Economics Teachers' Content Knowledge and Teaching Strategies Used to Teach Economics in Selected South African Schools

Abstract

Economics is a subject offered at the Further Education and Training (FET) section in South Africa, the subject has recorded performance that is not impressive, and the low enrolment and statistics of pass rate are of major concern. Therefore this paper explores the teachers’ content knowledge and strategies used to teach Economics in some selected schools in South Africa. The paper adopts a qualitative approach to phenomenological research design. Purposive sampling techniques were used to select 12 teachers from six schools, two teachers from each school in Buffalo City Municipality in East London, South Africa. A semi-structured interview was used to elicit information from the respondents. The findings among others revealed that Economics is very useful to be a better citizen and to make rational life decisions, the use of the right pedagogy can improve performance, and the content knowledge with adequate on-the-job training will be a match in delivering the content of the subject. It is concluded that a low level of understanding of the basic Economics concepts could be attributed to less professional development training of Economics teachers in content knowledge and pedagogy. It is recommended among others that the Economics teacher have to strike a balance between theory and practice. Teachers should be innovative and improvise by using technological skills, they should move towards the use of technology as a tool to enable learners to become creative, empathetic and high-order thinkers in this digital world.