Elaine Browne.pdf - Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

(Rogan & Grayson 2003, 1174). A significant cohort of South African teachers is still unqualified
or under‐qualified (Bloch 2009, 83; Ramparsad 2001, 288). Research conducted by Onwu and
Mogari (2004, 161), as well as Herbst, De Wet and Rijsdijk (2005, 261) confirmed that most
teachers did not grasp the philosophy of outcomes‐based education and struggled to
implement the new curriculum, due to inadequate training and preparation at both pre‐service
and in‐service level.
Morrow (2007, 93, 94) ascribes this state of affairs to an unwillingness by some schools to
depart from old apartheid strategies. He also argues that South Africa has a significant number
of “deficient schoolteachers”, who are either not willing to change or “do not have the
competences”. Taylor (2006, 2), who did a study on the National Senior Certificate results in
Mathematics, ascribes the general poor performance in mathematics and science directly to
insufficient content knowledge of teachers. In the poorly performing category of schools, only
15% of the total of higher‐grade final year learners passed mathematics (Bloch 2009, 66).
Prinsloo (2007, 165) conducted research on the implementation of the Life Orientation learning
area (LO) in South African schools. Her findings revealed that most teachers in government
schools, and in particular those in rural schools, do not cope with the demands of this subject
area, as these teachers are ill‐equipped. The teachers do not have sufficient content
knowledge, and lack the teaching skills, motivation and self‐confidence to implement this
learning area successfully. They also struggle to teach Life Orientation in a multicultural
classroom, as they are unable to comprehend the life worlds of these diverse learners. Herbst
et al. (2005, 273) investigated the implementation of the Arts and Culture learning area. These
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