Investigating relationships between English home language curriculum documents and classroom practice

Abstract

The research described in this report was undertaken with four teachers of English as Home Language in two different secondary schools in Johannesburg. The researcher’s purpose was twofold: (i) to uncover the attitudes of selected grade nine teachers to the English Home Language curriculum statement for grade nine; (ii) to establish how, if at all, the Revised National Curriculum Statement featured in the teachers’ construction of the subject English as home language. The data for this case study consisted of individual teacher interviews, notes from observations in the classroom of each teacher and artefacts such as teachers’ term plans and examples of learners’ texts. Findings from an analysis of this data indicate varied understandings of and attitudes towards this curriculum statement. These have translated into equally varied implementation of the curriculum. Analysis of the teachers’ interviews gave little indication of the rich and varied learning activities that they planned and implemented. In this case study, the difference between how teachers talked about the new curriculum and how they enacted it in their classroom practice was marked.