An Exploration of the Incorporation of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in the School Curriculum

Experiences from two schools in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces, South Africa.

Abstract

Indigenous people have a vast array of knowledge by which they have lived and sustained their livelihoods for ages. The impacts of colonisation and globalisation have meant that over time, this knowledge has been lost and not imparted to younger generations. The current educational system in South is still westernised. There have been efforts to align the curriculum with constitutional principles and values through the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) Grades R-12 and the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). The article looks at a study that aimed to find out how AIKS can be incorporated into the basic education curriculum in South African schools, by studying the educators’ experiences.  The qualitative study was conducted using the case study design, informed by the systems and symbolic interactionism theories. The findings revealed that although there is the requirement to include IKS in the curriculum, there is no clear indication of how this should be done. The development of AIKS content for teaching, introduction of AIKS campaigns in schools and communities, inclusion of different role players in the  AIKS development process and the development of monitoring and evaluation systems to track AIKS development progress are the recommendations that came out of the study.