Teachers Are Key: How Risk-Taking Teachers in Elite South African Schools ‘Use’ Apartheid History

This chapter explores how teachers in elite South African schools have adopted or resisted the state’s conceptualization of the purposes of history education. Based on qualitative interviews with 12 teachers in top-performing schools in the Western Cape, the chapter argues that although South African curriculum documents chart a particular path for teachers to follow, teachers themselves have considerable autonomy in shaping (or rejecting) this path. The characteristics of the national socio-political situation, of the school, of the student body; different teachers’ political outlooks; and the specific remarks made by students during lessons all contextualize the classroom interactions in which teachers make particular pedagogical choices. Kitson and McCully’s (2005) concept of ‘risk-taking’ as well as Burbules and Berk’s (2013) distinction between ‘Critical Thinking’ and ‘Critical Pedagogy’ are used to analyse these choices. The findings are organized into two sections: how this group of teachers conceptualize the purpose of history education in a post-conflict, post-colonial society, and how they pursue these aims in practice. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the implications of the findings for curriculum making and teacher education.