LEARNING HOW TO TEACH - The upgrading of unqualified primary teachers in sub-Saharan Africa
The formation of a teaching community can be based on a cluster of schools, working together in an education programme, in which feeding schools and core schools are linked together in a community of professionals. Such school clusters are quite often supported by teacher resource centres (TRC).65 “TRCs are often housed in a larger school at the nucleus of a school zone or a cluster of smaller neighbouring schools, sometimes enabling the cluster to pool and share resources, experience and expertise among staff, and to facilitate in-service activities.”66 For instance, groups of teachers can learn cooperatively in workshops of one or two days that are held in these centres every month or six weeks.* Ideally, this model of education encourages adjustment to the needs that emerge from daily practice and enhances an interactive learning process. However, when groups of student teachers are too large, so that interactivity between students ceases to be feasible, the disconnection between TRC education and real classroom experiences can be as large as in mainstream pre-service teacher education.67 Other disadvantages of such a model can be that the various workshops start functioning as separate modules with little coherence, tempting teachers to participate only selectively in the workshops. Models of education that make use of distance education may provide an attractive alternative. Communications with and among teachers can, for instance, take place through printed materials, radio, television, internet or mobile phones. In this model teachers are educated while staying in school, and their education does not create an additional workload for colleagues that need to replace them.68 Distance education can be of great use in rural areas, where long distances and scanty infrastructure limit externally supported models of mentoring. However, distance education can only provide a supportive addition in teacher education. Though it can be integrated with other models of education,69 distance education is not on its own sufficient for the entire education of unqualified teachers. Distance education in the form of printed materials and modules is best regarded as a “carrier” between the non-school-based and in-service components of an upgrading programme. Ultimately, personal support, such as observation of classroom practice and the offering of feedback, remains an essential element in teacher education.70 Feedback is also essential to distance education. Far too often, distance education is reduced to the one-way provision of instructional material, without any interaction on assignments. Despite being “at a distance,” the challenge in the design of distance education is to develop materials with a relevant and locally produced content71 and “with a particular focus on classroom relevance, learner achievement, and community need.”72 This is especially the case with internet applications that can be easily overloaded with materials originating in donor countries. Information and communication technologies in education can only be effectively used where the perception of education has shifted from “education for ICT” * This schedule is used in the USAID Basic Education System Overhaul in Ethiopia.
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