Dr Linda Chisholm, special adviser to Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga has spent most of her career trying to make a difference to the education system.
She contributed to the changes that the school curriculum is currently undergoing. The decision to alleviate the workload of teachers is partly because of the research that Chisolm and others were involved in.
Chisholm was chair and professor of education at the then University of Natal, Durban, when, in 2000, former education minister Kader Asmal invited her to lead a team to review and revise Curriculum 2005. This was the first time the newly introduced outcomes-based education curriculum was reviewed.
The revised version was implemented as the Revised National Curriculum Statement in 2002. It was reviewed again in 2009.
Before joining the then University of Natal, Chisholm was director of the Education Policy Unit at the University of Witwatersrand. She holds a PhD in history from that university and a masters in history from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. She obtained a postgraduate certificate in education from the University of London’s Institute of Education.
Between 2002 and 2009, Chisholm held the position of director at the Human Sciences Research Council where she supervised and conducted several education-related research projects. Highlights were projects on rural education, educator workload, gender equity and teacher education. For her work with interns, she won the 2008 HSRC award for capacity building.
She has been a member of among others, the ILO/Unesco Board of Experts on Teachers; Education International’s research institute in Brussels; and the Umalusi Council (formerly the South African Certification Council).
Chisholm is the author and co-author of several books and monographs and was editor of the Southern African Review of Education from 2004 to 2009. She says her career choice was inspired by, “the 1976 Soweto student revolt; teaching at Athlone High School in Cape Town, the schools’ boycott of 1980 and teachers’ struggles in the 1980s”.
“With other activists, I developed an understanding of the role of education that showed me that I had a choice either to become part of the system or part of the process to change it,” she adds.
She says the main obstacles she faced in breaking the glass ceiling was others’ “lack of faith” in her capacities. Chisholm advises women in leadership and management positions, “to enable women’s development through training, mentorship and giving them responsibility so that they can prove themselves”.
She says she believes that, in her field of work, more could be done to support women in their careers through better mentorship as well as by closing the gap between home and working life.
The thing she enjoys most about her job is grappling with and overcoming challenges, especially when this involves working with others to do so.
What education system in the world is she inspired by or has learnt from?
“I have been inspired above all else by South Africans. I think South Africa has a lot to offer the world. Our Education Labour Relations Council, for example, is a model for countries such as Japan, where teachers have minimal rights. I have been inspired less by particular countries than by people across the world who strive for a better world.”
Chisholm says she has conducted much research on how South Africa has borrowed ideas from abroad and the consequences of this.
“Every country’s education system is unique to it and grows out of its own history and social experience. Whether good or bad in their context of origination, borrowed policies, ideas or systems have always become ‘indigenised’ in the local context by the social realities that prevail here. I have learnt that internationally borrowed policies, in other words, have a tendency of being reinterpreted and recontextualised in national contexts in much the same way as national policies are reinterpreted and recontextualised at local and school level.”
She explains that schools and teachers “talk back” at national policies in the same way that national policies “talk back” at the international environment.
“I am cautious about ‘borrowing’ from other countries, or thinking there are any magic policy bullets. What there are, are magic teachers and schools.”
She says she believes that teachers have a special role in society.
“Each one of us will always remember the teacher that made the difference to our lives. Every great and creative person had a great teacher. Only read Chris van Wyk’s Eggs to Lay and Chickens to Hatch to see this.
“If we had more teachers who are remembered in this way, our education system would not be despised but revered. That is also why I have always thought the role of unions is important. Unions have an important educational role to play. And they should be aware of their power to educate teachers, as their members, about many things.”