Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

John: You know in terms of EMS although I'm handling it for the first time, I do believe
I've got more knowledge than most teachers and I'll tell you why. Some years ago,
they offered a course in consumer education and it was conducted at Springfield
College and nobody wanted to go for it in the school and I looked at it and said hey
this might be beneficial to me and I went and I find that most of the data that I
collected there I can use now.
MM: Are you drawing on that in your teaching of EMS?
John: J a, the only problem is I gotta look. I had this information for 15 to 20 years. I got
to find them now but I do know what it was. And people like Sanlam and Absa, well it
was United Bank that time, they sponsored material in terms of banking, in terms of
insurance, in terms of savings, in terms of budgeting and in terms of being a good
shopper. See those were the things that were covered in that consumer education.
So it gave me a broad perspective as to what EMS would be.
With his everyday knowledge, together with knowledge from informal programmes that
he had been exposed to, John had a basis for the teaching ofEMS in his school. There is
a distinct gap between everyday knowledge and the concepts and processes of formal
knowledge (Taylor 1999, Muller 2000). Formal knowledge is specific to a subject and
organised in a disciplined way. Later, (in Section 5.4.1) we see evidence ofthis gap in
John's knowledge.
John projected a very positive attitude towards the new curriculum. He in fact welcomed
the new curriculum and felt that it articulated with what he had already been doing in the
past. He had been teaching 'life skills' at his school for many years. When he first
arrived to take up his teaching post at this school, the neighbourhood had consisted of
houses that were made oftin. The community had been living in 'abject poverty'. Most
children left school and either looked for jobs or started their own businesses to sustain
themselves and their families. Twenty years later, people who had achieved only a grade
seven pass had been able to progress. He described the houses around his school as
'mansions' and identified people who had risen from being poverty stricken to becoming
very affluent. He believed that the main reason for this progress was that these people
were able to use their 'life skills' to progress. He identified people who were not 'good
students' in school and who eventually dropped out ofschool, but had gone on to succeed
at what they were doing. John felt that the new curriculum would help facilitate the
economic development ofpeople. He remembered people whom he regarded as not being
academically superior to him at school (people who did not finish matric), but who had
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