Intermediate and senior phase english language subject advisors’ perceptions of text-based theory as realised in the curriculum and assessment policy statement

Abstract

Despite the democratic government’s initiatives to streamline and improve educational outcomes, national and international studies indicate that South Africa has one of the world’s lowest literacy rates. This systemic under-achievement is routinely attributed to teachers’ inability to adequately implement the curriculum, amongst other factors. Less attention has been paid to the curriculum itself, and its possible impact on pedagogy. The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for languages endorses a form of genre pedagogy it terms a text-based approach. Given its centrality to teaching, learning and assessment, CAPS merits a closer examination. Furthermore, little is known about the curriculum mediation and literacy support that language teachers receive from district subject advisors. Accordingly, the first purpose of the study was to ascertain to what extent a text-based approach is realised in CAPS languages at Intermediate and Senior Phase levels; and secondly, to explore subject advisors’ perceptions of the text-based approach. In terms of research design, this is a qualitative case study. Relevant CAPS documents constituted the secondary data, while the primary data comprised semi-structured interviews with four subject advisors from different districts in the Western Cape. This was thus a case study of limited scope, and hence no claims are made about the generalisability of its findings. The study found that the CAPS document’s understanding of text-based approaches is limited and partial, thereby influencing subject advisors’ own narrow understandings of text-based theory. The implications of the findings are that the features of text-based theory be made more explicit in CAPS itself, and that subject advisors be provided with more in-depth training on the text-based approach to literacy.