Curriculum adviser EMILIA POTENZA answers questions from teachers about outcomes-based education (OBE) and Curriculum 2005.
Q: I think that the essence of outcomes-based education (OBE) is great. In fact, many of us in former Model C schools have used some of the outcomes without even being aware of it. We have integrated critical thinking and communicating effectively in groups through discussions and debates. Children have even evaluated their own compositions, posters and themes according to criteria and assessed their peers’ work.
What worries me are the following. The training we received from the department, a full four days, was definitely not adequate. You spend four years at college and four years at university to be trained. And now we are expected to implement OBE effectively with four days of training. For sure we bought books and read as much material as we could afterwards, but is this enough? I think the government should have given much more extensive training than what we have received to date.
The question of assessment remains a problem. Can we still use marks or must we only use symbols or comments? What should a quarterly report look like? Could you give us more advice on that with concrete examples? I have spoken to many colleagues and each one has a different approach to the report and some don’t even know where to start. I think that some principals, and I say this with the deepest respect, are also unsure about the look of reports.
If there isn’t a uniform form or report type that all are going to use, could this not lead to problems when a learner goes to another school? Maybe I have it all wrong, but I think that there are many teachers who are experiencing the same problems. I think that The Teacher can do a lot to help teachers with this dilemma by publishing an extensive programme on assessment. Thanks for the great work that you are doing.
— Andre du Plessis, Port Elizabeth
A: One of the problems with the approach taken to the implementation of Curriculum 2005 has been to make teachers feel that everything that they have done in the past has been wrong. It is reassuring to me that you and other teachers are making links between the new curriculum and what you have done in the past. I believe that it is critical to build on your own good practice and from that base begin to incorporate new approaches.
Most would agree that the training provided by the provincial departments of education has not been adequate. But to be fair, the timetable of implementation has not allowed for more than a brief orientation to be the focus of these training sessions. Of course, more training needs to follow. In every learning programme, teachers require more practical examples of what it means to teach in an outcomes-based way. Teachers need much greater depth of content knowledge in all the learning areas. They also need to be trained to evaluate and select appropriate learning support materials and to design effective worksheets. And perhaps, most importantly, they need to explore the intricacies of assessment much more rigorously. All of this will hopefully be dealt with in the 80 hours of professional development that teachers are now expected to participate in every year according to a resolution passed by the Education and Labour Relations Council in 1998.
Responding to your concerns about assessment is tricky. This is because there is still a lack of clarity about how assessment policies will translate into practice. A sensible route would be to use a combination of marks and comments. The trend, however, seems to be to move away from marks towards informative comments. Instead of giving a learner 56% for Language, Literacy and Communication, the argument goes that it is more meaningful to comment on how well the learner is progressing in the following areas: writing, reading and viewing, speaking and listening. Of course, this kind of assessment needs to be done against certain benchmarks. At present, there is still no clarity about what these benchmarks should be for each grade.
In terms of a format for reporting, I will describe what is being recommended for the Senior Phase in Gauteng schools. The report is made up of six A5 pages:
Page 1 (front page): Name of school, name of learner, grade, year, term, date of birth.
Page 2: Four of the eight learning programmes, in this case Arts and Culture; Economic and Management Sciences; Language, Literacy and Communication; and Life Orientation. Space is left to fill in an overall description of the learner’s performance in each learning programme (Your child can do the following: … Support needed: …).
Page 3: The other four of the eight learning programmes, in this case Human and Social Sciences; Mathematical Literacy, Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences; Natural Sciences; and Technology. Reporting on these Learning Programmes will happen in the same way as described above.
Page 4: General comments on critical outcomes. Here the critical outcomes are listed and space is left to comment on the learner’s progress in relation to each one.
Page 5: School attendance profile and comments. General involvement or conduct at school (including extra duties and special functions, leadership, relationships, special interests, likes and dislikes).
Page 6 (back page): Period over which assessments took place, learner’s comments, parent’s or guardian’s comments and signatures, signature of teacher and date, signature of principal and date, date on which school reopens, school stamp.
Are you one of the many teachers at sea about understanding and implementing OBE and Curriculum 2005? Send in your questions to our curriculum adviser, Emilia Potenza, c/o The Teacher, PO Box 91667, Auckland Park, 2006, or e-mail her at [email protected]
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, March 2000.
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