William Spady

In my previous two columns in the Teacher, I’ve traced the evolution of outcomes based education (OBE) thinking and implementation over the past 35 years, from its early emphasis on expanding the conditions of success in schools and classrooms to its transformational emphasis.

Some significant legal and political victories for mother-tongue education were gained in the recent past. In relation to Afrikaans in particular, there was Mikro Primary Schools successful defence against court action by the Western Cape department of education to enforce its language policy on the school governing body (SGB).

Last month, I briefly traced the evolution of the outcomes-based education (OBE) movement over the past 35 years: from its focus on expanding the conditions of success in schools and classrooms during the 1970s and 1980s, to the strongly learner-centred, future-focused, personally empowering emphasis of the five Cs in todays transformational models. These five domains of human functioning — consciousness, creativity, collaboration, competence and compassion — could (and should) be viewed as the real basics of learning, living and leadership in todays changing world.

In the previous edition of the Teacher, I introduced a different way of thinking about "the basics" in education. They are the basics not of learning skills, but of the conditions that make learning happen, and they apply directly — and even urgently — to the daily work of teachers. To introduce these “real” basics, I established four things.

In August, I was asked to share some of the “cutting-edge essence” of my 35 years of experience with OBE in two seminars at the University of Pretoria. It was an exciting day for me – an opportunity to address some of the most basic concepts surrounding OBE thinking and practice in South Africa and elsewhere, and to respond to a host of deep and challenging questions about learners, learning and learning systems.