In this module we have argued for a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. But in doing so, we have warned against an approach which suggests that learners are capable of learning all they need to know completely naturally, and that schools or teachers are unnecessary. What role do teachers play in producing and improving learning, and how can they structure learning?
In this module we have explored how people learn and then drawn some lessons from this understanding about how we can teach to maximize learning. We have deliberately not taken you through a series of famous educational theorists. Instead we have tried to use their ideas in action. In this section we will look more closely at how both famous theorists and teachers make sense of their ideas about learning. In other words, we will be examining how they theorize their practices. How can teachers use different theories of learning to understand and promote learning?
This module aims at empowering school managers and teachers to develop and implement appropriate mentoring programmes. This module covers:
The learning guide of this module addresses three key questions as follows:
The following are the learning outcomes of the module:
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning?; Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning?; Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning?; Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning?; Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning? Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning?; Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
The audiotape includes interviews and discussions that cover three key questions: What is learning? Is there a difference between everyday learning and school learning? How do we teach to enable learning?. For the most part of the 84 minutes of recording we listen to the views of experts who provide interesting and valuable insights and debates. These require careful listening, though, and probably re-listening! They are certainly worth the effort.
This is the second recommended reading for Saide's Education Studies module "Being a Teacher"
This is the third reading for Saide's Education Studies module "Being a Teacher". The history of teaching in South Africa has been one in which the most significant single factor has been the enormous differences in the experiences of teachers – dependent primarily on whether they were identified as ‘black’, ‘coloured’, ‘Asiatic’, or ‘white’; male or female; rural-, township-, or suburban-based, and so on.In this article, Heather Jacklin analyses how such factors have affected – and still affect – the identities and experiences of teachers in South Africa.
This is the fourth reading for Saide's Education Studies module "Being a Teacher".
Fataar and Patterson’s study looks at how teachers in such schools experience teaching, how they see themselves, and how this influences their practice.
The following two excerpts present the views of the leaders of two major
teachers’ organizations as they expressed them in 1994. They are extracts
from brief articles commissioned for a publication that attempted to
describe and discuss the education scene in the first year of South Africa’s
new democracy.
This reading from "Being a Teacher" focuses on protecting teachers' own interests, but that it should not be at the expense of their obligations to their pupils.
In this brief excerpt, Fullan and Hargreaves identify what they think
characterizes professionalism in teaching. They argue that it is not so
much the possession of a certain level of qualifications or status, nor the
possession of a set of technical teaching skills. Rather, it is the full
acceptance of the moral responsibility that is attached to the role of
teachers today, and the ability to make minute-by-minute professional
judgements in complex and uncertain situations.
One of the most important means of ensuring professional accountability
among teachers in South Africa (and of ensuring that such accountability
is administered by teachers themselves) is the Code of Conduct of the
South African Council of Educators (SACE). Introduced in 1997, the Code
establishes the basic standards by which teachers’ professional conduct
may be judged. Note that the Code provides teachers with many positive
guidelines on professional conduct as well as purely prohibitive rules.
This excerpt comes from an Education Labour Relations Council resolution
published in 1998. It is essentially a job description for South African
teachers.
The ELRC’s Teacher Appraisal policy is another important means by which
teachers’ professional accountability can be assured in South Africa. Note
the important emphasis on teachers’ professional development rather
than on simply judging teachers’ performance.
Reading 10 is a brief extract from a report in which researchers Christie
and Potterton describe the key factors that they found in those South
African schools that demonstrated resilience in the face of difficulties. This
excerpt focuses on only one of these factors: a shared sense of
responsibility on the part of the teachers on the staff – a moral
responsibility that goes beyond accountability and prevents teachers
from seeing themselves as victims, or as helpless (both of these selfimages
are hostile to the idea of teachers as professionals).
