Praxis towards sustainable empowering learning environments in South Africa

Front matter

Vards

E M BEMER NG sustainable EMPOWERING learn

PRAXIS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE EMPOWERING LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Table of Contents

Overview: Praxis towards sustainable empowering learning environments in SOUL ALI Ca: E exer cbusestivses asus EET i

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Chapter 1

A framework for university and provincial education department’s collaborative research towards the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments

Sechaba MG Mahlomaholo North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus sechaba.mahlomaholo@nwu.ac.za

The framework for research as praxis described in this chapter attempts to analyse, understand and on the basis thereof discover and describe significant processes underpinning the creation of learning environments that empower stakeholders in education in a sustainable manner. These stakeholders include learners, teachers, School Management Teams (SMTs), professionals from the North-West Education Department (NWED), and academics from the North-West University (NWU). In order to achieve the above in a systematic manner, the framework focuses on the following seven educational priorities of the Dr Kenneth Kaunda Education District, hence the North-West Education Department and the National Department of Basic Education: « Foundations for Learning Project (FFL);

* Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Programme (QIDS UP);

= the Learner Attainment Implementation Plan (LAIP);

« effective implementation of the National Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band (NPAS);

* Quality Learning and Teaching Project; « Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS), and = Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD).

Besides the above national priorities, the study is couched within the following four Millennium Development Goals (MDGs_ (UNDP, 2005: 2-3) as priorities at the international level, namely to:

* Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

* Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education.

* Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women.

= Goal 4: Develop a global partnership for development.

This research project as praxis, hereafter referred to as SELEN, is firmly located within all the above MDGs as it intends to create sustainable empowering learning environments that will create a new person who will be a productive citizen of the country and the world, who is self-regulated and capable of independent thought, is creative, respects him-/herself and others, and is committed to improving his/her life and that of his/her fellow human being. Such a new person will be able to address issues of poverty, will seek empowering education with primary education as a mere starting-point, will be sensitive to issues of discrimination be they gender, race, cultural, language, creed or socio-economic issues. Such a new person will also be health conscious, protective and respectful of his/her environment and collaborate with all for sustainable growth and development.

2. THE PROBLEM

The South African nation has not successfully emerged from the ravages and legacies of a dehumanising and dysfunctional apartheid education (DoE — Ministerial Committee on NEEDU April 17, 2009). This is currently evidenced by the continued poor performance of learners, teachers, schools and the entire education system. The matric (National Senior Certificate or Grade 12) examination results which continue to decline as the barometer of this progress and development (or lack thereof) away from this abhorrent system of apartheid education also attest to this fact (Mail & Guardian online January 07, 2009: 1). The average national matric pass rate was 65.2% in 2007, 62.6% in 2008 and 60.7% in 2009 (Buanews December 30, 2008: 1; DoE- EFA, 2008: 10-14; Mail & Guardian January 07, 2009: 1). This ongoing sad state of affairs regarding South Africa’s education system and performance of our learners is further confirmed in international research involving our learners. For example, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) (Van den Berg, 2009: 1-21) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (Baer, Baldi, Ayotte, Green, McGrath, 2007) are the point in question where our learners are outperformed by learners from countries with even smaller economies than our own.

The North-West Education Department (NWED), where this study was conducted, also reflects similar levels of dysfunctionality because of its apartheid education history as part of the South African nation as a whole, and in the words of this province’s Learner Attainment Strategy (LAS) document (NWED-LAS February 02, 2009: 3):

The number of matriculants endorsements increased from 14.6% to 15.9%

and the number of schools performing below 60% went up by 14% from

132 to 146 [...] and an increase in the number of learners with access to institutions of higher learning to 19.4%.

Although the document describes these percentages from the optimistic perspective of increase, hence achievement — it is, however, noticed that these matric throughput rates with admission to higher education, as is the case nationally, are alarmingly too low and not acceptable as they are symptomatic of an ailing educational system.

Against this backdrop, however, this study acknowledges and credits the efforts of the new democratic and developmental state of South Africa (including the NWED) which are aimed at ameliorating, reversing and uprooting this seemingly recalcitrant educational dysfunctionality. To clarify this point, the following is noted in a related

study (Mahlomaholo 2010: 3): ... the whole arsenal of legislative and policy directives on education (for example the National Education Policy Act 27 of 1996; the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996; the General and Further Education and Training Quality Assurance Act 58 of 2001; South African Council of Educators Act 31 of 2000) and other aspects of the lives of the South Africans (for example the Skills Development Act of 1998, Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa and the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition), since the advent of the new South African government in 1994, has been deployed towards addressing this problem.

