On the road to Durban:using empowerment evaluation to grow teachers' arts and culture curriculum knowledge
Date
2008-05-13T06:57:22Z
Authors
Glass, Donald L.
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Abstract
South Africa has engaged in an outcomes-based curriculum innovation that includes
Arts and Culture as a new learning area. Few empirical studies have examined what
the curriculum innovation looks like in practice in this high inequity and low capacity
school system. This study examines what teachers' curriculum looked like, what
influenced their design decisions, and what the growth of their curriculum knowledge
looked like. A small sample of new grade 7 Arts and Culture teachers from a
disadvantaged township setting participated in an adaptation of empowerment
evaluation to gather curriculum data over a 1.5 year period. The findings of this
evaluation-research study showed teachers using a more dialogic process to design
curriculum with varied influences from policy, learning support materials, and handson
arts practice, rather than a linear design process starting with learning outcomes.
Gaps in curriculum knowledge about outcomes and assessment were also identified.
As part of the empowerment curriculum evaluation (ECE), learning outcomes seemed
to play a more powerful role as heuristics in growing their meaning(s) in practice, and
generating valid assessment critiera. Evidence was found to argue that the ECE was
associated with curriculum knowledge growth and increased self-determination for
the teachers who had some initial experience in the learning area before participating
in the study.
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Keywords
Art, Education, Curriculum, Evaluation, Design, Empowerment, Outcomes, C2005, South Africa