Chapter 2: The State of Teacher Education

"Overall, deep learning deficits are too common among schooled children in developing countries." Global Monitoring Report, 2009

Numerous authors and global studies on teacher education in the past 20 years have advanced our understanding of what constitutes effective teacher education. There seems to be general consensus that teacher education is not on par with the professional training of other professions such as medicine and engineering. As Schwille, Dambélé, and Schubert put it, "…professional training as it is organized in many countries is not effective." (Schwille, Dembélé, & Schubert, 2007). This observation is echoed in calls for reconceptualization of teacher education in Africa to address the serious shortcomings in learners' performance (see, for example, Kwame Akyeampong, 2006; K. Akyeampong, Ampiah, Fletcher, Kutor, & Sokpe, 2000; Kanu, 2007).

Scholars in the field of comparative and international education have observed that while there have been a plethora of programs to support reforms for more effective teacher education that leads to improved learner performance, many of these programs have not been able to sustain the short term professional development gains made. (Craig, Kraft, & du Plessis, 1998; Lewin & Stuart, 2003; Moon, 2007; Schwille, et al., 2007; Villegas-Reimers, 2003). This is largely true of Africa, where college teaching of teachers has continued to be characterized as traditional in its approach, emphasizing knowledge transmission, theory over practice and superficial understandings of learner-centered education. Intended reforms have not taken root.

"…teacher education programmes in many low income countries have remained substantially unchanged since their development under colonial administrations." Lewin and Stuart, 2003

This chapter will help you learn what the research tells us about the characteristics of teacher education in developing countries in general, and Africa in particular. This resource assumes that you are aware of the vastness and, therefore, diversity in ways teacher education is organized in different African countries.

This chapter will first discuss the effects of EFA and other reforms on the quality of teacher education programs. It will then discuss some institutional and cultural factors impacting the quality of teacher education colleges in Africa, followed by examples of some successful programs. The proposed seminars at the end of this chapter will help the readers develop a comparative understanding of their respective programs and also reflect on possible reforms.

EFA and Increased Demand for Teacher Education

"educated learners ...think for themselves and go beyond the recall of facts and mimicking of skills"

In 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, leaders from around the world converged to address current education issues on a global scale. The most important outcome of the meeting was an agreement to meet the goal of all children participating in basic education by the year 2000 – Education for All (EFA). This had enormous impacts on governments as their priorities shifted from providing for all levels of the education system to opening up access to primary education to masses of out of school children. The demand for teachers increased accordingly to burgeoning school enrollments. More teachers were needed for the increased enrollments in schools; and teachers' colleges, with their meager capacity, were unable to keep up. The quality of pre-service teacher education decreased as the goal of getting teachers into classrooms trumped teacher quality.

At the same time, a move to improve learner performance through improved teacher practices that focused on participatory, child-centered and progressive education was underway. This reform movement came to be known as Learner Centered Education (LCE). The introduction of LCE brought high hopes and promises of increased student performance and, more broadly, educated learners who could think for themselves and go beyond the recall of facts and mimicking of skills. These learners were expected to grow up to be active participants in the economy and civil society (Dahlstrom and Lemma, 2005). The conceptual shift away from traditional forms of teaching and learning and toward LCE, together with the need to increase teacher supply, produced twin pressures on teachers' colleges across Africa.

As the year 2000 approached, it was clear that the goals of EFA were not going to be met. In April 2000, another world forum was held in Dakar, Senegal, to reaffirm the commitments to EFA . The renewed commitment promised increased donor assistance to developing countries to achieve EFA by 2015. And yet the quality of schooling and in teacher preparation continued to decline. As classes in Africa became more crowded (student teacher ratios of 100 children for one teacher are still found in many parts of Africa), implementing reform-minded approaches based on LCE became more difficult. Teamed with inadequately prepared teachers and an increased demand for more teachers, teacher education quality declined.

Impediments to Changing the State of Teacher Education

During pre-service preparation in particular, LCE is broadly seen as not having taken root and teachers' colleges seem to be trapped in traditional ways of organizing teacher preparation. We use the terms traditional in this text to refer to uncritical use of teacher education methods, most of which do not encourage active learning, resort to direct instruction and knowledge transmission, and are not learner-centered. While the above mentioned rapid expansion in schooling can be justifiably given as a reason for this, there are also other impediments to reforms embedded in the current state of teacher education. The next sub-sections discuss some of these.

