Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

covered in Module One we studied how...we learnt how the economic cycle worked. I
think the issue of scarcity was one I did not engage my pupils with in the past. But
now, I am able to relate almost anything to the problem of scare resources and
about making choices. In fact that for me it's like the crux of economics.
John went on to explain specific EMS content that could be linked to the outcomes he
had engaged his pupils with:
John:
MM:
John:
You see in EMS, firstly I work with my class with communication, which is LLC, and
then it leads on to living and I think nothing embodies the actual living and the dayto-day
experiences than EMS. If you take away EMS they could have social skills
and life skills but the actual money management they won't be able to handle once
they get out into the real world. So what I'm trying to do is to bring the real world
and real economics and management sciences into the classroom. Basically what I've
done is that I've used practical situations. I haven't gone onto my textbook. I
haven't used my textbook. I use all practical examples. I might have used the
textbook last year, but this year with grade seven, it was all practical. And I was
fortunate in that a lot of things fell my way.
When you say practical, what do you mean?
For example, I took them for an excursion to the strawberry field, so we did a preexcursion
budget. What do you think, firstly, planning of the excursion, the cost of
the excursion, you understand what I'm saying - the cost, the planning, the numbers,
the feasibility study and so forth. The children undertook all those things and then
when they came back, the task was, if you were a strawberry farmer, how would you
farm. During bleak periods when strawberry production is down, how else can you
make money, and the children gave me answers. They will build huts and get schools
to come and stay overnight and charge them X amount. Have a restaurant, a braai
area, pony rides, tractor rides, strawberry picking. So they came up with quite a few
ideas. And that was by observation and then coming in with their own ideas. So that
was a practical thing. So I brought in the school sports. They themselves worked out
the cost of, eh, that was needed to run the sports, the cost of the prizes, the cost
of the buntings, the cost of hiring the sound system, the amount of electricity that
was used. You see, the hiring of the chairs, marques and so on.
John talked about the way in which he had taught a section on budgeting. He had turned
the excursion into an economic problem by asking pupils to cost out the excursion by
preparing a budget. Pupils were then expected to apply their knowledge ofbudgeting to
planning for the school sports day. John introduced the issue'ofalternate uses of
resources, about product diversification and adaptation ofbusinesses to changing
environmental factors.
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