Science Education and Curriculum in South Africa

Koopman, Oscar

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-40766-1

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…The focus on throughput rates has a direct bearing on how academics approach their lectures. When academics focus on throughput rates, Koopman (2017) notes, the classroom becomes a space for technical compliance that aims to promote the essentialisation of commodified knowledge without the freedom for critique. Hopmann refers to this kind of pedagogical approach as 'restraint teaching ' (2007: 112).…”

Section: The Darker Side Of Teaching and Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re) Learning to Teach in Contexts of Crises

2021

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Alternation research groups have made decisive and far-sighted knowledge production contributions in the interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities arena for more than twenty-five years. From 2020, it adds the Alternation African Scholarship Book Series (AASBS) to its research outputs system. Via its incisive thematically-focused inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary, as well as digitally-informed, research approaches, the AASBS not only advances the frontiers of knowledge in Africa's institutions of Higher Learning in designated focus areas, but also critically generates scholarship of, by and with the people(s) of our continent. Historically the research draws on the rich traditions of interactive African intellectualisations, from its earliest civilisations, through struggles for liberation and freedom, to independence and growth. It opens up future epistemic opportunities through intellectual initiative and resourcefulness, while critically contributing to the international advancement of knowledge on all relevant levels. Contributing to research-led constructive, transformative and substantial discourse development in our programmes and disciplines, it also aims at impacting the wellbeing of our people foundationally and all-inclusively in the present. All forms of scientific and social challenge which Africa's societies and communities face, need to be problematised and researched in the Arts and Humanities, in the interest of cooperative and conscientious responsible knowledge generation and foundational conceptual and methodological research impacts. We serve the hopes and aspirations of the people of Africa.AASBS is committed to the highest levels of inclusive, factually correct and critical, sociallyresponsive and socially-accountable evidence-based research analyses and outputs. Each chapter is reviewed by at least two independent peer reviewers. Through its editing and peerreview system, each volume also builds research leadership, research expertise, and interactive research acumen, capacity and capabilities.

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Section: The Darker Side Of Teaching and Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re) Learning to Teach in Contexts of Crises

2021

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“…What separates indigenous knowledge from knowledge in the Western tradition is that the former excludes colonial and imperial impositions. As I have argued elsewhere (Koopman, 2017), in order for knowledge to be classified as valid Western knowledge, it must be (i) empirically verifiable, (ii) conform to ontological principles, theories, and laws, and (iii) be experientially consistent. Therefore, based on the fact that science is driven by the principles of empiricism, quantification, reductionism, and anthropocentricism (Ogunniyi & Ogawa, 2008), it shares common features with indigenous knowledge such as logic, common sense, creativity, place, and, in some cases, serendipity.…”

Section: Why Are Both Western Science and Indigenous Knowledge Importmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards decolonising teaching strategies: How to 'domesticate' and 'infuse' Western science with indigenous knowledge

Koopman

2018

Journal of Education

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Through recent violent protests, university students across South Africa have demanded a decolonised curriculum that includes incorporating indigenous knowledge into it. In response to that demand I pursue three aims in this article. First, I examine why it is important to infuse both indigenous knowledge and Western science into the school science curriculum. Second, I discuss Jegede's collateral learning theory and Piaget's theories relating to cognitive development in order to explain not only how African learners learn science but, more specifically, the cognitive challenges they might face when the focus is only on Western knowledge. Third, I recommend some teaching approaches on how to domesticate and infuse Western science with indigenous knowledge in the science classroom. Accordingly, I present practical examples of the ways in which teachers can teach both bodies of knowledge to make science more meaningful and appropriate to most African learners. I want to stimulate thinking about the importance of indigenous knowledge in school science today, as well as consider the implications for a shift in teacher pedagogy that a decolonial curriculum requires.

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“…As such, the curriculum should also take into account the invisible within the visible, the immediate perception of sense and significance that does not appear directly in a curriculum based on lived experience. It is only when lived experience and the living body are synchronised with conventional disciplinary knowledge that learning shifts from a process of understanding to a thinking process that transforms our being (Koopman, 2017). This is where the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty can make a solid contribution to the field of curriculum studies by moving beyond curriculum-as-lived.…”

Section: Brief Account Of "Lived Experience" and The "Lived Body" In mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on our personal experiences as both teachers and teacher educators in South Africa over the last 20 years, it seems to us that teaching and learning are fundamentally the same in schools and universities today as they were almost 50 years ago. Scholars such as Jansen (1999Jansen ( , 2002, Koopman (2017), Le Grange (2017) and Ogunniyi (2007), amongst others, thus concur that the principles according to which the post-apartheid curricula were designed were geared towards developing learners who remained consumers of predesigned knowledge. In other words, these curricula did not represent a break with the past and remained unchanged despite concerted criticism of their rigidly mechanistic and instrumental nature by deliberative curriculum scholars, re-conceptualists and complexity theorists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Curriculum of Inclusivity: Towards a “Lived-Body” and “Lived-Experience” Curriculum in South Africa

Koopman

2018

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

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Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's "lived body" theory, we argue for a shift towards a lived-experience and body-specific curriculum in South Africa. Such a curriculum would view learning as a lived, embodied, social and culturally contextualised field. Its central aim would be to draw the learner into a plane of consciousness conducive to being awakened to the act of learning through an attitude of full attention. We specifically use the term "body-specific" to imply, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all curriculum model, one in which lived experience and the "body" form the conceptual basis on which the curriculum is built. Consequently, we reject the orthodox cognitive conception of the curriculum which views learning as a mental exercise oriented towards the acquisition of pre-designed knowledge that is "outer fixed" and "inner constructed". In contrast, we propose that learning should be outwardly constructed through lived experience and inwardly fixed (embodied) as knowledge develops against the pre-noetic background of the lived world. Underpinning this is the essentially Merleau-Pontian notion that the knowledge we hold originates from (i) our relationships with this world that are embodied in experience, and (ii) our engagements within society and culture. The "inner" and "outer" shift in learning infers a switch from pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-led, supplydriven, hierarchical, peer-reviewed and almost exclusively university-based learning to experiencebased, applied, problem-centred, trans-disciplinary, heterogeneous, hybrid, demand-driven learning. In such a curriculum, the role of the teacher would be to focus on how the world arranges itself around the learner and to guide learners to see how the world reveals itself to them through their personal lived experience.

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Science Education and Curriculum in South Africa

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

(Re) Learning to Teach in Contexts of Crises

(Re) Learning to Teach in Contexts of Crises

Towards decolonising teaching strategies: How to 'domesticate' and 'infuse' Western science with indigenous knowledge

A Curriculum of Inclusivity: Towards a “Lived-Body” and “Lived-Experience” Curriculum in South Africa

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