Based on the above, it would seem that the solution(s) to the educational problems alluded to (as conceptualised and legislated by the South African state) could be found in the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments in all contexts where education, hence learning is supposed to take place. It is further noticed that, while the legislative imperatives referred to above are assumed to lay the foundation for this construction, the educational policy directives issuing from them — through their various, specific, focused and targeted programmes/projects — practically prescribe and describe measures that need to be set up at the national and provincial education departments, the education district, the school and the classroom levels. These measures tend to address problems of educational dysfuctionality hence learning and its improvement which are inherent and embedded in many of the factors, practices and relationships among role-players that constitute learning environments. It became apparent from the analysis of the educational legislative imperatives, policy directives and attended projects/programme documents conducted in designing this study that the following were significant among all these (i.e. factors, practices and relationships among role-players):

"= the teachers/educator’s role; * the availability and effective use of resources;

* the extent to which learners’ community cultural wealth was validated and capitalised on, and

* the extent to which discourses operational in the learning environments themselves were invitational, encouraging, equitable, socially just, free, peaceful and inspiring hope.

Toconcretise this point and to systematise the present argument, the study focuses first

on the General Education and Training (GET) Band (especially Grades R-6) because

it is now common knowledge that the seeds of any success or failure in all learning are

usually planted at this level of education (DoE Foundations for Learning-FFL, 2008;

DoE-GET Assurance Act 58 of 2001; Hindle, 2008; NWED Quality Improvement,

Development, Support and Upliftment Programme - QIDS UP, 2008).

In its attempts to uproot the vestiges of the educational dysfunctionality referred to earlier, the national Department of Education (now called the Department of Basic Education) launched the Foundations for Learning (FFL) Campaign. In describing the intentions of this campaign, the DoE (Hindle 2008: 1-2) indicated that it was aimed at ensuring that:

Every classroom had the basic resources to enable teachers to teach effectively;

every teacher in the Foundation Phase and Intermediate Phase sets aside reading

time on additional reading for all learners; every teacher teaches numeracy for

at least 1 hour every day ...; every teacher does regular assessment to monitor

and track learner progress, keeps individual learner performance records, and

keeps feedback to learners and parents; every teacher takes initiative to ensure

positive change amongst his or her learners.

A closer consideration of the Foundations for Learning Campaign also reveals that its fundamental aim is to facilitate quality numeracy and literacy teaching and learning by creating sustainable empowering learning environments in the grades R to 4 classrooms, at least. This focus is based on the research findings which show that learners in South African schools have “shown over the number of years that“ they were not “able to read, write and count at expected levels, and are unable to execute tasks that demonstrate key skills associated with Literacy and Numeracy” (DoE-FFL 2008: 4). Briefly, this campaign wanted to give power of knowledge and skill in the subject/learning area/discipline and pedagogy to the teacher who had to work in the social constructivist mode of learner-centeredness as prescribed by official policy (see policy and legislative imperatives referred to above). Another emphasis was on the availability of teaching and learning resources and their proper usage in line with the principles of learner-centred pedagogy as well as creating, through positive discourses, conducive and holding environments for all learners to be free and actualise their potential. All the above were also to be linked to and as such capitalise on the learners’ community cultural wealth, that is knowledge from their socio-economic backgrounds for learning to be successful in literacy and languages as well as in numeracy and mathematics.

The DoE also launched a related project named Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Programme (QIDS UP). While having similar purposes as FFL, this project tends to focus more on redressing the inequality in the provisioning of educational resources which has bedevilled learning in predominantly black and rural schools. The NWED’s QIDS UP Grade 3 Baseline Study Report (2008: 2) quotes former Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor as saying that “South Africa has not yet dealt a death blow to all the legacies of apartheid education” and as such:

To address this legacy, the cabinet has approved the implementation of

QIDS UP to give all South African schools an equal chance to provide quality

education for all learners. The programme intends providing basic resources

such as equipment, supplies, infrastructure and personnel support to the

poorest schools in townships and rural areas. The benefits of the programme

include the following; physical resources, teaching and learning resources

and materials, human resources and strengthening school management and

school governing bodies ...

QIDS UP focuses on the availability and use of resources in the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments. However, these are also directed to the role of the teacher in the mainly black, rural, township and under-resourced schools and to the discourses thus operational in learning environments and to the extent to which these environments constitute contexts of learning where there is positive support for all. In fact, the entire QIDS UP project is based on the recognition that each learner’s cultural community wealth matters and as such needs to be validated and capitalised on for successful learning.

