A teacher's conceptions and practices of active learning in science teaching amid large scale curriculum reforms

Curriculum reform is necessary in education for many different reasons. Mainly, they ensure that education is geared for current and envisaged future knowledge requirements. In fact, it is in keeping with global socio-economic challenges. Generally, curriculum change must ensure social sustainability through self-correction in the ever-changing state of knowledge (Doll, 1993). Curriculum reform must necessarily be a means of self-preservation and societal empowerment through new knowledge creation. An established curriculum assists teachers and their learners to explore the unknown (Quigley & Herro, 2016). In fact, this has been the case for many centuries and is still ongoing to this day. In situations of curriculum change, activities, especially at the point of enactment, must be highly interactive. Interactivity ensures that teachers and learners become empowered for self-organisation and transformation (Doll, 1993).

However, for learners, fundamental transformation depends on the knowledge of other, the teacher. Thus, meaningful and effective curriculum reform must necessarily be accompanied by improved teacher capacity. Undeniably, a relevantly skilled and knowledgeable teacher must be able to use appropriate teaching methods and tools for the envisaged curriculum. Nevertheless, attempts to match new teaching approaches to available physical and human resources have occasionally found implementation of large-scale curriculum reforms problematic. Large-scale curriculum reforms occur and affect the education system at various levels (Tikkanen, et.al., 2017; Tieso & Hutcheson, 2014). According to van de Oudeweetering and Voogta (2018), these reforms are generally besieged by problems at the enactment level. The introduction of the current South African schooling curriculum was no exception. For example, most teachers were not ready for the changes (Bantwini & Letseka, 2016; Seiler, 2018), even though their role in educational reforms is important..

Teacher agency is generally rated as one of the main driving forces of curriculum implementation. Without reservation, classrooms are important sites where teachers, as agents of change, enact specific curriculum provisions. Therefore, teacher knowledge must be one of the human resource necessities of educational reform. As a result, teacher knowledge must match teaching skills and social expectations of new curriculum provisions. However, it is also apparent that other factors influence the implementation of the South African curriculum reforms. Govender (2018) lists some examples of these factors as: learners’ academic readiness or lack thereof; the quality of learning materials and related teaching processes. Their effects are more pronounced at the level of classroom enactment of the curriculum. As a result, teacher conceptions and teaching approaches have a significant and direct impact on curriculum enactment (Herrington et al. 2016). Additionally, Aboagye and Yawson (2020) posit that teacher dissatisfaction with new curriculum changes, including motivation and self-efficacy, are some of the factors affecting curriculum enactment. These are generally viewed as more impactful on the enactment of curriculum provisions in the classroom.

Therefore, addressing teacher capacity before any major curriculum reform could ameliorate many specific conditions of change. Obviously, conceptions and related teaching approaches and practices are a pre-requisite for the facilitation of learning and require continuous upgrading. In fact, these two aspects could enhance the successful introduction and enactment of new curriculum objectives and related content. Critical among the objectives of the curriculum and relevant to the teacher, is the acquisition of knowledge and skills to enhance ‘active and critical approaches to learning’ for learners (Department of Basic Education, 2014). In other words, teachers need to frequently engage learners actively in order to promote learning. Notwithstanding the fact that this would happen in environments of teacher incapacity, expectations for success were still high in the case of reforms in South Africa. Teachers accustomed to conventional or traditional teaching approaches were expected to immediately accommodate techniques such as facilitation of learning activities as part of their repertoire of skills (Kurtz & Luykx, 2006; Kwan & Wong, 2015).

Facilitation of learning activities, unlike traditional teaching approaches, mostly involves the learner in his/her own learning. The same reportedly ill-prepared teachers were supposed to introduce the new and unfamiliar to them through classroom social interactions to accommodate the new curriculum requirements. Classroom social interactions occur when teachers use active learning and encourage collaboration in knowledge creation among learners (Virtanen et.al. 2017). Among the basic principles of active learning interactions is that the teacher facilitates the activities meant to enhance learning (Wass & Golding, 2014; Wilson & Devereux, 2014). Thus, the activities of the facilitator with learners introduce a new social environment in the classroom. Such environments may provide varied teaching and learning contexts with alternative measures of social interaction. The frequency of learner activities and interactions between the teachers, objects, and learners influences and/or potentially determines the chances of co-construction of understanding and, subsequently, learning (Grannola & Green, 2011). Active participation in science education is purported to produce scientifically literate citizens capable of engaging in scientific issues affecting society (Molinari & Mameli, 2013). Thus, the teacher must have the necessary knowledge and skills to match the requirements of the changing learning environment.

On the whole, the value of teacher agency in changing classroom social interactions should not be underestimated. The roles of teachers at the micro level of curriculum transition are important. Teachers and their learners are partners in generating materials for learning to co-construct knowledge. This happens in diverse and continuously changing contexts (Wang, 2021). Therefore, the success and/or failure of changing situations, especially where knowledge is key, depends mostly on the intellectual capacity of change agents or their agencies, such as teachers. Additionally, in changing curriculum contexts, expectations are that teachers will transit smoothly from their extant ways of teaching to those of the intended new curriculum dispensation. It is for this reason that teachers should understand concepts, principles, and teaching approaches and obtain the capacity to design and engage actively in different classroom social settings.