Learner-learning: New approach

Sound partnerships needed in SCBTD programs:

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. We publish final part of this article

The popular model of SCBTD usually incorporates productive partnerships between schools and other teacher development authorities (such as the National Institute of Education, teacher centres and so on) which promote communication of professional understanding among teacher educators, novice and veteran teachers. Such partnerships support teacher-learning by creating settings where professional practice can be strengthened by allowing teachers to work together with experts, peers and expert practitioners through mentors, faculty adjuncts and teacher-leaders.

Donald Schon differentiates technically competent practitioners (technicians who implement government policies) from the reflective professional teachers who are capable of thoughtfully evaluating their work, adaptable, committed to equity and social justice and in the process of life-long learning. A technician-teacher is competent to protect and reproduce social status-quo while a reflective teacher is likely to be a better agent of social transformation to establish a socially just society.

Professional relationships

Sachs identifies that the authorities responsible for teacher education need to establish and develop different kinds of professional and practical relationships with teachers in the school system. Hargreaves (1994) coined the term ‘cultures of collaboration’ for these relationships which are ideally collaborative, mutually respectful, supportive and providing mutual resource support.

Collaboration involves partnerships characterized by shared responsibility, ownership and risk in creation of a specific enterprise. Such partnerships are genuinely reciprocal relationships which reflect recognition of interdependence and unique contribution of various parties which bring constructive and imaginative problem-solving atmosphere and a will to work for both change and improvement. In addition, they are working relationships which permit risk-taking and possess tolerance for ambiguity, uncertainty and dilemmas.

Partnerships within a school and cluster-based teacher development program have a joint responsibility for planning, implementation and evaluation of outcomes in addition to their joint benefits of a commensurable kind. They are organizational structures which usually facilitate enactment of decisions and appropriate resourcing with intercultural understanding belonged to schools and other educational institutes.

Economic competitiveness

It is not easy to establish, develop and maintain real partnerships. They need both time and commitment at individual and institutional level. Hargreaves argues that ‘the challenge in developing extended cultures of collaboration is more than a challenge an administrative contrivance, of reconstructing interpersonal relations within a teaching community.’ Increasingly, schools are under the pressure of the need for changes to meet new social imperatives and to raise standards, consistent with the claims of the potential for education to contribute to increasing national economic competitiveness.

At the same time, they are under the pressure of adapting to new theories of learning.

Schooling nowadays has become a process of addressing social, cultural and economic changes. Describing multiplicity of teachers’ role, Hinton mentions several including that of technologist, information technology specialists, social workers, psychologists, counsellors, surrogate parents, health advisors, wardens, careers, financial managers, crowed controllers and so on.

SCBTD programs are supposed to develop relationships between schools and teacher education institutes. It is a new model of partnership between teacher education institutes and schools.

This sort of partnership usually opens channels for closing one-sided relationship in which the school is the passive recipient. Partnership also promotes optimal communication between two parties reducing the gap between theory and practice for working with sound awareness of each other with mutual contribution of both parties.

Human resource development

Normally this sort of partnership aims at three aspects: improving methods of teaching and learning, raising teacher quality and developing knowledge about teaching and learning through research.

Partnerships develop a system of support to help schools to handle these ambitions by making teaching-profession as a ‘profession based on partnerships’.

Partnerships within with mutual contribution of both parties in an SCBTD program intend to increase school’s capacity for innovation and knowledge development, too. The benefits for teacher education institutes out of this model are also many: opportunities to relate curriculum of teacher education more closely to complex reality within schools, to play a role in moving towards a more coherent and integrated approach to teacher education that links initial education to induction and continuous professional development and to create strong connections between innovation, professional development and research.

For addressing these aspects, partnerships should have clear mechanism for creating a shared understanding and involvement.

An active partnership of SCBTD which emphasizes both economic and human resource development, supports the conditional benefit that ‘if teachers as human resources are developed at the school level, the benefits would be spread out to more teachers, students and schools, and the country stands benefit at the end.’ (Teweiariki Francis Teaero p1 under Partnership in School based Teacher Development in Kiribati).

The National Institute of Education in its SCBTD programs initiated to promote bilingual education in 2010 provided ample evidence for utilizing them as very efficient and effective approach for teacher development. In 2011, too, the program will be continued and success of this program has already added a sound experience to the institute to see how the program can be improved in future ensuring its impact with other educational authorities.

When reflecting the experience gathered, SCBTD development program has been experienced as highly supportive for both teachers and the institute to closely work, discuss and negotiate collaboratively about the strengths and challenges in teacher empowerment that can be considered it as a process and philosophy to target learners’ success with concrete experiences shared among various stakeholders of education in line with successful stories which, can be theoretically and pragmatically rich in the Sri Lankan education context.

At the same time, this programs supports schools and other related educational institutes to utilize systems approach to experience the positive impact with a large number of benefits in education and through education.

The writer is the Chief Project Officer and Head of the Unit of Language Coordination, National Institute of Education Maharagama.