Teacher Educators Teaching as They Were Taught

Despite years of policy and programs designed to promote active, participatory and learner-centered education in primary school classrooms, the focus on whole class activities of choral response, memorizing and recalling information, and a focus on lower level cognitive skills remains the norm. Teachers' college classrooms tend to be characterized by an emphasis on recall and memorization similar to the one that characterizes the schools in general. While the effects of reform are not completely unnoticed, most observers of African education have found a narrow range of teaching strategies in use in college classrooms (Kwame Akyeampong, 2006; K. Akyeampong, et al., 2000; Kanu, 2007; Stuart & Tatto, 2000). For the most part, teacher educators teach how they were taught in African primary classrooms. As a result the student teachers reproduce the traditional norms of behavior in their own classrooms. Teacher education, thus, exhibits a self-perpetuating nature that works against change and improvement (Stuart, 2002, p. 368). From an early encounter with teaching as young students in their own schools to becoming teacher educators, most of us are exposed to both informal and formal experiences that continue to influence our perspectives on teaching and learning. This long stretch of learning to teach has been appropriately called Continuum of Teacher Learning (CTL) (Schwille, et al., 2007). The CTL describes four phases of teacher learning as follows:

• Learning as a student (Apprenticeship of Observation)
• Pre-service teacher education
• Induction as a beginning teacher
• Continuing professional development

In the case of developing countries, the first two phases are the most formative for teachers' learning. If ideas about good teaching that most teachers and teacher educators have are associated with traditional methods, then it should not surprise us to see teacher education in Africa as persistently traditional in its approach, grounded in behaviorism and emphasizing knowledge transmission and theory over practice.

While most new waves of reforms continue to call upon teacher educators to change and incorporate more learner-centered, hands-on approaches into their practice, teachers continue to teach how they were taught due to an apprenticeship of observation. As you can see, the reform efforts clearly conflict with and attempt to displace what is traditionally regarded as good teaching. It is largely due to this conflict that most teacher educators may find it difficult to align their practice with reformist ideas. While you may appreciate the benefits of reform-based suggestions for change, your early experiences with teaching may work against translating them into practice. As a consequence, and as documented by many observers, the hoped-for reforms toward learner-centered pedagogies make little progress (ACTIVE-LEARNING, 2007; Kwame Akyeampong, 2006; Carnoy, 2007; Chizambe, Tindi, Kayombo, & du Plessis, 2007; Craig, et al., 1998; Lewin & Stuart, 2003; Schwille, et al., 2007; Tabulawa, 2003).

Lack of Sustained Institutionalized Professional Development for Teacher Educators

Most teacher educators in African colleges of education and in-service teacher educators are rarely professionally educated as teacher educators (Stuart & Tatto, 2000). Rather, most teacher educators are subject specialists formerly teaching in high schools who have been recruited to teach at the teachers' college. Sometimes the primary school teachers are also promoted to teacher education posts. In college education departments, specialists with degrees in education are appointed to teach education subjects, often with little experience in the primary school classroom. Degree holders in mathematics, science, literature, history and geography, with little or no studies in education, are often hired to teach those subjects at the teachers' college and often find it difficult to make connections between teaching the subject matter and preparing teachers to teach those subjects. In many colleges, this results in separation of academic subjects from the educational subjects.

Little relevant and practical material has been developed for college tutors to help them make progress on their understanding of theoretical perspectives on participatory or reform-minded teacher education, and even fewer relevant materials exist to assist teacher educators to develop their practice. College tutors wanting to develop their understanding of reform-based teacher education and improve their practice may not always have easy access to relevant resources due to poor college libraries, lack of or slow internet connections, or long distances to those places where resources can be found.

In some countries, professional development of college teachers has often been conducted through donor-supported programs aimed at a particular subset of college teachers (e.g., literacy, science and mathematics). Although implemented in conjunction with Ministries of Education, the effects of these programs on tutor performance are seldom sustained. Several reasons have been suggested to explain this, such as a narrow programmatic focus on specific interventions (e.g. teaching reading), lack of institutional ownership of programs, an absence of career incentives associated with such programs, and, in some places, high teacher educator turnover resulting in an ever present need to orient new staff with their new roles as college-based teacher educators.

