Jonathan Jansen and the Curriculum Debate in South Africa: An Essay Review of Jansen’s Writings Between 1999 and 2009

Abstract

South Africa’s attainment of democracy in 1994 culminated in an educational reform anchored on an outcomes‐based curriculum which was initially labelled Curriculum 2005 (C2005). The reform process and ensuing policy was rooted in labour movement debates and informed by the outcomes‐based education (OBE) experiences in Australia and New Zealand. The policy was soon viewed by some as an anachronistic albatross, with built‐in contradictions that would eventually lead to its demise. It lasted 12 years after surviving heated contestation from a wide academic and political spectrum. This essay review concentrates on Jonathan Jansen’s critique and perspectives on OBE policy and its implementation in South Africa as articulated in his various writings between 1999 and 2009. His seminal “thesis” on why OBE would fail started a public debate that would attract other South African scholars into what would become one of the most important and captivating debates in the last decades of educational reform in developing countries. Jansen engages with issues of policy, knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy in a post‐conflict society. He proposes what we can refer to as an epistemology of empathy that takes seriously the experiences of both the victims and the perpetrators of apartheid (including their descendants) and proposes a post‐conflict “pedagogy of reconciliation.”

Note

Notes

1 MacLaughlin (1997) describes mutual adaptation as successful change implementation which is characterised by modification of the policy plan or project design to suit the needs and interests of participants and institutional setting while the participants also modify their status quo in response to policy plan or project design during implementation. Co‐optation refers to adaptation of the language and design of policy plan or project design, but there is no change on the part of participants or institutional setting. New or proposed strategies are modified to conform in a template fashion to traditional practices that the innovation is expected to replace. This is a result of resistance to change or inadequate education and help about the innovation for the implementers. Non‐implementation refers to projects that break down during implementation or they are simply ignored or resisted during implementation by participants.