Between curricula reforms and pedagogical practices: Ursula Hoadley and the “pedagogy in poverty”

Abstract

In this interview, Ursula Hoadley, a professor and researcher at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, discusses some of the ideas present in her book Pedagogy in Poverty: lessons from twenty years of curriculum reform in South Africa. The author highlights the explanatory power of Basil Bernstein’s theoretical framework, her main reference both in this and other investigations in the South-African context. The interviewee comments on her main findings in this research, which allowed her to describe and analyze teaching practices developed in the primary years of Elementary School – comprising a twenty-year period with intense curriculum reforms, in the context before and after the apartheid. While bearing the specificities of her country in mind, her considerations locate the aforementioned reforms in the wider context of developing countries – thereby becoming especially relevant to the debates about school curriculum in Brazil.