3. How does the existing resource demand influence the remote rural ECD school management?
5.3 The effectiveness of remote rural ECD schools’ responses in addressing ECD teaching and learning
5.3.1 Effects of low supply of resources to ECD teaching and learning
coaching, monitoring and evaluating their teaching, mobilising resources for improved
refers to the lessons and academic content taught in the ECD programme. This age range of 4-6 year olds have certain knowledge and skills they are expected to learn, which include learning standards and objectives they are expected to meet, like what one of the school heads said:
Children are supposed to be developed socially, morally, mentally, emotionally, physically and healthily (Vukosi School Head).
The pedagogies entail the teaching methods, that are framed within the objectives of the ECD programme and the ways in which such objectives are met. This is the core process of practice of teaching that can make the curriculum relevant or not. For instance, the play-way teaching methods are recommended to be better suited to teaching the ECD children than most academic or theoretical approaches. This is what this deputy head explained:
In ECD the learner is the player. In most cases these teaching and learning resources are used by the children. The children manipulate, touch and play as they learn. They need things like plastic and metal cans which they fill with water while learning. They are failing to effectively learn due to resource insufficiency (Goko School Deputy Head).
Hence these pedagogies main concern is „how‟ the teaching and learning occur. ECD children are regarded as unique individuals, who must be given that autonomy to construct their own understanding through the teacher‟s guidance. They learn as they play, under the teacher‟s auspices. This is what one of the participants had to say:
These children learn through play, the teacher is only a director who just follows to see if the children are working in these areas. However, due to lack of skills and knowledge in teachers, these children are not given the relevant pedagogies (Muzorori School Head).
Their knowledge of curriculum and pedagogies in ECD is supported by Udommana (2012) who claims that provision of quality education is a result of knowledge of teaching and
learning practices by teachers. Similar thoughts are put forth by ARNEC (2011), Alexander (2008), Chikutuma and Mapolisa (2013) and MoWCA Bangladesh (2010) describing the ECD curriculum as activity-based, child-centred, age-appropriate, culturally based and flexible to fully develop the child. In substantiating this idea I refer to UNICEF (2009) and Chikutuma and Mawere (2012) highlighting to support play-way methods and art related methods that help the child to develop intellectually, emotionally, socially, healthily, physically and culturally. Although, there are specified delineations, what is to be done in the provision of the relevant curriculum and pedagogies, emerging voices from the participants were talking about failure by schools to provide the holistic curriculum through the use of the play-way methods. Children need to manipulate things in order to learn from these concrete items. This is not possible because there are shortages of classrooms. As a result, the teachers are hard-pressed by this shortfall to occupy the children through teaching in abstract or concept theorisation. This is explicitly acknowledged by one of the school heads who said:
In the first place where there is hot seating; (hot seating is whereby children learn under the trees….) it reduces time for teaching. As a result children lose lessons.
Sometimes the children do not have enough practice. Teachers end up theorising because of no resources (Dambara School Head).
In this case, many classes were supposed to get a chance of entering the classroom to learn, using the displayed learning materials in the classroom. The teachers were not allowed to take the learning materials outside since these materials were supposed to be used by the class which would be occupying the classroom at each moment. According to them the fact that they had children learning under the tree was not pleasing. Teachers could not display learning areas under the tree. These teachers were not allowed to do team teaching, because children were too many to occupy one classroom. Each class teacher had to squeeze in and teach all the indoor lessons in that short period of time allocated to his/her class. This constrained some teachers to theorise in order to complete the day‟s work. Hence, there were classroom shortages that in turn influenced the type of pedagogies to be adopted by teachers.
This issue of resources had bad impact on teachers not sticking to the holistic curriculum and using of relevant pedagogies. This participant had this to say:
Teacher-pupil ratios are too high and definitely affect teaching and learning. As I have already said, one teacher is teaching double the number she is supposed to
teach for that matter she is not trained to teach. What wonders can we expect from Nazareth? (Muzorori School Head).
