Rethinking curriculum implementation in time of COVID-19 and beyond: lessons learnt from rural science teachers

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the way teaching and learning is carried out in South African schools. Policy decisions to curb the spread of the virus were superficially conceived as a health problem as opposed to an understanding of the interconnectedness of education in society. For teaching and learning to continue, schools were compelled to either rotate their learners or embrace remote teaching. Irrespective of the numerous curriculum reforms, curriculum implementation in South Africa has been in a moribund state with little attention given to rural science teachers. In this article, we explore how science teachers in rural areas implemented the curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic and what lessons could be learnt from their experience to foster the curriculum implementation discussion in South Africa. We used a qualitative research approach and phenomenology as our research methodology. Nine rural science teachers were purposively selected for a semi-structured interview. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the data. Our findings revealed that the government’s response to the pandemic appeared to have overlooked already existing fundamental problems associated with curriculum implementation in rural areas. We learnt in this study that curriculum implementation is narrowly conceived as a classroom pedagogic exercise. As an implication, there is a need for curriculum implementation reforms in South Africa, one that would consider contextual curriculum theorising and the experiences of rural science teachers.