During February I was able to visit some primary school classrooms in the rural North to see how outcomes-based education (OBE) was being implemented in grade 4 and grade 7. What I discovered was instructive and provides some clear pointers for policy makers.
I spent some time observing and team-teaching a grade 4 Human, Social, Economic and Management Sciences classroom. This Intermediate Phase learning programme is a combination of two learning areas — Human and Social Sciences (HSS) and Economic and Management Sciences (EMS).
The teacher concerned had a good rapport with her learners and was enthusiastic about OBE and implementing Curriculum 2005 in grade 4. New textbooks for every learner were in evidence. (Well done to the relevant department for managing to get textbooks to this far-flung rural area on time).
The focus of the lesson was on teaching the concepts “then” and “now” using an idea of a clothesline which came from the textbook — what did people wear then and what do they wear now? Learners were working in groups. Two of the groups were made up of transfers — children who were new to the school. These children were clearly behind and struggled to understand, speak and write English. They had apparently not “done OBE” at their previous schools.
This difference of levels is a problem that teachers often face and one that makes their task more difficult. However, separating these learners out from the others will only perpetuate the problem. Including them in other groups is more likely to succeed.
Learners were asked to trace the outline of a person twice into their groupwork books. Interesting that they had special exercise books for groupwork. Learners were given magazines and asked to cut out images and textures from the magazines to dress the two figures — one in traditional dress and one in modern dress. Most groups had a pair of scissors and glue.
When I asked the teacher what she saw as the outcome of the lesson she struggled to tell me. Although the learners were very engaged with the task, they were given no idea about how long they had to complete it and by what criteria they would be assessed. There was hardly any engagement with the meanings they were creating, for example why people dressed the way they did in the past, why people dress the way they do today, questions of identity, class and so on. The teacher also failed to intervene to correct mistakes, misconceptions or omissions.
From there I moved on to a grade 4 Natural Sciences and Technology lesson. This learning programme is a combination of the Natural Sciences (NS) and Technology (TECH) learning areas. Again, new textbooks were in evidence. This time the teacher started the lesson by stating the outcome clearly and simply. Learners would compare and contrast information. She did some concept checking to make sure that learners understood the meaning of “same” and “different”.
Working in groups, learners were asked to look at two line drawings in the textbook and to identify three similarities in the one and three differences in the other. In each case, the whole group was asked to come up to the front and report back. They did this by chanting their answers in unison. My sense was that this was boring for the learners and discouraged them from arriving at their own conclusions.
A third port of call was a grade 7 Language, Literacy and Communication (English as an additional language) lesson on pronouns. There were no textbooks and this made the teacher’s job much more difficult. The teacher modelled a sentence on the chalkboard with a noun as subject and then replaced it with a pronoun. He then asked learners, working in groups, to generate a sentence containing a noun and then to replace it with a pronoun.
He offered no explanation of why we use pronouns in English and made no attempt to deal with the importance of differentiating gender through pronouns or with the fact that the form of the pronoun as subject is different from its form as object. He then asked groups to report back their sentences. Most sentences reinforced traditional gender roles: “The girl sweeps the floor” or “The women fetch water”. These roles weren’t challenged in any way.
In conclusion, he introduced different types of pronouns giving just the four names – personal, demonstrative, interrogative and possessive – and asked learners to come up with two examples of each for homework. When I asked whether he had taught these to his learners at some previous point, he indicated that he hadn’t. He said he expected learners to use dictionaries or ask family members for help with matters which he had not made explicit to them.
These three classrooms provide a window on some of the problems of implementing C2005. Firstly, the OBE training these teachers have received has clearly been inadequate. This is partly because the first round of policy was couched in such impenetrable terminology that it was very difficult to get to the essence of OBE. Only one out of the three had a sense of what the outcome/s of the lesson she was presenting might be. However, she wasn’t able to make the connection between this outcome and what she should be looking for when assessing the performance of her learners.
Secondly, there is a misconception that OBE and groupwork are synonymous. This leads to the notion that, if learners are participating actively in a groupwork activity and doing constant report backs, they are doing OBE. Teachers appear to struggle to identify meaningful purposes of groupwork and to link these to the overall outcome/s of the lesson.
Perhaps the hardest nut to crack is the lack of content knowledge that teachers display. C2005 has done a disservice to the art of teaching and learning by underplaying the importance of content in the curriculum and content knowledge in teachers who deliver the curriculum.
The good news is that many of these problems have been identified and are being addressed in the writing of a new curriculum statement. The real challenge will lie in its implementation: changing classroom practice in a practical and meaningful way. All three teachers in this particular school displayed effort and commitment and, with the right support, they can provide a quality education for their learners.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, March, 2001.