learners were encouraged by one teacher to sympathise and align with the victims of the war which is caused by
their past agony and psychological trauma resulting from the experiences of their communities during the apartheid government and this demonstrated shared normalcy. The second teacher empathised with the Vietnamese soldiers and saw them as gallant soldiers against the strong US troops rather than as victims thereby displaying some elements of cognitive Historical empathy.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZConfronting controversial issues in History classrooms: an analysis of preservice High School teachers’ experiences in post-apartheid South Africa
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/33580
Confronting controversial issues in History classrooms: an analysis of preservice High School teachers’ experiences in post-apartheid South Africa
Wassermann, Johan; Bentrovato, Denise
The purpose of the study presented in this article is to understand the experiences of final year pre-service South African high school history teachers on their engagement with controversial issues during their teaching practice. The rationale for undertaking this study was twofold: filling a gap in the existing literature, which has neglected the experiences of pre-service teachers and their understandings of controversial issues in history during the early stages of their professional development, and for us to learn from our students so as to possibly contribute to a more meaningful school history education in present-day South Africa. The data for this study was drawn from a collection of reflective reports prepared by 75 preservice high school history teachers on their experiences of teaching controversial issues during their professional practice sessions. We found that the student-teachers’ experiences in this regard greatly varied, and were informed by multifarious factors, including the pre-service teachers’ positionality, the institutional culture of their placement schools, their professional relationships with the mentor teachers, and their engagement with learners, policy documents and teaching material. What stood out was the centrality of race to their experiences of teaching controversial issues, something which revealed the deep-rooted legacies of South Africa’s racist past. The consequence of this was a black/white binary that continued to influence the way certain schools, pre-service teachers, mentor teachers and learners relate to history and to each other.
2018-01-01T00:00:00Z