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These two extracts touch on the quality of curriculum delivery and quality assessment by ensuring that all levels of questioning are considered. DD2 elaborated further by stating that quality teaching and learning means that if assessments are standardised, learners perform above the targets that are set by the district. This is what she said;
If we talk quality of teaching and learning, learners must be achieving the outcomes at every single phase, and they must be assessed through quality assessments, moderated exam papers and if the learners can achieve beyond the targets that are set. If the learners at performance level can achieve above the targets, it means there is a quality of teaching and learning taking place.
However, the only time that we can prove that it is quality in the true sense; it is when they are assessed against externally moderated assessments. That is why, when we talk common exams, we truly want to measure quality, because the common exams are not set by individual educators, they are not even moderated.
Those are set by the team of identified educators at the provincial level, or they are set by the facilitators at the provincial level. If it is a district paper, by all means, it is set by the facilitator here in the office; teachers are not involved.
Participant DD1 concurred and further shared how important it was to have competent human resources throughout the district, from teachers in the classrooms to DOs;
Promoting quality teaching and learning in all our schools means that; I must know exactly what is supposed to happen in the classroom, né, but for a learner to be able to progress. This means that when you employ a CES Curricula, you must employ a competent person. You must have David, who is competent; you must have HoDs that are competent and competent educators, and they will be able to impart, you know. DD1
DCES1 viewed quality teaching and learning differently by asserting that it is about ensuring that there are equal opportunities for all learners irrespective of their socioeconomic status and race. This is what he had to say: That each and every learner must have the same opportunity to reach his or her full potential; that is quality teaching and learning. It is not that education must be a class or race issue. DCES1. Another participant viewed quality teaching and learning as making sure that teachers are in the classroom everyday teaching
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Ensuring that there are teachers in the classroom teaching every day. That is quality. Ensuring that teachers are not only inside the yard, but they are in the classroom teaching. Because some of the teachers, you find they are behind their work. However, when we interrogate the time book, they are present every day, but they are behind, so it means that they are not doing what is expected, they are doing other things at that time. However, schools must be functional, committed learners committed to learning, children, teachers, parents, everyone must be committed. At the end of the day, this will give us the quality of teaching and learning and with our vision.
CLI2 took a different stance and viewed quality teaching and learning as ensuring that learners are directly involved in their learning, and learners use technology in the classrooms. She said;
Quality teaching for me is not taking learners for granted. That will also make teaching to reach the peak we want, because what I have noted, we are taking children for granted, and the type of generation we have, you do not take them for granted, tell them what you want. Be open and specific, like give them the rubric, let them know, do not dilly-dally with them. They know what they want, and they will give you. So, the problem that we have, we still want to treat them as if abantwana [children] of the stone age. And that is impacting on your quality. Let us tell them, let us involve them, let us make use also, of the technology that they, you know, they like. The world, life has evolved so much, let us also evolve in education, because it is like, we are still stuck.
CM1 also highlighted that quality teaching in his district begins in primary schools because they try to avoid blame-shifting between primary and high schools. This is how he expressed this view
When we talk of quality teaching and learning in this district, it does not start in Grade 12; it starts right from primary school. So, we do not want a situation where people are passing the buck. When we do the accounting session, we realised that there is a lot of passing the buck that is happening. The high schools will blame the primary school teachers, to say, they are giving us learners that are not knowing anything and then the primary schools will say, the high school teachers,
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we are giving them the good learners and then they are not teaching them well.
CM1
DOs conceptualised quality teaching and learning by focusing on aspects of teachers, learners, content, and other aspects, such as ICT's role. This is in line with what Elmore conceptualised as an instructional core, as discussed in Chapter 4 (Elmore, 2004; Childress et al., 2007). DOs viewed their role as to ensure that learners are provided with challenging work, that the content is of quality and that teachers are capacitated so that they can deliver the content (Childress et al., 2007; Childress et al., 2006). Honig and Rainey (2015) contend that the extent to which this definition helps DOs depends partly on how DOs use it. What emerged is that; DOs shared a multiplicity of views regarding how they conceptualised quality teaching and learning. While there are these multiplicities, a clear definition of what quality teachers mean for DOs to improve learning outcomes for learners appears to be a prerequisite for supporting teaching and learning.