Setting quality standards for the teaching profession. The need for science and value addition in teaching
Today’s piece is related to the consultative meeting at GIMPA, Accra, on Monday February 1, 2016 regarding the “National Teachers’ Standards for Ghana.”
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Education in poorer countries tends to be a record of the ways in which human possibilities have been discarded or sold short. Serving as a self-fulfilling prophesy that perpetuates poverty, the soft bigotry of low expectations is in itself problematic.
The role of acceptable education, then, is to help the youth to identify their authentic selves, to see themselves in their “Element”, to set priorities by adding value to themselves through progressively adding value to the nation’s natural endowment. Scientific applications, for one, will help to lift the whole nation out of the throes of poverty while showcasing a brighter future still.
As the American visionary and entrepreneur, Walt Disney, put it, “All dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them,” but the caveat is that dreams do not come true on the back of lofty theories and apprehensions. The gamut of human possibilities have practically been underrated.
Why, for example, are teachers – in the basic schools and high schools - not taught (at the Teacher Training Colleges and universities) how to add value to the nation’s natural endowment through scientific inquiry and applications? Sadly, that negligence is perpetuated by people who themselves are expected to lead in those purposeful objectives by updating their own standards to unearth the possibilities in Ghana.
Again, even in the academics sphere, why, for example, are the basic schools in the Central Region recording some of the worst BECE results in the country when the nation’s top two teacher training universities are situated right there.
Perhaps a good many of the trainers themselves are more comfortable with lecture halls and theories than connecting with the student teachers and children at the school sites where the real action and possibilities are.
The other concern I expressed at the consultative meeting at GIMPA was that the 16 years of sitting in classrooms and lecture halls (from primary to tertiary) perpetuated the “chew, pour, pass, forget, and be poor” disease.
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We are creatures of habit, and that passive and immobilising posture - by the end of a degree course - translated into the lack of productivity across the country.
One solution to that was to update teaching standards - across the board - to include hands-on skills and projects as forms of assessment in lieu of the rote learning.
The Standards, dubbed: “National Teachers’ Standards for Ghana: Guidelines,” consisted of an 18 page document involving the 300,000 or so teachers “at the kindergarten and primary levels and junior high schools and senior high school levels”.
It aimed “at producing teachers imbued with professional skills, attitudes and values as well as the spirit of inquiry, innovation and creativity that will enable them to adapt to changing conditions, use inclusive strategies and engage in lifelong learning.”
The teachers are required to have a passion for teaching and leadership, engage with members not only in the school community but also in the wider community, and act as potential agents of change.”
The 2008 Education Act established the National Teaching Council (NTC) which is “responsible for establishing frameworks around teachers’ employment, continuous professional development (CPD) and periodic review of professional practice and ethical standards.
NTC has overall responsibility to license teachers by law. These standards define the minimum levels of practice expected of student teachers and teachers in order to be licensed.
In reflecting on the question, “What kind of teacher or citizens does Ghana need?” these new Standards emphasise the applied, practical work of a teacher as a valued professional in a community of practice, and envisage a warm and friendly teacher who has secure curricular, subject and pedagogical content knowledge, who plans for and uses differentiated interactive instructional strategies and resources and so engages their learners” to achieve higher learning outcomes.
The Teaching Standards are organised in three domains: One, Professional Values and Attitudes; Two, Professional Knowledge; and Three, Professional Practice.
The roles of the teacher education institutions (including the lecturers and tutors) are for them to have “a shared understanding of what each Standard means as a community of education professionals [and act] in partnership with head teachers, mentors and experienced teachers in local schools”.
The Standards noted that: “Lecturers Tutors may need recent and relevant school experience, particularly if they have not been teachers themselves at the level at which they are training student teachers to work in. Lecturers / Tutors will also need professional development to understand the Standards and to redesign their teaching to support this, in both content and the pedagogy they use. In particular they will need to support student teachers to reflect back on their various school experiences and to make sense of what they have learnt.”
Today, Ghana is at the inflection point between the stale sitting culture of the past copying notes for certificates, and a pragmatic hands-on education for prosperity. How unimaginative and distressing it is, for instance, that a country crying out for jobs and employment continues to import rice, corn flakes, canned corn, flour, biscuits, sugar, rice, canned tomatoes, coconut juices and chickens.
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For education standards to be relevant, policies must embrace science applications for developing each of the 200 or so districts in the country where each of those items are seen as most relevant pursuits in advancing Ghana into a more enlightened and prosperous nation.
[Email: anishaffar@gmail.com]