ABSTRACT
Since 1994, the concern in the South African schooling system was that the majority of teachers could not adjust their teaching to the requirements of the new curriculum policy. The country’s children are underperforming in national and international literacy and numeracy tests. As a result, professional development at all levels of the education system has become a priority of the state. In this chapter, we discuss programmes that have been driven by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) drawing on three National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) evaluation reports (2012–2014). Of particular interest are the processes aimed at improving classroom work, the impact of the programmes and challenges and setbacks identified by NEEDU. We argue that the expected outcomes have been compromised by leadership that is more managerial and administrative rather than transactional and by activities that fail to target teachers’ practical knowledge. The conclusion is that there is little prospect that the DBE programmes will be effective in improving teaching and learning within the schooling sector unless the assumptions and expectations that they embody focus on teachers’ knowledge and curriculum practices, use approaches appropriate to the conditions in the schools and engage the teachers’ idiosyncrasies.
