CHAPTER 5: THE RESEARCH SETTING
5.4 Biographical Data 164
5.4.2 Participants’ Work and Education History 171
Historically, the majority of people who have worked in engineering-related units have always been male trainers, facilitators and artisans, but not teachers. Their job was concerned with training youth and adults for the job market and producing apprentices who need to eventually undergo trade tests and become artisans. The focus was the NATED courses that provided many options over a short period of time; N1 – N3 took only one year.
The introduction of the new curriculum, the NCV, turned things around, brought a new kind of pedagogy, demanded that theory and practical skills, classroom and workshop
dimensions be inseparable in practice and placed emphasis on exposure to industry experience for all. Even though they possessed trade qualifications, because of NCV lecturers indicated that they started yearning for teaching qualifications, so as to fit in with the new dispensation. The biographical profiles supplied above show that lecturers added a teaching qualification over and above the trade qualifications they acquired before the introduction of the NCV.
In addition to the National Diploma, some of the participants, especially those in Engineering Sciences, have undergone trade tests and are qualified artisans. A lecturer in possession of a National Diploma and a trade test is the only one allowed to help students with practical work in a workshop. Only six of the participants fit into this category. It is not good for the sector if very few lecturers qualify as artisans. Godongwana (2011) revealed that in 1975 the country was producing 33 000 artisans compared to 3 000 documented in the year 2000. He added that this is a major concern for the country and the skills formation needs to change urgently. One of the participants emphasized the importance of artisans and their contribution to the workshop practical work component:
Thulani: When the NCV was brought in, it demanded that staff be highly qualified. This new curriculum is a combination of theory and practice. Practical work is allocated more than 60% but not all staff is qualified as artisans to enter a workshop and take students on practical skills, particularly the young lecturers employed when curricular changes happened…
This is a serious problem in many ways. Firstly, students are short-changed. Secondly, more theory than stipulated is taught. This is very much against what policy demands and was cited by participants as one of the reasons for the high failure rates. Participants pointed out that if the country is to make a difference in the fight against the skills shortage, some of the focus needs to be directed towards lecturer development.
Susan, from another campus, echoes this comment when she said that she is saddened by the fact that the new curriculum structure does not allow them to produce new artisans:
In the old NATED system, two years and six months I’ve got a mechanic and the trade. But now it takes five years or more to get an artisan. We’ve got a shortage of mechanics in South Africa and the NCV packaging is not helping to produce more. The NCV takes 3 years and at least two more to learn the trade but practically it takes more because they fail and repeat classes. Even then the students will be inexperienced new artisans and in junior positions where they will need to gain experience before being fully productive. There are teething problems in this whole set up. As it stands it is not working! I become very sad when I think about this.
The Engineering News (2010) added to this concern when it reported that South Africa has a severe shortage of artisans and one of the main concerns is that, at present, the average age of a tradesperson in South Africa is over 50 years.
Six of the participants have university degrees. These include a Bachelor of Education (Honours), three Bachelor of Technology degrees, Bachelor of Arts (Librarianship) and a Bachelor of Agricultural Management. Due to the introduction of the classroom-oriented NCV, which came with a demand for new andragogical and pedagogical methodologies, some of the participants felt inadequate and have made means to do a part-time National Professional Diploma in Education (NPDE), with the aim of becoming qualified teachers.
Although this teaching diploma is an adapted version of the school teacher training programme, some of them have done and completed the vocationally-oriented NPDE to fill the void and the inadequacy they feel as teachers in their professional work lives.
For some who are not happy to teach in the TVET college sector permanently, this teaching diploma is seen as a stepping stone to work in ordinary schools:
Zime: You know what; I am looking forward to finishing this diploma. The day I finish I will look for work in an ordinary school or may be a technical secondary school. Maybe things are better there. This place has too many frustrations.
Biographical data reveals that none of them began their careers as teachers, but started somewhere else and changed career paths later. One female lecturer lamented that her family refused her a chance to follow her passion of being a mechanical engineer.