While the above two projects focused on the GET, the DoE also designed and implemented among others the Learner Attainment Improvement Project (LAIP), the Quality Learning and Teaching Project (QLTP), the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS), the National Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band (NPAS) and Continuing Professional Teacher Development Programme (CPTD) in an attempt to improve the quality of teaching and learning in all schools from the GET up to the end of the Further Education and Training Band (i.e. from Grades R to 12).

LAIP’s (NWED-LAIP, 2009) eleven strategic goals constitute eleven focus areas:

(i) to protect and ensure that teaching time is observed and used effectively in all schools by teachers, learners and all role players, (ii) that there is quality contact time during teaching and learning occasions, (iii) that there is effective implementation of National Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band (NPAS), (iv) that common standards in internal assessment programmes are in place and adhered to, (v) that there is appropriate support from the Education Departments’ professional officials, (vi) that there was monitoring and refining through research of teaching and learning practices so as to identify specific challenges, (vii) that value was added to the development of all learners, (viii) that there were thorough and effective measures in place to enhance proficiency among learners and teachers in the language of teaching and learning, (ix) that there were processes in place for the development of management and leadership skills, (x) availability of human and physical resources and (xi) the development of comprehensive teacher development programmes (NWED-Learner Attainment Strategy 2009: 5-6).

The recurrent theme is the creation of a sustainable empowering learning environment with a focus on the role of an effective teacher who utilises teaching time effectively and assesses the enhancement of learning. Such an enhanced learning is also conceptualised as the one predicated by availability and effective utilisation of resources, taking into consideration the learners’ community cultural wealth and as such ensuring that the discourses operational in learning contexts are positive, collaborative, peaceful and inspire heightened levels of performance.

A similar theme is found in the National Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band, that is for Grades R-12 (DoE- NPAS, 2005). This programme provides directives and clear guidelines for assessment as learning opportunity, geared towards making learning environments sustainable and empowering for learners and teachers in learner-centred contexts. Some of the critical concepts defined in the NPAS document demonstrate that assessment is conceptualised as an important ingredient impacting on the role of an effective teacher, informs discourses leading to successful learning in an invitational, free and validating learning context, and recognise the learners’ background/community cultural wealth as basis. These concepts are: A similar theme is found in the National

Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band, that is for Grades R-12 (DoE-NPAS, 2005). This programme provides directives and clear guidelines for assessment as learning opportunity, geared towards making learning environments sustainable and empowering for learners and teachers in learner-centred contexts. Some of the critical concepts defined in the NPAS document demonstrate that assessment is conceptualised as an important ingredient impacting on the role of an effective teacher, informs discourses leading to successful learning in an invitational, free and validating learning context, and recognise the learners’ background/community cultural wealth as basis. These concepts are:

"= Assessment Standard which describes the minimum level at which learners should demonstrate the achievement of a Learning Outcome and the ways or range (breadth and depth) of demonstrating the achievement. It is grade-specific;

= Assessment Task which is an assessment activity or activities that is/are designed to assess a range of skills and competencies;

* Continuous Assessment being described as an assessment model that encourages integration of assessment into the teaching and the development of learners through ongoing feedback. Itisa model of assessment that is used to determine the learner’s achievement during the course of a grade or level, provide information that is used to support a learner’s development and enable improvements to be made in the learning and teaching process;

» External Assessment refers to any assessment activity, instrument or programme where the design, development and implementation has been initiated, directed and coordinated by provincial education departments and the Department of Education, either collectively or individually;

* Moderation which involves the process of verifying the results of National Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band (NPAS) and the external assessment, and

« School-Based Assessment (formerly known as Continuous Assessment/CASS) which is made up of any assessment activity, instrument or programme where the design, development, administration, marking, recording and reporting has been initiated, directed, planned, organised, controlled and managed by a school.

All the above programmes and projects culminate in the Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign (DoE-QLTC, 2009) where all significant stakeholders pledge to execute their roles (and be held accountable), as envisioned in the educational legislative and policy directives of the new South African government aimed at undoing the educational dysfunctionality engendered by our historical past. QLTC emphasises the creation of a sustainable empowering learning environment by all stakeholders as a significant factor in solving South Africa’s educational woes. At the launch of the QLTC the following important points were made, capturing succinctly the purposes of this campaign:

Research suggests that three factors are critical to educational success

across the world: Teachers, Textbooks and Time. The QLTC aims to build partnerships with all stakeholders, in particular, between the DoE and teacher unions. The department of education has committed itself to support teachers, to hold its officials accountable, to ensure that the necessary resources are provided on time, and that vacancies are speedily filled. All teacher unions have committed their members to be on time, in class, prepared and teaching (DoE-QLTC, 2009: 3).

