Since 1999 I have been involved in researching learner performance in Outcomes Based Education and how it is progressing in schools. My research last year has shown that the system is working in schools with foresight, a professional approach and management control.
However, many schools seem to have lost direction. This can happen because of a misinterpretation of OBE, and too strict an adherence to the principles instead of seeing them as guidelines.
I have drawn up the following 10 points for educators and school management teams to bear in mind as they take OBE into the new school year:
1. Although OBE guidelines talk a lot about ‘skills”, knowledge and content are still vital. ‘Educators” are still teachers and have to pass on their expertise to learners. Old-fashioned swotting of facts and drilling of spelling and times-tables are still needed. Apart from teaching facts, these activities also develop memory and other thinking skills.
2. OBE is meant to encourage teachers to use as many different techniques as appropriate, not to restrict them. As professionals, it is up to teachers to decide the best way to get knowledge and skills across, even if this does mean drilling, testing
and making learners work as individuals instead of in groups at times. School is still a learning experience and school-time is not exclusively for socialising, playing games and doing drawings.
3. The emphasis in OBE is on letting learners find things out for themselves. Taken to extremes, this becomes ridiculous. It is simply not possible for a group of learners to rediscover Euclidian geometry! There has to be a time for teaching and explanation and, most importantly, every learner must look things up in books.
4. Using only local resources for teaching can be extremely
limiting. For example, schools cannot possibly teach the whole range of human, historical, scientific and technological experience based only on gold mining or cattle farming. It is up to teachers to add many other dimensions to expand the minds of learners.
5. OBE has a much freer approach to noise levels than traditional teaching and classroom discipline can suffer. However, a balance can be struck between strict rigidity and free expression. The trick is to set boundaries, like ‘my time and your time”, listening or talking time.
6. The curriculum allows for holistic learning through a three-year period. However, learning everything about a subject in one grade, only to forget it in the next, is pointless. Teaching plans need extensive coordination and control within phases. Some schools have an OBE coordinator who organises Learning Area meetings at the beginning of each term to help teachers work together to balance what will be taught year to year.
7. There is sound logic behind the large number of Learning Areas and Specific Outcomes to be covered. Coordination is needed to ensure that all Specific Outcomes are covered equally. For example, Mathematical Literacy is not achieved by only paying attention to how maths is used in practice, nor by teaching number patterns. Most importantly, it appears from my research that Human Social Sciences are hardly being handled. Schools should workshop the underlying reasons for teaching particular subjects. For example, History is the basis of feeling ‘Proudly South African”, of teaching tolerance and cause-and-effect. At the moment it seems the subject is being ignored because of a fear of being politically incorrect.
8. It is important to maintain learners’ self-esteem but they should not be deceived about their levels of achievement. Life is not like that. If they are never allowed to experience failure or criticism, they will be unable to handle the eventual and inevitable reality of a public examination and employment. Awareness must be instilled that quality and high standards of performance have to be met instead of praising them for sub-standard work simply because it has improved slightly or has not deteriorated.
9. Ultimately, education is aimed at producing youngsters who can handle higher levels of learning and adults who will contribute to a better society. Schools must identify which values they want to be associated with. Self-discipline is a good place to start. It is too late for matriculants to find out that they need to study in their spare time; they should have learnt this from the beginning of their school days.
10. Teachers and schools cannot be expected to build on missing foundations. The first step to achieving improvement is to measure the current situation. Gaps in learners’ knowledge should be identified and remedied at the outset of each grade. Subject teachers should set probe tests to assess academic levels of individual learners. Otherwise, externally available tests should be used to get an inexpensive and objective view.
Dr Louise Holman is an industrial psychologist who specialises in the development of assessment tools for schools and researches the results.
She can be contacted on 082 463 3710 or (011)614 6309