{"title":"Searching for learners’ voices: Teachers’ struggle to align pedagogical-reform policy with instructional practice","authors":"G. Chimbi, L. Jita","doi":"10.2478/jped-2021-0010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Globally, pedagogical reform policy seeks to give space to learners’ voices. But teachers often struggle to engage learners in knowledge construction, deconstruction and reconstruction; as advocated by official curriculum reform policy. Aligning classroom practice to pedagogical-reform policy remains an uphill struggle for most teachers. This article examines Zimbabwean teachers’ efforts to align teaching methods to new curriculum policy which seeks to engage learners in classroom discourse. Using a qualitative multiple-case study and the theoretical lens of sensemaking, a case study of History teachers assessed how they were implementing new pedagogical prescriptions. Data gathered from the document analysis, interviews and 47 lesson observations suggest that, although participants made efforts to open up a space for learners’ voices, they often drifted towards teacher-centred practice. Some participants complained that the unavailability of technology‑based instructional resources, recommended in the new reform policy, made them resort to rote pedagogy. Others believed that teacher didacticism and the dictation of notes were inevitable in History instruction. The use of learner‑centric approaches (as advocated by policy) appeared to be just a drop in the ocean. This study recommends pedagogical reorientation for teachers if learners’ voices are to be heard and large-scale instructional reforms are to be successfully enacted at classroom level.","PeriodicalId":38002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pedagogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Pedagogy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jped-2021-0010","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Abstract Globally, pedagogical reform policy seeks to give space to learners’ voices. But teachers often struggle to engage learners in knowledge construction, deconstruction and reconstruction; as advocated by official curriculum reform policy. Aligning classroom practice to pedagogical-reform policy remains an uphill struggle for most teachers. This article examines Zimbabwean teachers’ efforts to align teaching methods to new curriculum policy which seeks to engage learners in classroom discourse. Using a qualitative multiple-case study and the theoretical lens of sensemaking, a case study of History teachers assessed how they were implementing new pedagogical prescriptions. Data gathered from the document analysis, interviews and 47 lesson observations suggest that, although participants made efforts to open up a space for learners’ voices, they often drifted towards teacher-centred practice. Some participants complained that the unavailability of technology‑based instructional resources, recommended in the new reform policy, made them resort to rote pedagogy. Others believed that teacher didacticism and the dictation of notes were inevitable in History instruction. The use of learner‑centric approaches (as advocated by policy) appeared to be just a drop in the ocean. This study recommends pedagogical reorientation for teachers if learners’ voices are to be heard and large-scale instructional reforms are to be successfully enacted at classroom level.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Pedagogy (JoP) publishes outstanding educational research from a wide range of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical traditions. Diverse perspectives, critiques, and theories related to pedagogy – broadly conceptualized as intentional and political teaching and learning across many spaces, disciplines, and discourses – are welcome, from authors seeking a critical, international audience for their work. All manuscripts of sufficient complexity and rigor will be given full review. In particular, JoP seeks to publish scholarship that is critical of oppressive systems and the ways in which traditional and/or “commonsensical” pedagogical practices function to reproduce oppressive conditions and outcomes. Scholarship focused on macro, micro and meso level educational phenomena are welcome. JoP encourages authors to analyse and create alternative spaces within which such phenomena impact on and influence pedagogical practice in many different ways, from classrooms to forms of public pedagogy, and the myriad spaces in between. Manuscripts should be written for a broad, diverse, international audience of either researchers and/or practitioners. Accepted manuscripts will be available free to the public through JoP’s open-access policies, as well as featured in Elsevier''s Scopus indexing service, ERIC, and others.