The recurrent theme still emphasises the role teachers play in the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments, the availability and effective use of resources towards that end, the significance of positive discourses, and the importance of considering the learners’ community cultural wealth in such an endeavour.

Allthe above projects, campaigns and programmes are encapsulated in the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) and Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) programme. These two policy directives directly emphasise the role of the teacher (and support due to him/her) in the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments. They appear to be mere different sides of the same coin. IQMS sets the objectives and outcomes for the operationalisation of the CPTD and assesses the outcomes of this intended growth and development of the teacher as facilitated by the latter. While the emphasis is on the role of the teacher, adequate provisioning and proper use of resources are also integral parts thereof for enhancing positive discourses that validate the learners’ community cultural wealth for improved performance.

The IQMS, as described in the Education Labour Relations Council’s (ELRC) Collective Agreement Number 8 (2003), consists of twelve performance standards on the basis of which teachers at graded levels of responsibility, from level 1 teacher (standards 1-8) to senior, head of department, deputy principal and ultimately principal teacher (standards 9-12) are evaluated for practically playing their roles effectively in the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments. When one examines the 12 performance standards below, one notices the extent to which the role of the teacher is inextricably interwoven with the availability and use of resources towards enhanced learning. The performance standards also directly point to the need for a holding environment to be created in all learning situations by means of positive discourses that also validate and capitalise on the learners’ community cultural wealth. These standards focus on the extent to which the teacher: i. demonstratescompetenceinplanning, preparing, presentingandmanaging learning programmes which enable the learners to actively participate and succeed in their process of learning;

ii. creates positive learningenvironmentandmainstreameffective discipline that supports the development of learner abilities;

iii. | demonstrates competence in monitoring and assign learner progress and achievement;

iv. engages in professional development activities consistent with his own goals and objectives and that of the school;

V. engagesin appropriate interpersonal relationships with learners, parents and staff an contributes to the development of the school;

vi. is prepared and knowledgeable of the content and demonstrates appropriate preparation for teaching;

vii. provides an environment that creates and fosters commitment and confidence among colleagues, learners, the Governing Body and the community and communicates and interacts effectively with all stakeholders in order to ensure that all relevant information is both accessible and understood;

viii. participates in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities in such a way that it supplements the learning process and leads to the holistic development of the learners;

ix. administers resources and records in an effective and efficient manner in order to ensure the smooth functioning of the institution;

x. manages and develops personnel under his/her supervision in such a way that the vision and mission of the institution are accomplished;

xi. establishes procedures that ensures democratic decision making and accountability within the institution, and xii. displays competence in planning and education management development (ELRC Number 8, 2003: 6-9).

The CPTD ensures that the teacher continuously strives towards playing his/her role perfectly as far as its best practices are concerned. This incidentally involves performing well in all the above IQMS standards. In addition, CPTD promises to provide support to teachers as they develop the competencies elaborated in the IQMS by following well-structured, credible and duly accredited processes. There are six criteria elaborated jointly by the South African Council for Educators (SACE) and the DoE to guide the CPTD. These criteria determine the extent to which the professional development (PD) activity:

= leads to improved competence in professional practice in the field of education;

* improves the quality of teaching/learning and assessment in teaching subjects/ learning areas in the school curriculum;

* has opportunities for members to demonstrate what they have learned in this activity; = long enough to have significant impact on the teachers’ development;

« is aligned to the system needs as indicated by the DoE, the SACE, teacher unions and other organised professional bodies, and

= leads to the promotion of commitment to the improvement of schooling and responsibilities of the teaching profession in a transforming society.

The present study is thus consciously aware of the efforts by the democratic South African state towards reversing and totally uprooting the devastation of apartheid and its legacies on the entire fabric of South African life symptomised by an ailing educational practice, hence performance therein, among others. All these efforts have currently culminated in the creation of the National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) (DoE-NEEDU, 2009) whose primary responsibility will be to ensure that quality education is provided across all institutions of learning in the country through developmental monitoring and evaluation of the role of the teacher, the availability and utilisation of resources, and the facilitation of the existence of positive discourses that validate and capitalise on the learners’ community cultural capital, among others.

3. THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Three theoretical positions seem to be most appropriate in responding to the research question of this study, namely social justice research, scholarship of engagement and social constructivism. It is a widely accepted truism among many researchers (for example, De Corte, 1996; De Corte, 2000; Vershaffel, Entwistle and van Merrienboér, 2003; Goh and Khine, 2002) that the nature of the research question, hence research objectives, determines the theoretical framework of the literature to be reviewed and the methodology to be operationalised towards useful, relevant and valid findings.

