**1. Introduction**

The changes and advancement in the socio-economic and cultural systems globally, indicate the need for rethinking knowledge construction in schools as well as teacher education and training. The transformation of the mindset of knowledge recipients to knowledge constructors in teachers should be the main focus in the teachers' education and training. This work contests the view of the perennial and essential philosophy to reproduce knowledge of discoveries, inventions and construction which does not inspire and challenge those who receive it. The assertion of [1] about education raises questions about education as a concept and the phenomenon thereof. If education was indeed about knowledge creation and not reproduction of knowledge, what has been learnt could not been forgotten. The Phenomenologist Psychologist describes learning as the process of creating lived experiences, from the environment and one's surroundings. The knowledge therefore becomes part and parcel of one's being, and the lived experiences are the basis for any further knowledge creation. If learning is about mental, emotional, and physical development, firstly, the person acquiring knowledge will have the understanding of; what knowledge, why knowledge and how knowledge? The explorations, inquiry and search for suitable and relevant information is driven by the inquest to solve problems experienced from the real-life environment, not about idealised situations. It is this sense that this work conceptualises B.F Skinner's assertion about education. The other issue that is linked to Skinner's assertion about education is viewed in this work to be the compartmentalised knowledge into the abstract realities, which are delinked from the real-life experience. According to [2], knowledge that is brought into the classroom as reported reality, is more relative than the actual lived experience, which is authentic practical experience and the reality of the process and results of problem solving, exploration and inquiry. The post-school education and training cannot be the continuation of the approach to knowledge acquisition at a school level. Research has highlighted that the conformist approaches to knowledge acquisition in South Africa and globally had deprived teachers the opportunity for lifelong learning, reflective thinking, and subsequently teachers have become technicians [3–5]. This work supports the trajectory of scholarship, which promotes the descriptions of educational practices as a process of engagement with the reality and surrounding environment for the purpose of creating knowledge and developing essential cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills. According to the educational psychology, the mental growth and development is the results of the process of becoming, meaning that adaptation in the environment demands problem solving, exploration and inquiry. These are therefore cognitive skills, or the functions performed by the mind for the purpose of enabling the individuals to master the demands and challenges posed by the environment. The mind alone cannot complete the function of adaptation and mastery of the environment and surroundings, but the affective skills also play a role, for example, the decision-making processes are based on; a willingness to participate, the choice to respond or to receive, and interest. The aspect of psychomotor skills is the physical actions or movement driven by the affective and cognitive abilities to address the desire to adapt to the environment and to master the realities in the surroundings.

The argument on the necessity and importance of the learners' perspective in knowledge construction in teacher education and training is informed by the data collected from lesson observations. The desire that manifested from teacherlearners' interaction regarding factual knowledge, confirmed the ideas advocated by constructivist, humanist, cognitive and phenomenologist approaches, which identify the nature of the learners to rely on their interest, familiarity with context and experiences to conceptualise knowledge [6]. The findings presented in this work are the extension of this narrative, that promotes the contestations and debates in the classroom to allow learners to express their opinions, interests and experiences of what is presented to them. In addition, the findings from the data influenced this work to firstly assert that factual knowledge presented to learners in the field of Natural Science and Social Science in grade nine is irrelevant to the learners' interests, familiar contexts and real-life experiences. Secondly, learners have no confidence in the textbook knowledge and in the teachers' abilities to transverse knowledge and

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*Connecting Pedagogical Interactions in the Twenty-First Century Classrooms: The Role…*

teachers and the textbooks in the observed lessons for this chapter.

being a subject to being called a 'Learning Area'.

general outlooks to real-life world experiences, to assist learners to develop an indepth understanding of scientific phenomena. The lack of opportunities for debates and reflective argumentation in Natural Science and Social Science classrooms, is perceived in this work to be incongruent with the assertion that "education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten" [1]. The assimilation of raw facts deprives learners in the Natural Science and Social Sciences classes the opportunities to explore, discover, and investigate facts through deductive reasoning and logical thinking, hence learners were not complaisant with the explanations from the

The educational and curriculum transformation in South Africa reflects ideas and perceptions that had been advocated by international research. With regards to knowledge production, the Department of Education established the National Qualification Framework, to articulate phases in the educational system, and curriculum design and organisation. The restructuring of knowledge in the national school curriculum encapsulated ideas of the so-called mode two knowledge; the clustering of compartmentalised knowledge in a broader field of study [7, 8]. The first curriculum introduced by the new education ministry for the democratic South Africa was called, Curriculum for the 21st century, and this curriculum introduced a concept of 'Learning Areas', to replace subjects in the national curriculum for schools, for example, Life Sciences in a school curriculum encapsulated knowledge regarding aspects of life and sciences and it was for this reason that it changed from

The curriculum transformation in South Africa from 1997 to 2010 has been criticised in the works of academics and researchers [9, 10] for being vague and too broad, in the sense that the adopted design for Curriculum 2005 or Curriculum for the 21st century did not take the capacity of the current cohort of teacher into account. The criticisms were justified by the revelations and findings in the report of the ministerial task team appointed by the Department of Education to investigate the challenges and difficulties which findings are highlighted in the works of [11, 12]. According to [13] the main focus of the investigation covered; the field testing, teacher orientation and follow up training, professional support services provided within provincial systems, classroom practices, the quality, quantity, use of learning support materials in support of the Curriculum for 21st century, and the level of understanding of outcomes- based education. The findings highlighted by the task team from its review provided this work with the understanding of the background and the process that resulted in the current educational and pedagogical practices of teachers in schools. This background provides a clue about the views and the purpose of the designers of the curriculum for the 21st century concerning the transformation of a paradigm of knowledge production and pedagogy suitable for equipping citizens with skills, abilities, and knowledge of global standards. According to the task team's report the decline in the levels of abilities and skills to read, write and to understand and perform numerical calculation in mathematics was of great concern, the levels of incapacity of teachers to comprehend the philosophical and theoretical principles and ideas underpinning the curriculum changes resulted in chaos in the learning environment. Teachers were struggling to understand and to implement curriculum guidelines due to the inability to conceptualise the new terminologies and concepts that were introduced in the Curriculum for 21st century. According to the curriculum guidelines teachers were expected to create a knowledge structure by integrating conceptual knowledge to

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96401*

**2. Background**

*Connecting Pedagogical Interactions in the Twenty-First Century Classrooms: The Role… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96401*

general outlooks to real-life world experiences, to assist learners to develop an indepth understanding of scientific phenomena. The lack of opportunities for debates and reflective argumentation in Natural Science and Social Science classrooms, is perceived in this work to be incongruent with the assertion that "education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten" [1]. The assimilation of raw facts deprives learners in the Natural Science and Social Sciences classes the opportunities to explore, discover, and investigate facts through deductive reasoning and logical thinking, hence learners were not complaisant with the explanations from the teachers and the textbooks in the observed lessons for this chapter.
