Rethinking the reflective praxis of the name Social Science: pedagogical 'mischief' in the Grade 4 to 9 Social Science curriculum

Abstract

The article depicts the global history of the Social Science (SS) curriculum to illustrate that already by the 19 th century Geography and History had been divided. The influence of non-integration of the SS was mainly by Geographical determinism which promulgated that the natural environment prescribes how people live, suggesting that all people living in a specific natural environment would respond in the same way when engaging with their environment. Such thinking inferred that human agency and culture had no role in such interaction. As a result some historians have neglected the environment in the study of History, which in turn served to further set boundaries for integration in SS. South Africa also subscribed to such a division as policy makers stipulated categorically in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) of Grade 4 to 9 that, SS is integrative in nature but has to be taught and administered as distinct Geography and History components. Integration occurs administratively when exam marks have to be combined as one to comprise SS-which is mischievous as it does not depict the reflective praxis of the subject pedagogically. The teaching and learning in terms of the content is divided into Geography and History but the summative is the only indicator of an integrated subject. From literature surveyed no investigation on the set topic has been undertaken in SA. The article thus proposes that non-integration of SS pedagogically speaking is 'mischievous' in the teaching and learning of SS in schools because the name negates what occurs practically in the teaching of the subject. The article through qualitative research drawing from interviews of trainee teachers enrolled in the Post Graduate Certificate Education doing SS at the University of KwaZulu-Natal enlightens the 'mischiefs' embedded in the SS curriculum. Drawing from some of the trainee teachers' views the conclusions and recommendations of the article are that, SS has to be integrated because as is it is pedagogically misleading and compromises the quality of teaching in the learning area. This implies that, SS is an integrated subject and has to be taught as such because Geography cannot be taught without History or vice versa, because the one without the other equates with an incomplete learning area.

Decolonising curriculum change and implementation: Voices from Social Studies Zimbabwean Teachers

“…Teachers in the study indicated that fidelity to the implementation of the new curriculum could have been facilitated by involving them in drafting the decolonised content of the Social Studies curriculum (Interviews S2). The finding tallies with representation as a social construct, as expounded by Kgari-Masondo (2017), who asserted that Social Studies is located in the activities of the world, reflecting the communities it serves and empowering learners with critical lifelong learning skills. Hence, it is represented as a curriculum that can have outcomes based on common models of society, which could have been achieved by the teachers utilising the knowledge of African values that they gained by practising in their communities.…”

“…As posed by Higgs and Van Wyk (2007), the Ubuntu philosophy of education draws from the concerns, experiences, and aspirations of Africans and how they construct knowledge (cited in Letseka, 2016) to decolonise curriculum design and implementation. We argue that the use of Ubuntu philosophy and its related work ethics in educational circles is reconnecting and reviving the 'usable past' in curriculum design and implementation, and thus has a valuable place in the education system (Kgari-Masondo, 2017). Similarly, it is in line with the current global debates on decolonisation of the curriculum.…”

“…The Ubuntu philosophy was handy as it presented a framework that is indigenous to Africa and her educational challenges. Foreign theories had been employed in the African context, causing a mismatch and leaving some critical issues untapped (Chimuka, 2015; e-ISSN 2309-9003 Kgari-Masondo, 2017). Bruyn (2017:43) argues that the Afrocentric paradigm affirms that Africans and African topics ought to be studied, analysed, and understood from an African (internal) perspective, based on African philosophical assumptions.…”

Using a historical memoir to improve curriculum coherence in teacher education: The case of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime

“…Given the heavy demands put on an already full curriculum, university lecturers need to develop an integrative approach to History education, in which historical textual resources should be integrated across the curriculum. While the scholarship on curricular coherence in relation to Social Sciences in South Africa has o en tended to focus on the decision to combine History and Geography into one subject (Kgari-Masondo, 2017;Iyer, 2018), there have also been great successes in using topics in Social Sciences as key sites for transdisciplinary coherence-building more broadly (Ferreira, Janks, Barnsley, Marrio , Rudman, Ludlow & Nussey, 2012;Jarvis, 2018;Kruger & Evans, 2018;Li ig, 2021).…”