The above theoretical positions constituting the coherent framework for this study are informed by our aim to conduct a study that will be very sensitive to the historical past of inequity, social injustice, oppression, violence and desperation that engendered the dysfunctionality presently witnessed in education. Such a sensitive framework coupled with the express intention to deconstruct and destroy the legacy of apartheid is found in social justice research, in particular its critical emancipatory and critical race theories (Brayboy, 2002; Yosso, 2005; Apartheid Archives Project, 2009).

Social justice research is always on the side of the vulnerable communities and individuals. It wants to give back the voice and power to the vanquished and the marginalised. It is participatory. It treats all the researched with respect to their dignity as dynamic, subjective, interpreting and as such, full-fledged human beings. It consults and involves them at every step of the research journey, from conceptualisation at the interpretative phase, through reflection at the analytic phase to the dissemination and application of results at the educative phase (Lather, 1986). It thematises power. It is geared towards subverting the excesses of power (Mahlomaholo and Nkoane, 2002). It critiques ideology’s hold (Ivey, 1986) over human being’s meaning construction, hence actions and interactions. It posits that ideology’s hold can never be complete, hence the possibility of transformation and change in meaning construction. It was found that such a socially just research is most appropriate to the praxis of this study: contributing to knowledge theoretically while practically supporting the national efforts to eradicate apartheid legacies as envisioned in the educational legislative and policy directives.

On the other hand, the choice of the Scholarship of Engagement as the other aspect of our theoretical framework is based on the following words of the President of the Republic of South Africa:

Education must be elevated from being a departmental issue, or even a governmental issue, to a societal issue — one that occupies the attention and energy for all our people. A commitment should be made to a Code for Quality Education, which describes the responsibilities and discipline required of them — the non-negotiables. It must be seen as a revolutionary act to subscribe to act within this code (Zuma, 2008: 1).

This study is based on a wish that higher education, as in the North-West University (NWU), should be a full-time contributing member of civil society in the North-West province, nationally as well as beyond South Africa’s borders. Higher education should not be an occasional visitor, riding on educational moral high horse to do research that finds fault with national and provincial efforts as they respond to the dysfunctionality in education due to apartheid legacies. To date higher education has been omitted from shouldering the responsibility to account for the dysfunctionality so rife in our national education despite the fact that universities train teachers. If teachers who went through the portals of higher education to improve their qualifications still lack the requisite skills to implement the educational legislative imperatives and policy directives (UNESCO-EFA, 2009), then the higher education curriculum that prepares these teachers needs to be revisited to determine its relevance, value and usefulness, especially to the taxpayers.

Against this background the scholarship of engagement theoretical framework (Boyer, 1996; Mahlomaholo, 2010) offers the present study the platform to do collaborative research which is mutually beneficial to the NWED and the NWU as reflected in the membership, objectives and action plans of the Sustainable Empowering Learning Environments (SELEN) research team. This team conducts research based on the principles of discovery, integration, sharing and application as described in the mentioned theory (Boyer, 1996; Mahlomaholo, 2010). The reciprocal and practical outcomes are that NWU benefits, among others, in terms of curriculum improvement while NWED is supported in terms of the operationalisation of the educational legislative imperatives and policy directives towards the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments.

Finally, social constructivism as part of the theoretical framework of this study facilitates meaningful investigation and direct contribution to the creation of sustainable empowering learning environments as envisioned in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, hence the educational legislative imperatives and policy directives referred to above. All these documents attest to social constructivism as the educational theory of choice specifically for those projects, programmes and campaigns selected for investigation and operationalisation in this study, namely Foundations for Learning Campaign (FFL), Quality Improvement, Development, Support and Upliftment Programme (QIDS UP), the Learner Attainment Implementation Plan (LAIP), the National Protocol on Assessment for Schools in the General and Further Education and Training Band (NPAS), Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign (QLTC), the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) and the Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) programme.

Very succinctly the Critical Cross-field Outcomes directing all educational endeavours (the abovementioned policy directives, in particular) in South Africa confirm this view as they describe the qualities of a graduate of our education system as one who is able to:

identify and solve problems in which responses display that responsible decisions using critical and creative thinking have been made; Work effectively with others as amember of a team, group, organisation, community; Organise and manage oneself and one’s activities responsibly and effectively; Collect, analyse, organise and critically evaluate information; Communicate effectively using visual, mathematical and/or language skills in the modes of oral and/ or written presentation; Use science and technology effectively and critically, showing responsibility towards the environment and health of others; Demonstrate an understanding of the world as a set of related systems by recognising that problem-solving contexts do not exist in isolation. (Bender, Daniels, Lazarus, Naudé and Satter, 2006: 40-45).