The participants believed that ineffective teaching and learning was caused by the shortage of classrooms and large class size. This is supported by Pence (2008) positing that good quality ECD education provision has the basis in the infrastructural development of the school.
Montie et al. (2006) maintain that if children are over-crowded, there is high risk of disease, infections, and children are prone to greater risk of injury and teachers are obliged to abuse the children due to stress of having many children to teach. Extending this idea of large class size, Kyoung (2012), Smith (2010) and O‟Sullivan (2006) acknowledge over-population being related to poor teaching and learning in the schools, since children would be having shortages of learning equipment that is critical in the development of children‟s basic skills.
The participants said that pupils should have access to play materials during learning periods.
They agreed that children should not scramble for materials during learning time. Though it was important for children to have materials for use during learning periods; they had double trouble with many children scrambling for play materials and over-crowding in the classrooms. Participants believed that children‟s learning was compromised one way or the other. The quality of the teachers was also a determinant factor for using the suitable pedagogies and adhering to the relevant curriculum. The participants were showing concern with the quality of teachers who taught ECD classes, especially para-professionals who were not even trained to teach. They had seconded primary trained teachers who were not trained to teach ECD at all. Most schools had less than half of the ECD teachers who were not trained to teach ECD. They were operating with teachers who were ignorant of what they should teach. These teachers had problems in interpreting the syllabus; the syllabus determines what should be taught and how to teach. This teaching was described as
„confusing‟ to the learners by one of the school head who said:
One out of five teachers is trained to teach ECD, so the interpretation of the syllabus is not properly done. Children are taught what they are not supposed to be taught. This teaching is rather confusing to these little children (Goko School Head).
The issue of unqualified teachers teaching the ECD children is also lamented by Rao (2010), UNICEF (2012), Chikutuma and Mawere (2012) and UNESCO (2012) claiming that para- professionals are not developed or equipped with appropriate practices of developing the curriculum and pedagogies suitable for the ECD children, they still use didactic and academic rather than the recommended holistic learning through play methods of teaching. Though some of the participants laid blame on these para-professionals and the seconded trained teachers for not teaching the relevant curriculum using suitable pedagogies, some removed the blame from these teachers. These teachers were just blamed for being mandated to take a duty, the seconded trained teachers and the para-professional and even the TICs were not to blame for all the misleading teaching instilled in the ECD children. They were not trained to teach ECD. This was echoed by one of the deputy heads who said:
Teachers are not trained to teach ECD so at times we should not blame them for failure to teach effectively. How can we expect the untrained teacher to teach the right thing? (Goko School Deputy Head).
The issue of the teachers not teaching the expected content through the suitable pedagogies was not the solution to the ECD children. Teaching is a professional duty that needs training.
There were no ways the para-professionals and the seconded trained teachers could do it without training. The participants echoed much concern on the need to have ECD trained teachers in their schools rather than pointing fingers at innocent individuals who were just hired to help the children. This school head had this to say:
We have challenges with qualified specialist teachers who can help to develop the children as required (Vukosi School Head).
The idea of how teachers work is determined by their training. This becomes the source of the difference, if the school had no ECD trained teacher, the development of children tells the story. However, generally all the schools had the problem of qualified ECD teachers to teach the children. Most participants agreed that as school administrators, they were not competent to supervise ECD classes. They received no formal training or staff development on professional expectations that are favourable to the ECD children. This point was echoed by one of the school heads saying:
Teachers are failing to perform well because of the school leadership team; we were not trained to supervise ECD. …..The paraprofessionals need our help as supervisors, but we cannot help because we do not have the skills. We need some form of training in order to stand a chance of making teaching effective (Goko School Head).
`In summarising this section, I have to state that the comments from participants suggested many commonalities among all the site schools and among the participants. Teaching and learning was not effective in the schools, because of lack of skills and knowledge in both the teachers and the school leadership team, insufficient teaching and learning time due to inadequate classrooms, among other things. This meant to say no justice was served on the curriculum and the pedagogies, due to the low supply of the resources.