The alignment of the National Senior Certificate Examinations (November 2014 - March 2018) and the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement Grade 12 Physical Sciences : Physics (P1) in South Africa

Abstract

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has associated the poor pass rate in the National Senior Certificate (NSC) Grade 12 Physical Sciences examinations to the learners’ lack of practical skills and the inability of learners to solve problems by integrating knowledge from the different topics in Physical Sciences. The CAPS (Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement) is central to the planning, organising and teaching of Physical Sciences. Even though more than a third of the learners achieved below 30% in the NSC Grade 12 Physical Sciences: Physics (P1) November 2017 examination, there was a lack of references made to the CAPS, rationalising the poor performance. A disjointed alignment between the CAPS and the P1 is a possible cause for the poor performance. Since there have been no previous studies that investigated the alignment between the CAPS and the P1, this study aims to fill that gap. This study used a positivist research paradigm and a case study research strategy. A purposive sampling procedure selected the CAPS Grades 10 – 12 Physical Sciences document; the Physical Sciences Examination Guidelines Grade 12 documents and the final and supplementary P1 examinations in the period starting November 2014 to March 2018 as the documents for analysis. A summative content analysis research technique was conducted using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) research method. The SEC method employed the use of the four topics of Grade 12 Physics and the four non-hierarchical levels of cognitive demand as described in the modified version of Bloom’s taxonomy. The physics topics included mechanics; waves, sound and light; electricity and magnetism; and optical phenomena. The cognitive demand levels included recall; comprehension; application and analysis; and synthesis and evaluation. This study found a 100 percent categorical coherence, a 67.3 percent balance of representation, a 79.4 percent cognitive complexity and an average Porter’s alignment index of 0.77 between the CAPS and the P1. The overall Cohen’s kappa for all the documents analysed was 0.88. The findings of this study indicate that the mechanics topic was under-emphasised whilst the application and analysis cognitive demand was over-emphasised in the P1. The CAPS and the P1 did not utilise the highest cognitive demand, synthesis and evaluation which may be interpreted as an environment that fosters lower order thinking. To change this environment of lower order thinking and simultaneously increase the alignment between the CAPS and the P1 this study recommends that firstly, the CAPS decreases the recall based content of the mechanics topic. Secondly, the CAPS and the P1 increase the synthesis and evaluation cognitive demand-based content at the expense of the recall cognitive demand-based content. Thirdly, the CAPS must include the content of the school-based physics practical assessments while decreasing the focus on physics definitions. The ultimate aim is an improvement in the pass rates of the NSC Grade 12 Physical Sciences examinations.