A loss of public confidence in schoolteachers and increasing scepticism about the education role of teacher unions came under the spotlight last week when unionists, academics and other educationists addressed the state of professionalism among South Africa’s teachers.
The occasion was the second in the “Teachers Upfront” series of education conversations, which was held at the University of Johannesburg on May 31.
The series is the product of a partnership between UJ’s education faculty, Wits University’s school of education, the Bridge education network and the Mail & Guardian.
UJ education academic Dr Lloyd Conley; Ezra Ramasehla, president of the country’s second-largest teacher union, the National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa); and Themba Ndlovu of the South African Council for Educators (Sace) were the main speakers. A representative expected from the largest teacher union, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), failed to arrive.
Conley opened by defining core features of teacher professionalism. “Members of this profession have power and influence over the learners to whom they provide a service and they are therefore expected to guard this power and act ethically and professionally,” he said. “Teachers need to have certain characteristics — namely skills, concern for others and concern for themselves,” Conley said.
The skills include both subject knowledge and teaching prowess; concern for others entails collegiality, commitment and the building of teacher-student relationships, and concern for self involves self-empowerment and self-development. “The most fundamental tenet of professionalism and the most challenging is ethical conduct,” Conley said, and this is why “teaching calls for a sense of personal and corporate responsibility”.
Ramasehla warned that “teachers must not become a law unto themselves”: developing professional judgment “is a critical part of being a teacher”. Acting professionally means behaving honestly, compassionately and with discipline — that is, in ways that do not bring teaching into disrepute.
But there has been a devaluation of teaching in South Africa, Ramasehla said — an erosion of the public’s esteem that has, in turn, influenced teacher behaviour. Prescriptive teaching methods are part of the problem because they communicate to teachers that they are generalists rather than specialists. In addition, “teachers remain generalists because of the short courses the education department puts them through, which do not constitute adequate training”.
New curricular demands compound the problem, Ramasehla argued. “Teacher professionalism is problematic in a system where teachers’ concerns have shifted: they are struggling with the implementation of the new curriculum and conditions in schools do not allow pedagogic changes to take place.”
The negative image of teaching is an additional burden, one that is evident in the profession’s failure to attract sufficient teachers and in the high percentage of teachers who say they want to leave the profession.
Sace’s Ndlovu agreed that, among the myriad challenges teachers face, the many curriculum changes and departmentally required courses have generated much confusion. On society’s apparent distrust of teachers, Ndlovu said: “Some of the conduct displayed by our teachers leaves much to be desired.”
Although teaching is a noble profession deserving of respect, this image is difficult to sustain when there are so many instances of gross misconduct. Focusing on what Sace is doing to promote teacher professionalism and to restore respect to teachers in a society that is losing trust in them, the council’s work on continuing professional teacher development aims “to improve the teacher in practice”.
Ndlovu also spoke of the need for a campaign that communicates to teachers their centrality and the importance of professional behaviour. “We are calling on unions and the department of basic education to be partners in this.” When the discussion was opened to the floor, participants raised numerous factors they thought contributed to declining professional behaviour.
These included dismal remuneration, low levels of empowerment, erratic school resource allocations, and the department of basic education’s failure to take responsibility for the proper upgrading of teachers’ content knowledge. But participants acknowledged that teachers also need to take responsibility for their own development.
“The department is offering bursaries, for example, but are we, as professionals, taking advantage of these opportunities?” Ramasehla asked. Whether unionism itself has become the enemy of professionalism was also debated — and participants commented on the irony of the failure of the Sadtu speaker to arrive.
The need to be not only unionists but also professionals was repeatedly stressed. Said Ramasehla: “We can be unionists in terms of bread-and-butter issues but we can also make sure that we do not let down our learners by taking teachers out of the classroom during teaching times. We at Naptosa believe that it is important to bring back a culture of teaching and learning into classrooms.”
Sace’s approach to teacher professionalism is “to get away from a top-down approach to development and encourage teachers to determine their own development needs”, Ndlovu said. “I think there is no union that would agree to teachers neglecting their responsibilities.” He questioned how unions respond to teachers who do things that don’t fall within their mandate. “I do not see action with regard to rape cases. What can we do to challenge unions to put their words into action and to bring about professionalism?”
Barbara Dale-Jones is chief operations officer at the Bridge education network. Katalin Morgan is managing editor of the journal Education as Change and publications and design consultant in the faculty of education at UJ
The next “Teachers Upfront” dialogue will focus on school communities and will be held at Wits University’s school of education on August 2. For more information, call 011 726 8313 or 011 726 8199