South African curriculum studies

a historical perspective and autobiographical account

Lesley Le Grange

pp. 177-200

in: William F. Pinar (ed), Curriculum studies in South Africa, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

In this essay I wish to trace the history of South African curriculum studies of the past 30 years through an autobiographical account of my engagement with both the field and the term curriculum. It was as a school learner in the decade of the 1970s that I first heard the term curriculum being used and understood it to mean the collection of school subjects taken in a particular grade. My understanding of the term curriculum and the field of curriculum studies has since expanded and this essay bears testimony to this.