Infusing Competencies into Foundation Phase Literacy : the Competency-based Learning Programme
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Date
2021
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Publisher
National Education Collaboration Trust, South Africa.
Abstract
In our complex and fast-changing world, there is increasing acknowledgement that formal education systems globally are not adequately preparing young people for life after school (Fadel et al., 2015), and that schools need to foster a breadth of competencies that will enable young people to better navigate an uncertain future (Winthrop, 2018). While the Brookings Institution found that the current
South African curriculum contains many of these social, emotional, and cognitive competencies, it highlighted a number of challenges regarding the deliberate and systematic implementation of the competencies in practice (Care et al., 2017). In this context, the NECT EdHub seeks to explore how we can better equip learners and teachers in South African public schools with the knowledge, skills, values, and mindsets needed for success in the 21st century and beyond. The EdHub exists to promote, inform, and facilitate education programme innovation by increasing the speed and agility of learning about policies and practices relevant to education for a changing world. This work primarily involves iterative Research & Development with a small sample of public schools, and Advocacy within the broader education sector around the future of education. The Sandbox Schools Project is the EdHub’s flagship research project, that trials approaches to competency-embedded education in South
African public schools. The aim of the Sandbox is to test these teaching and learning practices within the context of a ‘typical’ public school in order to gather substantial evidence on which practices and models are best suited to the South African schooling system. There are 11 schools participating in the Sandbox Project (10 in Waterberg District, Limpopo and 1 in Soweto, affiliated to the University of Johannesburg). These are quintile 1-3 schools that have volunteered to be part of the project for its duration.
Description
As part of the ongoing work to understand how to deliberately infuse social, emotional, and cognitive competencies into the existing South African schooling curriculum, the EdHub designed and launched the Competency-based Learning Programme (CLP) in Grade 1 Home Language in 2020. The CLP is a structured learning programme that seeks to support teachers in deliberately developing both foundational literacy skills and competencies for a fast changing world through content and pedagogy.
Keywords
Primary schools, Public schools, South Africa, Learning skills, Competencies, Foundation phase, Sandbox Project, Literacy