The magnitude and complexity of this enormous and imperative sweeping change, will undoubtedly throw up unprecedented challenges fraught with the attendant problems and dangers such fundamental restructuring is likely to generate. Many of these problems are manifest in the nature of current rampant social trends as the new dispensation undergoes a singularly difficult and troubled social transformation process. Clearly, problems of social change in South Africa have little precedence elsewhere, given the acutely skewed politicized nature of policy and provisioning over some 50 years of minority privileged rule. With the advent of a democratic dispensation committed to the institution and consolidation of a system of greater equity and access in all of its sectors, the degree of energy and optimism required needs little elaboration here. Suffice it to say, the awesome challenges confronting the new incumbents to office staggering though they might be, are being engaged with the vigour and tenacity they warrant. This scenario, though commonplace within all social sectors, is perhaps nowhere more pressing than in that most contested terrain subject to turmoil since 1976, and consequently representing the test bed for political emancipation the educational sector.
South African educational practice, insulated from contemporary developments, was effectively rendered irrelevant to the majority of those it was ostensibly designed for, inherently behaviorist in practice, content and methodology. Unfettered subscription to rote, repetition and regurgitative methodologies, antagonistic to more enlightened teaching approaches, comprised the mainstay of methodology and paradigm. The present Herculean challenges to educational reconstruction, are in no small measure commensurable with the dysfunctionality of previous structural design. Much of this is now conventional wisdom. Perhaps more important, are the implications for present capacity to transform the system in the context of a renewal of culture and ethos within education, at the dawn of the new millennium.
Education and training in South Africa, has been accorded priority as indeed the White Paper on Education emphasizes. "For the first time in South Africa's history, a government has the mandate to plan the development of education and training for the benefit of the majority of it's people.........A government of National Unity pledged to reconciliation and reconstruction, has a profound duty to ensure that the vast equation and training system numbering more than 11 million students alone, becomes a place of true learning and training system." Both the dictates and sentiment of the White Paper in particular, and the popular demand and expectation in general, put great emphasis on the rapid expansion of enrolment, especially at basic entry level.
Peculiar though its problems might be, South Africa would not be the first country experiencing the imperative of systemic educational transformation. Many African countries embarked upon similar policies in the wave and wake of independence in the post war period. Observations of transformation dialectics in several developing countries might prove instructive and offer leads as to where and when 'turning points' have been reached, in the protracted and often obfuscating change process. However, the present status of education and available capacities within this and other critical sectors, urge the examination of a few observations and issues potentially impacting upon medium and longer term national transformation goals.
The Department of National Education and indeed the White Paper itself, places considerable store by such central concerns as equity of access, universality, quality, rehabilitation, democracy and diversity within education, accountability, and open and lifelong learning, etc. Whilst these and the many other goals that might be included, each warrant meticulous attention in that they constitute the under girds to educational reconstruction, all of these aspects will not be discussed here, for reasons of space. However, four essential areas are singled out for discussion in the context of how these are given application within the work of NGOs in general, and that of OLSET, the Open Learning Systems Education Trust, more specifically. These respective strands are neither hierarchically ranked nor necessarily separate and disjointed, rather they resonate more sharply with the outcomes based activities within the microcosm of the educational renewal project alluded to. The four areas are:
A low threat intervention, Radio Learning serves as an appropriate technology vehicle for shifting orthodox pre servicing methodologies to more relevant approaches in keeping with the demands of a new educational dispensation. OLSET's teaching methodology, premised upon the new national curriculum, aimed at innovative learner centered approaches to improving instructional quality as well as teacher effectiveness in the classroom situation. Pupil teacher ratios remain high in schools throughout South Africa, a situation further impacting the already poor outcomes and high failure, repetition and drop-out rates. Admittedly, research findings indicate that class size might be overplayed in pointing to causality in failure rates. However, ratios as high as 120:1, as many OLSET schools attest to, cannot be entertained as having no bearing on quality of educational instruction.
