2.3 Teacher learning theories
2.3.2 Teacher learning approaches in South Africa
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teaching approaches that can improve the students’ understanding. Although Thompson and Thompson (1996) agree with this notion, they strongly feel that the level of support the teachers need to be researchers is beyond what most professional development programmes and teacher education can offer. On the other hand, Guskey and Yoon (2009) argue that effective professional development programmes which incorporate ideas from outsiders (e.g.
programme authors and researchers) and directly offer these ideas to the teachers, enhance the enactment of new knowledge. These professional development activities articulate and also draw from the socio-cultural theory of teacher learning, with individual and collaborative participation being paramount and enhanced by a range of factors (Avalos, 2011; Guskey &
Yoon, 2009).
Having reviewed the overlapping meaning of the concepts of professional development, teacher learning and professional development activities in section 2.2 and an overview discussion on teacher learning theories in this section, it is imperative to briefly discuss the implications of these theories on the teacher learning process in South Africa, which is the context of this study. Next, I present the implication of these debates on the South African teacher learning approaches.
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& Reed, 2002; Fleisch, 2008). According to Bantwini (2010), these ‘cascading’ training models for teachers offer short-term courses with little or poor follow-up structures to teachers who have to deal with long-term classroom practices in the complex South African schooling system. Internationally, PD short courses mostly offered by training agencies for schools are perceived as the least valuable means of enhancing classroom practice (Guskey & Yoon, 2009;
V. D. Opfer, D. Pedder, & Z. Lavicza, 2011).
There are similar echoes from other researchers and even the media. For instance, the launch of the Jika iMfundo initiative (which translates to ‘decode education’) in Durban by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education on September 2, 2014, was reported by Sihle Mlam in the Daily News as “the latest in a long list of previous [teachers] intervention programmes, but is being hailed by stakeholders, including teacher unions, as they fix the ailing school system”. Such forms of professional programme initiatives (workshops or seminars) are prevalent in South Africa and are mostly initiated by the provincial Departments of Education in accordance to the National Department of Basic Education (DBE) policies. According to this media report, the Jika iMfundo professional development intervention aims to assist all schools in the province from the grassroots, rather than having the change mediation being led from ‘outside’. This can be achieved by supporting school management teams which can then lead learning and support teachers in covering the curriculum to improve learners’
performance.
Coincidentally, cascading models and workshop interventions of PD are being used at a period when developers of teacher programmes in higher institutions of training have shifted to more transformative and effective PD models.
For the last two decades, recommendations for on-going learning, collaborative learning and site-based teacher programmes as the most valuable forms of teacher learning even in South Africa, have been irresistible (Brodie, 2013). Such models are mainly work-embedded and stress the importance of follow-up and the active participation of teacher learning (Kelly, 2006). They are placed formally or informally in school contexts. Such programmes draw from the pragmatic approach which advocates both cognitive and socio-cultural theories of teacher learning, depending on what works best for a particular context (Gravani & John, 2004).
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One of the earliest PDs in the form of community learning was an ethnographic case study by Henning (2000), where seven South African unqualified teachers struggled to build a teachers’
community learning programme in the early 1990s, until one of the former all-white universities came on board and helped them to form the programme. “The willingness and commitment of partnership on both sides, allowed for the successful development of a programme that combined contact education, distance education, school-based training and the systematic assessment of prior learning” (Avalos, 2011).
Since then, various professional teacher learning communities, where teams of practicing teachers get together regularly to exchange ideas and experiences about teaching and learning, have sprung up to promote professional development in each province in South Africa. Most of these interventions engage teachers, school administrators and the districts’ education officials (Bantwini, 2011). The ultimate goal is to raise learners’ performance by adopting new knowledge and teaching practices through collaboration. During the meetings, they discuss issues like lesson plans, learners’ progress, curriculum challenges, and identify their own professional learning needs.
Although in South Africa, the most economically developed country in Africa and where teacher learning policies and on-going PD activities have been the most developed, little of the intended outcomes have been achieved (Taylor et al., 2013). The continued poor performance by learners and the inadequate teacher knowledge among the majority of the teachers have forced the government to search further for effective policies to streamline teachers’ education in the country (Department of Higher Education and Training, 2011b). The reason is that teacher education is perceived as a spring board to improve the teachers’ competencies to enable effective teaching and learning in schools.
The ACT programme encourages participants to form peer discussion groups among themselves or with their colleagues in their teaching contexts. Such activities promote collaborative learning among the FP teachers. Verbeek (2013), suggests that such opportunities enhance academic skills, as it provides forums for positive criticisms about their assignments or tasks before submitting them. Although community learning is beyond the scope of this study, the ACT programme’s intended curriculum seems not to have an explicit consideration of the factors which influence collaborative teacher learning. It is also believed that too much
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teacher collaboration slows down individual creativity, while too little collaboration can hinder growth and create isolation (Opfer & Pedder, 2011).
In line with these national policies, the ACT programme, although informed by the cognitive theory of learning, adopts progressive classroom-focused learning activities for the teachers (Reed, Davis, & Nyabanyaba, 2002). For instance, the intended curriculum of the ACT programme emphasises active participation during the contact session and most of the assessment tasks and assignments are classroom-based or context-based (Verbeek, 2013)to embrace the socio-cultural theory to teacher learning (Verbeek, 2013). This seems to reinforce the importance of the professional development activity, individual effort and the school context, as mediating factors towards teacher learning.
Earlier, empirical evidence indicates that teacher learning from formal activity may not necessarily take place (Adler & Reed, 2002), but is greatly determined by the duration of the programme and the specific participants involved as well as the interaction of contextual factors (Brodie et al., 2002),. Overall, teacher learning is not an automatic consequence of formal, informal and external programmes or of workplace or even collaborative activities.
Therefore, an effective professional development programme in the South African context should integrate the cognitive and socio-cultural theories of learning in line with to the complexities of teacher learning processes (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Opfer & Pedder, 2011).
To show that teacher learning is a gradual, complex process which leads to the transformation of teachers’ practices and beliefs, the next section conceptualises the domains of teacher knowledge anticipated from the professional development programmes.