An exploration of grade 10 teachers' experiences of the new further education and training (FET) economics curriculum.

Abstract

Political changes of the post 1994 general elections witnessed significant innovations within the education sector of the Republic of South Africa. Most significant of these was the rapid transformation of the existing school curriculum into the new curriculum 2005 (C2005). This confirmed the removal of the unnecessary variations in the curricula used by the different departments, created alongside racial groups. This brought about new challenges for teachers as it was to influence their experiences of how teaching was to be conducted in the context of these changes. As a teacher of Economics, I developed an interest in seeking ways in which teachers could be professionally developed to teach Economics in the new curriculum currently implemented in the FET band, acknowledging that the Department of Education supported the new curriculum by a training programme in the form of a cascading model.