Unlike several Latin American instances, South African Radio Learning does not represent a supplementary or enrichment strategy in introducing new curricular objectives. It constitutes a core curriculum alternative delivery and practice, where teachers are inadequately trained for effective teaching of communication skills, often in spite of the regulatory pre servicing period. Radio Learning in this instance, offers an invaluable entry point to teacher inservicing and support, regardless of distance from center. For many thousands of teachers, this radio access remains the sole significant professional contact with current mainstream developments in educational reconstruction. Given the embryonic status of the newly instituted provincial educational authorities, it is plausible that they would otherwise remain marginalized for a considerable time in the foreseeable future, in a country where some 60% of population still reside rurally.
Measurable gains are being attained by way of learner outcomes and teacher upgrading via inservicing strategies such as Teacher Support Group mechanisms and daily classroom lesson observation and monitoring. Elaborate but uncomplicated user friendly Teacher Guides outlining daily radio program content, aims and objectives, serve as an indispensable guide to all project teachers and necessarily their unqualified peers, more so. Extra mural Teacher Development modules by radio/audio, are seen as potentially powerful inservicing modalities, with work already in progress. The impact of such strategies on development might ultimately depend on the extent to which they are employed in conjunction with other systemic strategies in the provinces. Positive evaluation findings regarding the IRI initiative in seven of South Africa's nine provinces, continue to inform and encourage further work and innovation within the field of distance education by radio. It is clear that the open learning modalities of IRI in South Africa, especially in Teacher Upgrading and Inservicing, have yet to be exploited to their full potential. Such an approach could effectively link levels of capacity and learning and enable learners to move to higher skills levels, from any starting point. An open learning strategy of this sort, might prove a timely and immensely powerful channel for educational skills development and enhancement.
Distance education and open learning models are gaining increasing currency as equally effective alternative provisioning systems for the better placed as well as severely deprived educational constituencies. Innovative curricula using media such as radio integrated with print materials, are considered cost-effective quality options. More notably, curriculum reform demonstrates cognizance of skills needs, trends and concerns likely to be commonplace in the new information technology century. Distance education combined with conventional classroom modalities, is becoming standard practice even in rural settings, surely an encouraging sign of comfort levels with multichannel applications, however low tech and off the beaten information highway it may be.
A recently published audit characterizes South Africa's 360 000 teachers, as 'all being in need of some form of inservice training INSET.' ( National Teacher Audit, 1995.) The implications of this professional deficit for curricular changes and paradigm shift, are staggering. Seen in another light, this might constitute immense opportunities for relevant upgrading and repositioning of teacher skills in tune with the information driven needs of the rapidly evolving teaching ecosystem of the imminent 21st century. What is essentially considered a disturbingly acute deficit of teacher capacity presently, could be used to great advantage if perceived for the implicit opportunity it offers on the eve of a world-wide paradigm shift in education provisioning and the new skills versatility required of teachers in fast evolving economies.
That Radio Learning already offers daily access to all but two provinces of South Africa's nine provinces in a relatively short period of development, is not fortuitous. Daily rural outreach is unsustainable by most other means, given the expanse and isolated nature of rural communities. In anticipation of this provisioning concern, OLSET embarked upon an instructional design, portable across the provinces in terms of content, curricular approaches and methodology, easily accessible by the prevalence of radios in most communities in the country.
Access issues, however, have not been narrowly confined to 'availability on the air'. Acknowledgement of various learning styles and media preferences within the radio instructional design (all not being able to be accommodated of necessity) imputes more generous construction consensus around the notion of equity of access. Learners are offered an array of approaches to lesson content and structures, in order to accommodate learning style preferences as much as possible. Story, song, motion, music, rhyme, peer teaching, print and graphics, radio, teacher interaction, face to face, total physical engagement, etc., are deployed in imaginative combinations encouraging greater active participation in the learning process. Evaluations show several aspects of learner performances have been impacted positively, and 'equity of access' of content by considerably more pupils within the learning situation, is seen as contra distinct to 'as many as possible accessing the program.'
Similarly, teacher development and inservicing by radio, print and audio and face-to-face combinations, are perceived as potential viable routes to open learning configurations, whereby access is addressed meaningfully through voluntary entry and exit points and not solely through physical outreach connotations.
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