Learner - learning: New approach

G H Asoka

Ensuring quality of learner-learning as it is defined within a particular education system is the most fundamental feature of high-quality education. Several elusive and highly complex constructs such as quality of education, quality of learning and quality of teaching influence this process and the latter has been identified as the most important out of these because of its variety of interlocking factors focusing on quality of teachers and their facilitation.

Recent efforts to enhance educational quality have identified the approach called school and cluster-based, on-going (continuous) teacher-professional development programs because of their more effective and efficient nature than the same of the off-site programs for which teachers are usually called at local, national, regional and international levels.

Employment of various officers such as in-service advisors (ISAs) between teacher education institutes (TEIs) and schools using a cascade for promoting teacher-quality has also been found out as poor and weak in their efficiency and effectiveness in accessing target quality-ensuing aspects. This situation has often created difficulties such as a one-sided relationship in which schools become a passive recipient of teachers with less power than TEIs, absence of optimal communication between schools and TEIs, negative perceptions of schools about TEIs and vice versa, possible gaps between theory and practice and lack of opportunities for the school to act with responsibility to promote teacher development through mutual contribution.

In the Sri Lankan scenario, teacher employment currently needs careful attention and well-organized mechanism in terms of its quality rather than its quantity. School and cluster-based teacher development (SCBTD) possesses a holistic approach to quality development allowing related institutes to access desirable targets using a systems approach. Therefore SCBTD development highlighting quality-enhancement in education is the focused topic for discussion in this article as a motive to direct responsible educational authorities.

Need for Enhancement of Education

Quantity and quality of education are pressing issues which have attracted policy makers for a long time. Today the key role of teachers in promoting quality-learning is a key trend for justifying importance of improving quality of education and its impact. By the time of the Jomtien Declaration, the matters related to quantity were prioritized setting goals to be achieved by the end of the 1990 and then in 2000, the second Education For All (EFA) conference held in Dakar, Senegal declared quality as one among the six goals identified in developing education.

‘... evidence over the past decade has shown that efforts to expand enrolment must be accompanied by attempts to enhance educational quality if children are to be attracted to school, stay there and achieve meaningful learning outcomes... recent assessments of learning achievements in some countries have shown that a sizable percentage of children is acquiring only a fraction of the knowledge and skills they are expected to master. What students are meant to learn has often not been clearly defined, well taught or accurately assessed.’ (Objective No: 6, Dakar Framework for Action, quoted in ADEA 2004, P.11)

Quality needed in education today is important not only as a choice, but also as an imperative according to the EFA Global Monitoring Report-2005: Education for All - The Quality Imperative (UNESCO 2004). Quality has been identified as the motivating factor for education planning, reform and practice throughout the world. Though quality is explicitly discussed or not done, any education system always deals with a certain vision of quality.

When the quality aspects are discussed relating it to teacher development, it is necessary to quote how the UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report reads teacher and teacher’s role in education:

‘.... what goes on in the classroom and the impact of the teacher and teaching has been identified in numerous studies as the crucial variable for improving learning outcomes. The way teachers teach is of critical concern in any reform designed to improve quality’ (UNESCO 2004, p. 152).

Right recruits

The same report further mentions five areas critical to teacher-quality: finding the right recruits, initial teacher education, on-going professional support, teacher earnings, teacher deployment and conditions of service.

Thus it is clear that current societies concentrate on school effectiveness and school development in terms of student achievement and developing students’ other desirable characteristics focusing on teaching/learning process and the conditions that support them.

The USAID funded EQUIP I program (Education Quality Improvement Program - I) also mentions that decentralization and widespread reforms in curriculum and instruction that emphasize active learning for students have emphasized to affect the content and structure of programs for teacher-learning.’

The arguments, ideas, information and details with constructive criticism and suggestions which had echoed in the Parliament, Sri Lanka on the 19th, May 2010 in its discussions on education also largely focused on quality rather than quantity: however the constant changes implemented from time to time in education without a national policy on the education do not assist the country to ensure target quality of its education.

Thus the need for national educational policy which is able to ensure quality in line with quantity of every facet of education including teacher recruitment, teacher deployment, teacher-education and teacher development for teacher empowerment needs immediate attention. Today two fundamental paradigm shifts have been identified as influential factors of quality-teaching: the shift in approaches to both student and teacher learning from passive to active learning, and the shift to more decentralized forms of authority, activity and agency at school level though the latter has not yet been vividly addressed in Sri Lanka.

Modifications in student-learning of previously used approaches in the process of instructional design were based on passive learning, rote memorization, teacher-centred atmosphere and positivist base, but the novel approaches currently identified mostly focus on active learning using higher-order thinking skills in a learner-centred background with a constructivist base.

Nature of empowerment

Shifts in teacher-learning has also been distributed in seven sub-areas: in goals, nature of empowerment programs, learning model, nature of accessing, use of resources, importance expected in teacher knowledge and approach to knowledge.

Regarding quality, conventional teacher development programs aimed at the competent teachers who follow rigid and prescribed classroom routines. This has been shifted to set goals for transforming teachers to become reflective practitioners who can make informed, professional choices and decisions. The teachers, who were ‘trained’ to follow patterns, are now expected to be empowered professionals.

The passive learning model used in a cascade has been shifted to active and participatory learning in a school based model. Meanwhile teacher facilitation with support material has replaced ‘expert driven’ seminars and conferences. Instead of little inclusion of ‘teacher knowledge’ and realities of classroom, they are nowadays used as a rich source for teacher empowerment programs across experiential and discovery-learning models at the centre of androgogy in order to achieve on-going professional development with localization and appropriation.

To be continued