Analysing the curriculum philosophy of equipping learners with values, and its conceptualisation for integration into life sciences teaching in South African schools

Abstract

Value(s) is a conceptualisation, and it is abstract because it does not have physical presence. The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) Grades R-12 is a postapartheid values-driven policy statement currently used for teaching and learning in South African schools. From the start of democracy, curricular documents used in South Africa have been built on certain fundamental values that inspired the nation's Constitution. However, against the backdrop of its imprecision in the policy statement, this study examined what the NCS's philosophy of equipping learners with values connotes, and how it could be conceptualised for integration into classroom teaching of life sciences concepts. The qualitative study was underpinned by the cultural-historical activity theory as theoretical framework. Textual data in form of words, phrases, sentences, excerpts, quotations, or entire passages from policy documents were analysed using the Bowen (2009) approach to document analysis. The Manifesto on Values, Education, and Democracy (Department of Education, 2001) provided the framework for deductive and inductive approaches to analysis. The study offers explanation on how equipping learners with values can be understood and interpreted in terms of nurturing, seeding, instilling, or inculcating South African constitutional values in learners and awareness pertaining to strategies that can be used to accomplish this are established. How the curriculum philosophy can be conceptualised for integration into classroom teaching of life sciences concepts is also proposed.