Few countries in Africa have professional associations or journals on teacher education, and institutional climates may not generally be conducive to professional growth and development. The meager resources earmarked for reform activities are usually allocated to increasing the capacities of teachers at primary levels in teaching specific school subjects such as reading and mathematics. As a result, few resources are left for the professional development of in-service faculty at teachers' colleges. Thus, pre-service institutions are often left out of reforms in primary education.

Institutional Role in Professional Growth and Development

A college with a dynamic principal or educational leader can make professional development a priority for the college. Also, Ministries of Education or other bodies responsible for pre-service teacher education can provide resources and a policy environment for meaningful professional development that is sustained and leads to improved practice at the college. Yet it is rare to find the institutional leadership or policy environment needed to stimulate and sustain meaningful professional development of the teacher educators. In most colleges, little time is made for professional development for staff, and, in some cases, tutors with college degrees disdain participation in professional development, especially when it involves participating equally with junior colleagues. College principals tend to focus on administrative issues and are not generally provided with support to become instructional leaders.

As discussed earlier, an unintended result of EFA has been that college faculty often teach large numbers of students and supervise them in the field, leaving little time for professional development activities. Elsewhere, workplace norms provide little incentive for professional development: career ladders are limited, low pay of teacher educators compels many to supplement their incomes in off campus activities, and college leadership does not promote active professional development.

Cultural Barriers to Teacher Educators Implementing Active Pedagogy

Even where the concepts of active and participatory learning or learner-centered education reforms are well understood, there are often cultural barriers to implementation. A number of authors have written about the cultural norms that prevent the implementation of active pedagogy (Kwame Akyeampong, 2006; Kanu, 2007; Lewin & Stuart, 2003; Owuor, 2008; Tabulawa, 1998). Norms regarding hierarchy, gender, age, culture and epistemology are powerful drivers of what teacher educators do in their practice.

Examining your beliefs in this regard is an important step in moving beyond traditionalist approaches. However, deconstructing beliefs regarding teaching is rarely practiced as part of professional development of teacher educators. This topic is taken up in more detail in Chapter 4, Learner Centered Education.

Pressure of Exams to "Cover the Curriculum"

"Covering the curriculum" is a common expression used by teachers and teacher educators. Rather than seeing teaching and learning as a process of "uncovering the curriculum," many teacher educators are driven by the need to complete the syllabus and transmit all course material to student teachers in preparation for exams. Indeed this approach is regarded as exemplary when measured by student teachers' exam passing rates. This exam-driven approach spills over into in-service approaches (where there are often no exams or other assessments for what a teacher has learned in professional development activities) as the teacher educators rely on 'downloading' the information because the duration of the workshop is too short.

With the pressure of exams as a measure of student teacher learning, teacher educators are compelled to 'download information' or 'impart knowledge,' and emphasize student teacher recall and tests and exams that mimic what has been delivered in class. Opportunities for deep understanding, debating issues, providing alternative views and deep exploration of topics from different perspectives are limited. When systems rely less on exams and more on authentic, locally derived, continuous assessment, there is more opportunity for a wider range of teaching strategies to be used, leading to deeper understandings by student teachers.

Examples of Successful Teacher Education Programs

Namibia in the 1990s provides an example of reform-oriented teacher education. In the years following its armed struggle and independence from South Africa, the Ministry of Education's policy for teacher education took a proactive stance of "undoing apartheid." For Namibians, this meant a focus on a democratic approach to teacher education reform that would develop "teachers as critical agents in creating the reform in relation to several broad principles: access, equity, quality and democracy" (Swarts, 2003). The shift in Namibia was away from a focus on procedural competence in the classroom to a more participatory methodology oriented to transformation. This approach was seen by the Ministry of Education as a way of raising the critical consciousness of teachers not only to provide quality education, but to act as agents of change at the community level. Continuous assessment was introduced and externally moderated final examinations were eliminated. Teacher educators were trained in new methodologies, and integrated and learner-centered curricula were developed. A component of action research (called Critical Practitioner Inquiry) was included in upgrading courses for both student teachers and teacher educators.

