Are you suffering from TBP?

Over the past decade, major changes have taken place in our educational system. Adoption of the OBE approach has not been an easy passage for all educators. Lack of resources and inadequate professional development and training were, and are still, the major challenges facing educators in transforming our educational system. Not having the capacity to usher in the changes at classroom level has led to untold levels of anxiety, stress and tension within the teaching community. Recently, the diminishing levels of safety in several of our schools have created additional fear among learners, parents and educators. These developments have contributed to the existence of a phobia in the educational environment that is currently being experienced by many educators.

Hence, the question that educators need to ask themselves is: am I suffering from TBP?

TBP? What is this?

TBP is the abbreviation for “tobephobia”. Tobephobia is a manifestation of fear within the learning environment. The word tobephobia was coined by the author of this article. It’s derived from transformational OBE plus phobia: t + obe + phobia. Simply put, it means that individuals are displaying symptoms of anxiety, tension and stress and could be suffering from mild to severe bouts of depression because of the fear that is engendered within the educational environment.

TBP could manifest in many ways, such as fear of failure in achieving educational objectives, fear of changes in education as well as not being able to cope with the demands of educational transformation. Mostly, this could be attributed to educators being unable to cope with the demands of OBE and deliver quality education to all learners.

This has been exacerbated by the increased amount of administrative work that has to be done by educators to plan, teach and assess learners in terms of the OBE curriculum requirements.

Three-hundred-and-fifty educators were interviewed over the past six years. This goes back to the year 2000 when I first used the word tobephobia in an article published in the South African Journal of Education. Judging from the responses of educators interviewed, it is evident that fear among educators is a reality, which they attributed largely to their loss of authority in terms of curriculum design and discipline. Everyone interviewed supported the existence of TBP. The interviewees strongly believed that the word “tobephobia” was highly appropriate to describe the fears being experienced by educators.

They also pointed out that a further dimension to TBP is the fear of one’s physical safety within the educational environment. The availability of drugs to school children and the threats from gangs within both poorer and affluent communities has increased the levels of TBP. Also, teachers will soon be required to prove their competence to be in the classroom. Failure to do so will result in the de-registration of educators as spelt out recently in the policy framework document for teacher education. The question of a professional hiatus has definitely had a negative impact on the morale of teachers.

These initial research findings support the hypothesis that TBP is a fear of being incompetent to carry out one’s professional obligations in a disabling educational environment. This stems from the changes constantly taking place in the school environment without the relevant infrastructure being in place. The latter has been compounded by poor support services from the department of education in terms of human and non-human resources. Evidently, the need for a paradigm shift among educators bound to traditional approaches is not taking root at the desired or anticipated levels.

Interviewees complained about, inter alia: