From Theory to Practice: Teachers’ Pedagogical Experiences in Animal Studies

Abstract

The South African educational curriculum has significantly been changing subsequent to the apartheid regime, which had a lot of restrictions on content coverage of Agricultural Science. With such evolution in the curriculum, there has been an amendment and introduction of new Agricultural Sciences’ content and concepts review as well as alignment. There is, however, a limited number of studies exploring educators’ knowledge and experience of teaching Animal Studies. Therefore, it is against this background that the present study explores grade 12 educators' experience in the content and pedagogy in eight selected schools in Mohlaletse Circuit, Limpopo Province. The study employed a qualitative research approach to develop an explanatory framework representing the lived experiences of Animal Studies grade 12 educators. In addition, the study adopted Shulmans' 1986 (PCK) Pedagogical Content Knowledge as a theoretical framework to guide the experiences in teaching Animal Studies to learners in grade 12. Twelve (n=12) grade 12 Agricultural educators were purposively selected from Mohlaletse Circuit, Limpopo Province. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews, which included one-on-one interviews. Thereafter, the data was thematically analysed through the following themes: challenges of teaching animal studies, strategies employed by educators when teaching animal studies and unpreparedness to teach some of the aspects of animal studies. The study's findings revealed challenges and the experiences encountered by Animal Studies educators. These challenges and experiences include a lack of resources, which limited learners to perform practical experiences, and limited content knowledge. The study concluded with the recommendation that professional development programmes should be tailored to address the gaps and areas of development among Animal Studies educators.