Outcomes-based education in South African curricular reform: A response to Jonathan Jansen

An ‘outcomes‐based education’ (OBE) underlies South Africa's proposed new Curriculum 2005, one of the current government's initiatives to address the legacy of apartheid education. This response to Jonathan Jansen's critical analysis of OBE (Cambridge Journal of Education, 1998, 28, pp. 321‐331) contextualises the shift to an outcomes‐based education within an epistemological framework, drawing on Ryle's distinction between propositional and procedural knowledge. Curriculum 2005 as currently conceived lays a disproportionally heavy emphasis on procedural knowledge. The paper proposes that a less radical version of OBE, in which teachers integrate thoughtfully propositional, procedural and dispositional knowledge, will better address apartheid education's legacy. Copyright © 1999 University of Cambridge School of Education.