Small classes and rotational timetables as effective curriculum-recovery teaching methods during Coronavirus-19 pandemic.xlsx

Ethics Reference: EFEC 2-04/2023

The perceptions of teachers on how effective small classes and rotational timetables were in curriculum recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic in South African schools.

Qualitative data was collected. Data was collected using a Google Forms survey, which contained 12 open-ended questions about the teachers’ experiences of using small classes and rotational timetables during the lockdown, and how these changes affected curriculum recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Google Forms were chosen to collect data as it gave participants freedom to complete the questionnaire anywhere and the feedback was sent to the researcher as soon as the questionnaire was completed. The researcher also intended to conduct interviews after the questionnaires were completed, using the same questions from the questionnaire, to give the participants space to ellaborate. The researcher had permission from the WCED to approach schools between 1 August 2023 and 30 September 2023 and during this time he set up meetings with the principals to explain the study and gave the participants two weeks to complete the questionnaire. Using qualitative research in this study helped design questions that valued the participants’ lived experience.

The results of this study have indicated that the use of small classes and rotational timetables somehow helped the participants to recover lost teaching and learning time, albeit with challenges, most of which were associated with the employment of rotational timetables. The analytical discussion presented above situates the ineffectiveness of these strategies at a deeper level than just participants and learners, but rather in the echelons of family, school, WCED and the DBE. These are the structures that should have provided participants with the support they needed to recover the curriculum effectively. Parents should have supported the learners and ensured that they attended school regularly on the days they were scheduled to attend, and that they did their homework promptly, thereby strengthening the efforts of recovering the academic curriculum. In addition, the schools, the WCED and the DBE should have had contingency plans in place for the instability brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, they should have been more proactive and responsive. These plans should have directly addressed how the schools that could not continue with online teaching and learning had to function so that no learner was left behind. It is clear that without the interventions of these systems, teachers were bound to encounter challenges along the way.