Despite what some people think, teaching isn’t easy. In fact, if done properly, it’s very challenging. I always quote the late professor Ted Wragg who observed that teachers engage in as many as 1,000 contacts with children a day, when they ask questions, praise or reprimand, assign tasks or respond to demands for their attention. This is a busy life, and it may mean as many as 5,000 contacts a week and several million in a career.

In a recent podcast interview a leading academic was asked whether he would rather teach a Grade 1 class or be a stand-up comedian. He chose stand-up comedy because it was so much easier: “In a comedy situation, you’re talking to a group of inebriated people who are expecting to laugh and respond with laughter to anything you say. You are in a controlled environment – a smoke-filled, noisy, darkened room.” A classroom was more complex: “You have the curriculum to follow, the children are… jumping around, one child is collecting stuff out of his locker, you have concerned parents breathing down your neck and the principal is making her demands.” 

Schools are complex organisations that are frequently forced to veer from their main teaching and learning trajectory. South Africa remains one of the countries in the world with the biggest gap between rich and poor. Every now and then the Statistician-General reminds us that about 32 million people live below the poverty line. Most times, this reality translates into schooling for poorer children that is not as good as it should be. 

Despite our belief in the need for educational change and reform in this country, change has been far too slow. Transforming an education system that was so divided and unequal has been an almost impossible task – perhaps more mammoth than we ever imagined. The intervention efforts that have been made have done away with the racially differentiated system, but continue to reproduce a class-differentiated system, where socioeconomic factors are the major determining factor of the quality of education. 

In this context a lot has been written, and is being written, about developing 21st-century skills in education. The conundrum for education planners is how best to prepare our children for a rapidly changing world. 

The big benchmark problem

In Australia, Geoff Masters, chief executive of the Australian Council for Educational Research, argues that one of the challenges we face in education is to identify and develop the knowledge, skills and attributes required for work in the 21st century. 

A big challenge in Australia and in many other countries, including ours, is the declining performance in international benchmark tests, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment. In Australia, for example, children have problems applying fundamental concepts and principles in real-world contexts.

Masters argues that in the future we will need adults who can engage with sophisticated information about complex societal and environmental challenges. 

Current curriculums are often dominated by substantial bodies of factual and procedural knowledge, at a time when it is more important that students can apply a deep understanding of key disciplinary principles to real-world problems.

Curriculums are designed for delivery in traditional classroom settings, at a time when new technologies are transforming how courses are delivered and learning takes place, says the writer.
(Photo: iStock)

School subjects are taught in isolation, at a time when solutions to societal challenges and the nature of work are becoming more cross-disciplinary.

School curriculums tend to emphasise passive, reproductive learning and the solution of standard problem types, at a time when there is a need to promote creativity and innovative solutions to new problems.

Assessment processes provide information about subject achievement only, at a time when employers are seeking better information about students’ abilities to work in teams, use technology, communicate, solve problems and learn on the job.

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Students often learn in isolation and in competition with each other, while workplaces are increasingly being organised around teamwork and require good interpersonal and communication skills.

Curriculums are designed for delivery in traditional classroom settings, at a time when new technologies are transforming how courses are delivered and learning takes place.

A curriculum for the future

Experienced curriculum experts know that challenges like these cannot be addressed by changes to the school curriculum alone. Most would argue that change depends on investments in teacher quality, changes in how curriculum content is taught and the alignment of assessment processes with new curriculum priorities. But the content and organisation of the curriculum and the emphasis placed on different forms of learning in the curriculum do determine how students engage in classrooms.

There seems to be agreement that a curriculum that prepares students for life and work is likely to include an emphasis on deep understanding of subject matter and the ability to apply what is learnt; the ability to communicate and solve problems in teams; the ability to think critically and to create novel solutions; and flexibility, openness to change and a willingness to learn continually.

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In designing a curriculum, the balance between breadth and depth is fundamental. Breadth is about the range or amount of content (often factual and procedural knowledge) covered in the curriculum. Depth is about the development of a deep understanding of concepts and principles and the ability to apply these to new contexts. 

In South Africa, donors and the government have put money and effort into pre-prepared lessons – or “high-quality teaching resources”, as some people call them – to improve teaching and learning. Initial reports from non-governmental organisations using this approach are positive.

An Australian think tank, the Grattan Institute, notes in a summary report that “of 2,243 teachers and school leaders across Australia… only 15% of teachers have access to a common bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all their classes”. The report creates an image of teachers “being left to fend for themselves, creating lessons from scratch and scouring the internet and social media for teaching materials”.

The institute’s proposed solution is ready-made lesson plans to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, scripted lessons do not pay attention to the difficult work contexts of teachers and their own expertise, which is central to teachers’ practice. I would argue that one of the jobs of the teacher is the design and development of learning materials. This is an aspect of the job that cannot easily be outsourced.

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Planning lessons by finding, organising and developing resources is central to the work of teachers. Critics of the institute’s plan argue that “many teachers take delight in carefully crafting lessons that leverage students’ interests; education is not, and never has been, a one-size-fits-all model”.

Teaching, unlike stand-up comedy, is a complex affair. A lot happens in a classroom, and things are much more difficult when you have 40 or more children in front of you. 

In this situation, it may appear to be a lot easier for teachers to deliver content via a pre-prepared lesson or script. The question is: who benefits from a lifeless and unthinking teacher delivering someone else’s content? 

Keith Heggart and Steven Kolber, authors of Empowering Teachers and Democratising Schooling, put it brilliantly: “The key to good teaching and learning lies in the human relationships between teachers and students. Those human relationships allow for careful contextualisation and design… Whereas teachers are responsible for their school students, families and communities, creators of ‘teacher-proof’ lesson banks are accountable to their corporate employers.” 

Which surgeon would you have to remove your cataract – the one following a script taken out of a ring-bound file or the one with an understanding of anatomy, physiology and ophthalmology? DM168

Dr Mark Potterton is principal of the Sacred Heart College primary school and director of the Refugee Children’s Project.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.