Besides being male dominated, this was a field that her parents did not associate with high status and upward mobility.
Susan: I said to my mom I want to become a mechanic. She was so shocked and said no ways, you going to study. A mechanics job won’t take you anywhere in life. I can’t describe the frustration I went through trying to think what other jobs I could study for. I ended up studying librarianship which I did not like at all.
Regardless of the discouragement from her family, she pursued her passion later in life.
She says it was not easy but she loves being a teacher:
Susan: I didn’t start as a teacher but as an artisan. When I came to the classroom environment, it was totally different than the trade environment. But, ja I adjust very quickly because its two passions of me to teach and to trade. So, I’m one of the unique people that do what they want to do. I got two passions and ja I will stay in the teaching profession because I see people grow and that’s very nice for me. I’m giving back what I learnt from the trade to our future, the students.
There are other participants who have come to accept being teachers because of benefits, especially those who have passed their professional teachers’ diploma and are on the government payroll. Even though they had joined the profession out of desperation, due to socio-economic factors like poverty and limited employment opportunities, they have now decided to stay:
Shenge: I wanted to be an electrical engineer, which is what I studied for up to N6. So now what I think is that if I moved it would be to a private company to do what I initially wanted. But since I got my teaching diploma my salary improved. I have all the good benefits. Now I’m finding it difficult to run. That’s why I’m still here.
Others expressed a desire to stay in the TVET sector and be lecturers if it could be turned into an attractive, noble profession that it once was, with improved monetary benefits and better conditions of service.
Sipho: College council appointments are associated with ‘worse pay’ and poorer conditions of service. We are in a sector in which conditions of service are worse and full time jobs are shrinking. This needs to change if they want us to stay.
Some of the lecturers, for example Thulani, who teaches Mathematics, enjoy teaching on the campus where he works:
Ja, when I am in class it is nice to work with students. There are new challenges all the time especially when you teach Maths like I do. This is one of the subjects that give students a problem. But I enjoy teaching it. I like helping students.
The situation with non-engineering participants is not different. Although they are not artisans, they have for years worked in very informal, non-classroom focused technical environments. Some of them have been teaching subjects like Mathematics, while others have provided training in Primary Agriculture, with the aim of producing subsistence farmers. One of the lecturers explains that she started to feel she was becoming a teacher when she was asked to teach English:
Zime: Before the NCV was introduced we were specialists, teaching core subjects in the NATED programs. Now we have been turned into language teachers. You find yourself teaching English. I am a Science and Mathematics person. We people are very non-linguistic. But you find yourself being instructed to teach a language. It is teachers in schools who teach languages. You can’t refuse because you may lose your job.
Evidently, there are lecturers, who do not want to be, and are not happy to be, teachers but will keep on working because it is the only available opportunity to earn a salary.
The qualification picture painted here may not be representative of all staff in the two TVET colleges, as it was not used as one of the criteria for selecting participants. The sentiments expressed by the lecturer above is indicative of the temporary nature of college employment, due to dissatisfaction, the human capital possessed and its potential transferability, lack of identity as a college teacher and how some of the lecturers in the
TVET college sector use the institutions as a ‘waiting station’ or jump-off point for better opportunities that might come their way.
Although there are draw-backs like these, the presence of enabling factors is noted. One of the lecturers talks about collaborative efforts amongst staff in which the knowledgeable ones give advice or lend a hand. Susan acknowledges this:
Ehm, luckily I had a very good mentor that helped me, saying no, no, no don’t do this do this, alright, that’s how you handle, and from that experience I’m helping some of the lecturers here also to say no, no, do this and don’t do this. But the National Professional Diploma in Education (NPDE) gave me a more philosophic point of view and I am able to help others better.
Although the sharing of information and knowledge occurs informally during tea breaks and staff meetings, the presence of collaborative efforts on some of the campuses contributes towards professional development and may be central to the enhancement of work environments.