Abstract
Teachers face three major challenges: preparing learners for careers that currently do not exist and teaching them how to solve future problems and use technology that is still being developed. The cultivation of global 21st-century competencies has thus become a critical responsibility of the teaching fraternity. Global competencies include more than academic knowledge and teachers should therefore be able to support learners in navigating their way through a demanding, complex, and uncertain future. Learners can flourish in a brave new world only if they are able to access and use digital information and social media platforms effectively yet critically. At the same time, they need to demonstrate sound intercultural sensitivity and respect for others’ languages and cultures. Being able to communicate in an additional language lies at the heart of teamwork, collaboration, and networking in a global world, through social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.
This qualitative study attempts to contribute to the fields of multiliteracies and global competencies by exploring literacy practices in a first additional language (FAL) textbook that is expected to prepare learners for the national exit examination after 12 years of schooling. An instrumental case study was conducted using an interpretivist lens. The primary research question focussed on how global competencies were cultivated in an Afrikaans FAL textbook for grade 12 learners, while the supporting questions asked: What are the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) requirements pertaining to the cultivation of global competencies? How were global competencies addressed in the 2022 National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination paper? How are global competencies developed in the texts and questioning in an Afrikaans FAL textbook for grade 12 learners?
Multiliteracies pedagogy (MLP) was applied not only as a theoretical lens but also as the research instrument that sought to identify the four tenets of multiliteracies pedagogy. In the manifesto of the New London Group (1996) the key tenets are described as, firstly, situated practice, that employs the prior knowledge and situated experiences of all learners. Secondly, overt instruction expects active interventions from the teacher to facilitate constructivist scaffolding during teaching and learning experiences. Critical framing, the third tenet of multiliteracies, encourages learners to critically question assumptions and stereotypes to transfer meaning to different and differing social contexts. Transformed practice is the outcome of the multiliteracies approach and aims to teach learners through self-exploration how to apply knowledge to redefine and transform their own practices. The success of the MLP approach depends on how these interrelated tenets work towards cultivating skills and literacies, other than the traditional notions of reading and writing.
In the first place, the study set out to establish what the CAPS curriculum requirements are pertaining to the development of global competencies and, secondly, how global competencies manifested in the 2022 NSC final examination. Lastly, the content material prepared for a popular and highly esteemed Afrikaans FAL textbook – which serves largely as preparation for the exit examination – also formed part of the data. A qualitative content analysis was used to reveal the extent to which the three textual data sets (CAPS, an extract from the 2022 NSC examination and the sampled textbook) cultivate global competencies for 21st-century learning. The data were analysed deductively to establish the prevalence of these tenets and how the texts might have encouraged the development of global competencies. The findings reveal that the CAPS curriculum indeed clearly requires addressing global competencies such as critical thinking, creative thinking, and emotional intelligence.
This article reports on the initial stages of exploring the phenomenon of the cultivation of global competencies, and only the reading and viewing section of the exam paper was sampled. This section accounts for 24 and 6 out of a possible 80 marks of the selected paper. The chosen texts in the paper were age appropriate, aligned with grade 12 learners’ authentic worlds, and linked closely to the four tenets of multiliteracies. Not only did the texts in the exam paper address technology and social networking but it also required critical awareness of how knowledge has the power to transform communities and redefine learners and their own learning practices. On the contrary, evidence indicated that the textbook sample did not use the multiliteracies approach or cultivate global competencies as required by the curriculum.
This grade 12 textbook is still available as a first edition (2012) and has been reprinted 23 times without any adjustments. The textbook series received the stamp of approval after an evaluation by the Ministerial Committee in 2016, but themes, topics, texts, and vocabulary have remained unchanged. Relevant topics such as loadshedding, the pandemic, fake news and TikTok do not feature in the sample. Despite the inclusion of three advertisements, a mock web page and cartoons, questioning strategies focused on testing grammatical ability rather than the development of visual literacy skills, as required for paper 1. The advertisements were either too verbose, not “attention grabbing” (Janks 2014) or outdated. Furthermore, the process approach required by CAPS was absent as prior knowledge is not required in the questions. There is also no verbal scaffolding as suggested by the lower-order verbs describe and explain versus the more cognitively demanding verbs compare and create – a common taxonomy used to formulate questions. Despite the longevity of the textbook, it fails to prepare learners for final examination assessment or develop learners’ global competencies. The contribution of this research lies in the new knowledge pertaining to textbooks and global skills in Afrikaans FAL methodology and may serve to alert practitioners and policy makers to reassess its continued use of an officially approved textbook.
Keywords: 21st-century learning; Afrikaans FAL; Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS); final examination paper; global competencies; grade 12 textbook; multiliteracies; visual texts; qualitative content analysis; questioning techniques