Farrell (2008) also summarizes some successes at reform in teacher education in what are sometimes referred to as 'alternative' teacher education programs. While looking at a number of alternative teacher education programs he highlights the Escuela Nueva (New School) in Columbia, the Non-Formal Primary Education Program of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the Community Schools Program of UNICEF in Egypt. These alternatives to the mainstream teacher education systems generally include the training of teachers for multi-grade classrooms and curricula, active pedagogy, individual and small group student work, self-guided learning and constructivist learning (discussed in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5). These programs often draw student teachers from unemployed young people (mostly women) with limited academic education who are based in the communities in which they teach and would not qualify for entrance into teachers' colleges otherwise. Compared to mainstream pre-service teacher preparation, these programs have a relatively short initial face-to-face segment followed by intensive on-the-job support. These programs provide in-service support to the teachers over a number of years, match teachers with mentors on the job and promote participation in peer support groups for teachers to share ideas, problem-solve and express opinions. All three of these programs are successful both in terms of student performance, as students often outperform their peers in government schools, and lower costs than those of mainstream schooling.

Conclusion

This chapter was a very brief survey of the state of teacher education in Africa in relation to recent waves of reform. The global push to increase access to primary education has put tremendous pressure on teachers' colleges to produce more teachers. At the same time, new perspectives on teaching and learning have put teacher educators in conflict with both institutional inertia and time-hardened traditional views of teaching and learning. These combined pressures may be contributing to an observed decline in the quality of teacher education.

Despite an emphasis on reform-oriented teacher education in most African countries, traditional teaching approaches have persisted. While this chapter has suggested some possible reasons for the slow pace of reform, the rest of this book focuses on examining some of these reasons in more detail, gives concrete examples of reform oriented practices, and provides suggestions for seminars as ways for teacher educators to reflect on their beliefs and practices as they grow professionally and strive for higher quality teacher education.

Seminars

Seminar 1. Traditional or reform oriented teacher education

Introduction

This seminar is designed to enable participants to gain a deeper comparative understanding of traditional and reform oriented teacher education programs. It will also prompt you to critically examine your own program in terms of this comparative framework. The purpose is to use this understanding to ultimately reflect on the possibilities of institutional change and reform.

Specific Tasks

Table 2.1 (adapted from Craig et al., 1998, p. 147-151) illustrates some of the characteristics of reform oriented teacher education as well as traditional teacher education.

Here are some questions you may want to discuss with other colleagues:

1. Look at the teacher education program you are implementing. Is it reform-oriented teacher education, traditional teacher education, or a mixture of both? Explain.
2. Are there other aspects of policy and program that don't fit into this dichotomy? What are they? Why don't they fit into either of these classifications?
3. Does the college or the Ministry of Education hold a particular perspective regarding teacher education? Is it traditional or reform-oriented approach? Or, is it a mixture of different approaches? Explain.
4. As a college, department or individual, examine each of the areas in Table 2.2 to determine how each component aligns with the approaches both stated and in practice. Add new areas such as practice teaching, timetabling, tutorials etc. For each component give examples of how it is consistent with reform or traditional approaches to teacher education. Can you develop a summary statement for each component? *Examples of how you might respond are provide for you in Table 2.2.

Suggested Reading

Craig, H., Kraft, R., and du Plessis, J. (1998) Teacher Development: Making an Impact. Washington, DC: World Bank and AED/USAID.

Schwille, John and Martial Dambélé with Jane Schubert. (2007) Global perspectives on teacher learning: improving policy and practice. Paris: UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning.

Seminar 2. Addressing the policy-practice gap

Introduction

This seminar is to be held after the first seminar and not independently. The purpose of this seminar is to build on your understanding and develop potential plans to address the gaps in the college program that you identified in the last seminar.

Specific Tasks

Look at the gaps between areas of policy and practice you described in the last seminar. If assessment in practice, for example, is focused on recall of information and the approach is more of a reform-oriented approach, what is needed to bring the assessment more in line with this approach? Part of a plan might be to acquire books and other resources to update staff's knowledge on the types of assessment that are consistent with the approach. Student assessments could be developed collaboratively in departments and shared with other departments. Practical examples of interesting and effective assessments could be shared with others after they have been used with student teachers.

Table 2.3 mght be useful in facilitating the development of strategies to address the gap between what is expected (policy) and what is being implemented. This exercise might be repeated after completing the seminars in Professional Learning Communities in the Teachers' College or other professional development activities.

References