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This paper presents a "peace with social justice" framework for analysing the role of teachers as agents of sustainable peace, social cohesion and development and applies this to research evidence from Pakistan, Uganda, Myanmar and South Africa. The paper draws on evidence from a recently completed UNICEF and ESRC funded project on education and peacebuilding, and specifically from data gathered around the role of teachers. Drawing on rich fieldwork data collected between 2014-2016 in each of the four countries, the paper will evidence the complex and contradictory role that teachers play in sustainable peace and development and its implications for teacher governance, teacher policy and teacher practice. The paper challenges the overly human capital driven logics of much teacher policy reform agendas and highlights the need and importance for a more holistic approach to teacher governance and management that recognises teachers' multiple potential to contribute to both societal peace and development.

The wellbeing of sexual and gender minorities (SGM) is undermined by widespread homophobia that extends to health systems, and is exacerbated by medical curricula under-representing the health needs of this key population group. In 2012, under the auspices of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, a student-inspired curriculum intervention led to the introduction of interactive participatory workshops centred on the health needs of SGM. This paper describes the experiences of two of the workshop facilitators who embraced the risk of introducing an unchartered topic in a student-centred manner, which frequently led to unpredictable events that were challenging. Here, the authors reflect on their own vulnerabilities, which are considered alongside the value of moving through risk to transform present curricular practices and student attitudes, especially in a country like South Africa where prejudice against SGM patients by healthcare providers is well-documented.

This paper explores a curriculum paradox that may arise for teachers in post-authoritarian regimes if a radically new curriculum, designed to prepare learners for democratic citizenship, requires them to be autonomous professionals. If teachers were originally schooled and trained under the old regime to follow the orders inscribed in syllabi and textbooks authorised by the regime, then they were probably not educated for autonomous thought and practices. If so, they are caught in a double bind: either they continue to do what they have always done but then may not be able to fulfil the aims and ideals of the new curriculum, or they can wait for more detailed orders and directives that tell them exactly what to teach and how to teach. In the latter case, a dependency on external authority is maintained. The current response to this problem in South Africa is to develop programmes to strengthen teachers' content and pedagogic content knowledge and to provide highly specified curricula for teachers to follow. Deepening teachers' knowledge is one important step towards addressing the paradox, but there is a danger that teachers who are not yet sufficiently autonomous may simply treat the content and form of such programmes as yet another set of orders to be obeyed. Just over a hundred years before apartheid ended, France was in the process of transition from despotism to democracy, and was in the process of introducing radical changes to the curriculum and the school system. Durkheim's education theory courses were explicitly designed to help teachers think about the underlying social logic of the new policies, about the significance of the changes for them, and to think about the challenges of change. Aspects of Durkheim's lectures are explored to reframe our understanding of, and our response to, the curriculum paradox with which many South African teachers are faced.

