Five months ago a group of teacher educators from 14 universities met at a hotel near OR Tambo International Airport, set on forging a path of definitive change in foundation phase teacher education and research (Mail & Guardian, “Teacher rescue plan takes off“, May 27).
They were also concerned about the status of teachers in South Africa, specifically those in the foundation phase. We know how strongly the early learning foundations of a child direct all future learning and we all entrust our children to the care and the instruction of teachers, yet society no longer accords teachers the status that recognises this.
Under the leadership of Dr Whitfield Green, director of teacher education in the department of higher education and training, the group that met at the airport hotel has had, only a few months later, some notable results to show for their collaborative work. The first issue of a research journal on early childhood learning has been produced, a literacy education winter school was hosted at the University of Johannesburg and plans for a numeracy education winter school to be hosted next year at Rhodes University have been finalised.
Last week the president of the European Union (EU) visited the Funda UJabule school, part of UJ’s Institute for Childhood Education on its Soweto campus, and the South African Research Association for Early Childhood Education was established to co-ordinate research and advocacy in the field. Nine research programmes are well under way at the 14 universities, some of which are conducted in consortia.
One such programme centres on schools such as Funda UJabule, a partnership between UJ and the Gauteng education department, in which the uses of research and teaching are investigated. Such schools could, in time, become part of all pre-service teacher education programmes.
Supported by funding from the EU, the initiative responds to the alarming low numbers of suitably qualified teachers for the foundation phase. The number of enrolments at universities is so low that children who enter the foundation phase in schools in which an African language is the medium of instruction are highly unlikely to be taught by a professional.
With this in mind, a programme of 200 new bursaries has been launched specifically for candidates who are proficient in one of the eight African languages. Teachers who have not learned the nitty-gritty of teaching initial literacy and numeracy simply cannot be expected to teach these highly specialised topics.
Drawing top candidates
The drive to improve early childhood education is now snowballing. The stance of the new research association’s members is that research and advocacy, with the best teacher-education programmes, will awaken a society that expects much from its education structures but does little to afford teachers of the young the status needed to draw top candidates.
We should contrast a country such as Finland, where top students at school are selected to study education at university. They are given the best education possible for the teaching profession and paid a competitive salary, and show little need to be controlled, assessed and monitored by the authorities. Although we are a long way from that, there is nothing wrong with developing an attitude of zero tolerance for the low status given to teachers of the young.
Before 1994 colleges and universities for white students had programmes to train teachers in the foundation phase (then called junior primary) that selected the top school-leavers. Where I grew up, for instance, the image of a grade one teacher in the community is, to this day, that of a second mother. She is caring, kind and hardworking, and respected by those who know their children’s future is in her hands.
From our inquiry into the choices school-leavers make about different career paths in the teaching profession, it has emerged that the weaker students used to be relegated to the foundation phase in the formerly black and coloured colleges. One colleague tells me that in her day aspiring teachers were told to aim for matric teaching posts to fight apartheid the more effectively by producing the best possible matric candidates.
To work on the image of teachers and disseminate current research on learning and teaching in the childhood years, the new research association’s South African Journal of Childhood Education has entered the academic forum. Published by the Centre for Education Practice Research, the research leg of the UJ Institute for Childhood Education, its co-editors are at the universities of Pretoria, Cape Town and the Free State. It will be up for accreditation in 2012 and researchers have already offered 34 articles as non-subsidy gifts to get it off the ground. This means the authors have forfeited substantial state subsidy by submitting to a journal that will only be accredited after its first year in the field — an encouraging sign of the commitment and foresight of the childhood education community in South Africa.
The literacy education winter school hosted by UJ in July drew 123 participants from universities and non-governmental organisations from across the country. The flagship courses were presented by a literacy education team from Harvard University, with UJ visiting professor Catherine Snow as key presenter. Professor Paola Uccelli, also from Harvard but originally from Peru, a specialist in multilingual literacy, assisted Snow. Their team was completed by Dr Ingrid Willenberg, a South African PhD graduate from Harvard and originally a speech and audiology specialist from Cape Town.
The momentum to improve foundation phase teacher education and teacher status looks as though it might be paying off. In 2009, 13 institutions offered foundation phase education as a professional degree option or a postgraduate certificate. In that year there were 10Â 073 enrolments. This means that by the end of 2012 there should be many more professionals qualifying than the meagre number of 1Â 347 who qualified in 2009.
But there will not be many more graduates who can teach in an African language, because only 174 of those 1Â 347 graduates were prepared for teaching in schools where an African language is the medium of instruction. Moreover, the 174 graduates were mostly isiZulu-speakers. In that year — 2009 — the enrolments were also mostly isiZulu-speakers, largely at the University of Zululand.
UJ came on board in 2010, so there are now an additional 240 students who may qualify by the end of 2013 and 2014. And 215 of them will be qualified to teach in the schools where there is the greatest need to teach in African languages.
With carefully planned and monitored programmes at the universities, bringing students on board in the digital age, who knows how fast we will be able to change the status of teachers of the young?
Elbie Henning is professor of educational linguistics at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Education Practice Research. She is the editor of the journals Education as Change and South African Journal of Childhood Education.