This paper is a response to the recent curriculum revisions in South Africa, namely the introduction of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). We argue, using the deliberationist perspective to curriculum development, that the attention on curriculum policy is misdirected and fails to sufficiently address one of the key problems facing schooling in South Africa today: that of the lack of teacher professionalism. We review both scholarly and popular literature to demonstrate the challenges of the education system as largely rooted in the historical apartheid construction of teachers, which positioned white teachers as professional while casting African teachers as mere technicians. We hold that current revisions to the curriculum seem to suggest that government has given up on the professional agenda of the post 1994 dispensation and seem to be making the curriculum ‘teacher proof’, thus making teachers more powerless and unimportant. We suggest that the focus should not solely be on the curriculum, but also on creating professional teachers. This means empowering teachers, addressing SACE, separating the role of teacher unions from government and attracting the best students for the teaching profession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how students' resources can be drawn on in curriculum design in tertiary education to develop a pedagogy of diversity. It asks what kinds of resources are privileged through existing academic practices, and how certain traditionally unused resources can be included in teaching, learning and meaning-making. With reference to a case study in engineering in South Africa, an argument is made for a 'reciprocal curriculum', an exchange of cultural practices and not just bridges to established norms. In this conception of curriculum, students' practices and resources can be utilised, whilst the discourses and knowledge of the discipline can also be made accessible. The parameters of 'science' and scientific discourse are explored by analysing students' texts from a multimodal social semiotic perspective. The paper ends by proposing that students' resources be harnessed through using metalanguages to describe and reflect on their own practices as well as on academic practices, and the need to create less regulated spaces in the curriculum in order to enable this reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the reconceptualisation era of curriculum studies, scholars drew on a range of theories such as existentialism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, feminism, poststructuralism, and especially critical theory. They used critical theory as a lens to examine the influence of social and political forces on curriculum, in particular the role of dominant ideologies on schooling and higher education in capitalist societies. In this article we explore some of the limitations this has, especially with regard to the current posthuman condition, without repudiating all the benefits that it has offered. Then we re/think curriculum studies in the posthuman condition, drawing on insights from a particular strand of posthumanism, critical posthumanism. We experiment with the real, as well as with what a reconceptualised subject (one that is ecological) might mean for curriculum inquiry in South Africa. In our exploration, we re/think the curriculum concepts: curriculum-as-lived, curriculum as complicated conversation, and currere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I reflect on my experiences of teaching a new course in curriculum design to Postgraduate Certificate students at a South African university. The article, thus, is largely a reflective case study. During 2008 a range of new courses was introduced in our Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) after three institutions merged. It was felt then that the time was ripe to move towards more student-centred approaches to teaching and learning that veered away from rote learning and traditional lectures. One of the central aims of the course was to contest and disrupt closed and top-down systems of knowledge construction. This shift in emphasis would also be more in line with the new educational reality South Africa finds itself in after the demise of apartheid. I focus particularly on the difficulties and struggles students experienced in having to take responsibility for their own learning, which was completely new to them. The evidence suggests that constructivist approaches to teaching and learning are not straightforward, but are a highly challenging endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African National Curriculum for schools envisages teachers as qualified, competent, dedicated and caring. If policy documents hold such high expectations of what teachers should be, the question arises as to how professional development programmes contribute to developing teachers with such attributes? One of the aspects teachers may want to address in an effort to meet the expectations of policymakers is to improve their qualifications. This research focused on teachers who were registered for an Advanced Certificate in Education (Physical Science). The framework of Beijaard, Verloop and Vermunt (2000), which describes the professional identity of teachers as: the teacher as subject specialist; the teacher as pedagogical expert and the teacher as didactical expert, is used to interpret the kinds of identities teachers in the study hold. Six teachers were interviewed and observed teaching physical science to determine whether their identities are constituted in the same way as the identities described in the framework. The data is presented as short narrative accounts. These narratives reveal that the teachers’ identities are strongly shaped by their view of themselves as subject specialists. Pedagogic knowledge as well as didactic knowledge are not valued as highly as content knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The question that is addressed in this study is whether gifted pupils in high schools are capable of using self-regulated learning (SRL) to master an advanced curriculum in Accounting. Researchers working with gifted populations admit that, to date, limited studies have been conducted with a view to examining gifted pupils’ expertise in using SRL strategies to assume ownership of their learning. This concern is addressed, to a certain extent, in this study. The findings of this research will contribute new insights to the discussion on giftedness and education in high schools. Furthermore, this study may also be helpful in determining the role of self-regulated processes (eg metacognition, motivation and creativity) in gifted pupils’ performance in a subject such as Accounting. In this study, an experiment was conducted with Grade 11 pupils who were considered to be specifically gifted in Accounting. The main purpose of this experiment was to investigate whether gifted pupils in South African high schools could master subject matter of an advanced level on their own by using SRL strategies. The empirical results suggest that these pupils are capable of SRL. A major recommendation is the triumvirate theory of SRL which can contribute new insights into the current discourse on giftedness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The most significant barrier to learning in the inclusive education system of South Africa is the curriculum and differentiated pedagogy has been found to be an effective adjunct to inclusive practices in schools. Subsequently a special school in Gauteng implemented the “Learn NOT to Burn” (LNTB) fire safety programme through the provision of differentiated instructional adaptations and accommodations for learners with severe intellectual disabilities (SID). This study used a qualitative research design to elucidate themes surrounding teacher implementation of the LNTB curriculum. A pilot study was conducted whereby an ethnographic design was used to address the research question. Data collection methods included focus group interviews, questionnaires and journal analysis. The findings focus on the relevance of differentiated instructional practices such as visual stimulating focused activities, hands on learning and the importance of incorporating music in ensuring access to the LNTB curriculum for the SID population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This discussion piece focuses on possible strategies for taking action around some of the challenges teachers and schools in rural communities face in the context of larger systemic changes in southern Africa, and particularly in the context of HIV/AIDS. For this purpose we examine five key entry points, i.e. teachers' lives, school leadership and management, the voices of young people, teachers working with communities, and partnerships and pedagogies for preparing new teachers. We propose visual participatory research as a possible strategy for providing a space for dialogue that could be unleashed from the narrow political and economical aims of education transformation in South Africa. In a context where rural communities and schools are often viewed and approached as deficient, we consider the importance of an asset-based approach, invoking specific types of communication as an alternative to a needs-based approach to community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, critical thinking is a prominent aim of education. Argumentation (the processes and products of arguing) is central to critical thinking and important in science and technology, but teachers have not been trained in classroom methods. This article reports an evaluation of the university-based part of a programme to train science and technology student teachers to teach argumentation. Observations of the university sessions produced detailed descriptions of the enacted curriculum with respect to argumentation and the teaching of argumentation. A model called SIMPL facilitated critical reflection by the programme's teacher educators. These reflections validated course structures, identified key assumptions made by teacher educators and clarified the interplay between student teachers as learners, and teachers’ and teacher educators’ instructional roles. The findings showed that while the curriculum provided student teachers with ample experience of argumentation and opportunities to plan for and teach peers, they needed more support in facilitating argumentation discussions and drawing on sufficient, relevant science in peer teaching. SIMPL allowed teacher educators to realise they had not identified or differentiated student teachers’ learning of argumentation from learning to teach argumentation. Implications for future cohorts and the application of SIMPL to better understand the integration of aspects of training are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]