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SECTION 3
Extending the University of Fort Hare, Open University partnership
The DEEP project has been working at a number of levels including acting
as:
1. a showcase research enquiry to investigate how new technologies could
change the lives of rural teachers;
2. a study to show how established Universities can become multi modal
in terms of methodology and research;
3. an almost philosophical exploration of the forms that partnership and
technology can take in Universities working together to address some of
the global challenges of the age.
In the ten years of the Fort Hare–Open University partnership a
number of themes around teacher education, particularly a developing context
like that of the Eastern Cape have emerged. The two universities have
worked together to disseminate some of the findings. For example, the
partnership experience has provided exemplar case studies for The World
Bank in a number of different contexts, workshops, conferences and publications.
At the Commonwealth of Learning international biannual conference in Durban
in 2002 academic staff from the two universities and teachers working
on the DEEP project made presentations around the key themes of the work.
In a joint paper entitled ‘Challenging the assumptions about teacher
education and training in Sub-Saharan Africa: a new role for open learning
and ICT’, Nhlanganiso Dladla and Bob Moon elaborated a number of
generic points for teacher education about some of the impediments to
the successful implementation of new forms of teacher training. These
included:
• The erroneous perception that school-based teacher education can
be equated with old style unsupported distance learning. Supported school-based
training using state-of-the-art technologies bears no relation to that
old, much-discredited model.
• The way course designers treat unqualified or under-qualified
teachers ‘as if’ they were new pre-service entrants to training.
The prior knowledge of teachers, whatever their qualifications, needs
to be given prominence in the planning and production of courses.
• The equation of ‘one year’s full-time study must equal
two years part-time study’ was identified as seriously inhibiting
the new and urgent forms of school-based training. Some form of recognition
of prior experience needs to be developed. We seriously question whether
teachers with a number of years of classroom experience really need to
spend as many years acquiring the competence to successfully teach the
primary curriculum.
• The problem of programmes designed in such a way that large chunks
seem irrelevant to the class teacher. Teaching educational theory or subject
knowledge without making it meaningful to the daily task of the teacher
represents a wasted opportunity.
• Insufficient policy reflection in many countries on the balance
of time and resources between pre-service training and ongoing continuing
professional development. In a context, however, where resources are limited
and need expanding rapidly there must be a question mark over continuing
with traditional models. Is it appropriate to give some primary teachers
three or four years campus-based training whilst others, sometimes a majority,
receive none? Is there not a case for providing an intensive foundation
course for greater numbers and linking this to better resourced and strongly
conceptualised models of supported school-based training?
Based on our experience and understanding of these problems, the Fort
Hare–Open University partnership team have asserted that:
• if we are to educate all our children, then we also need to educate
all our teachers. More attention, we suggest needs to be given to this
complementary challenge of providing universal primary education. And
to do this it is necessary to formulate models and practices of professional
development that are conceptually strong, confident, and whilst sensitive
to the inevitable complexity and contrariness of local circumstances,
are capable of establishing discourse across and between communities;
• we need to build new, flexible, effective, school based forms
of teacher education at a reach hitherto undreamt of (and this involves
rethinking the traditional pre-service/in-service divide);
• emergent models of development that exploit new forms of technology
need to be examined in order that new practices of teacher education might
be shared, experienced and evaluated globally;
• we believe that a task for teacher education, in parallel with
Universal Primary Education (UPE), is to create a new and imaginative
‘architecture’ for discourse and debate that is truly international,
drawing on wide ranging practices and scholarship, and one that embraces
the challenge set out in this paper.
UPE is a global challenge, and one of the key Millennium Development Goals.
The statistics and analyses that inform the UPE agenda, however, make
salutary reading. Despite strenuous efforts over the last decade, over
100 million children are without primary schooling and 60% of these are
girls. These children are spread across the continents.
This essay has concentrated on Sub-Saharan Africa where, in almost all
respects, the challenge of providing UPE is at its greatest. This region
is one of the most educationally challenged parts of the world. A news
release from UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics stated that four out
of every ten primary-age children in sub-Saharan Africa do not go to school.
Of those who do, only a small proportion reach a basic level of skills.
The number of primary school-age children in the region grew from over
82 million in 1990 to 106 million by 2000. It is projected to rise to
139 million by 2015.
The success of DEEP and The Open University–Fort Hare partnership,
as well as those which replicate its structures, will improve the quality
of teacher education and training, a key element in expanding educational
systems to achieve universal primary education (UPE). Currently, a third
of existing teachers are untrained and there are thousands of teachers
being recruited each year to the regions primary schools with inadequate
subject knowledge and little or no pedagogic preparation.
The IUA document ‘Internationalisation of Higher Education Practices
and Priorities’ notes that “Student, staff and teacher development;
academic standards and quality assurance; and international research collaboration
are ranked as the three most important benefits of internationalization.”
It further asserts that “the most frequently cited benefit [of internationalisation]…
was the development of students, staff and teachers. In fact, more respondents
referred to the importance of `human development’ than to `economic
development’ . Both of these statements
resonate with the purpose of the partnership and its investment in the
people of Africa.
Traditional thinking has it that Africa and its people cannot benefit
from ICTs for a number of social and economic reasons (the `penicillin
not Pentium’ argument). Kofi Annan, speaking in 1999 to the Millennium
Assembly, spoke of a ‘yawning digital divide.’ He told us
then that there were more computers in the USA than in the rest of the
world combined. There were as many telephones in Tokyo as in all Africa.
“Visions of a global-based economy and universal electronic commerce,
characterised by the ‘death of distance’,” he said,
“must be tempered by the reality that half of the world’s
population has never made a telephone call, much less access the Internet.”
Kofi Annan was speaking at the end of 1999. The statistics have changed
quite dramatically since then and indeed are changing every day. Yoshio
Utsumi, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications
Union says “In 1999 there were 1.5 billion telephone lines worldwide,
for example, while today there are nearly 2.5 billion. In just four years
we have added 1 billion lines to the 1.5 billion we had connected in all
the years before – and 75% were installed in the developing world”
. (United Nations, Utsumi, 2003) Africa
now has twice as many telephones as Tokyo and these are becoming more
sophisticated in their use every day.
The UNESCO World Summit on the Information Society Plan of Action asserted
in December 2003 that ICTs have the capacity “to reduce many traditional
obstacles, especially those of time and distance, for the first time in
history makes it possible to use the potential of these technologies for
the benefit of millions of people in all corners of the world.”
It went on to further assert, “Everyone should have the necessary
skills to benefit fully from the Information Society. Therefore capacity
building and ICT literacy are essential. ICTs can contribute to achieving
universal education worldwide, through delivery of education and training
of teachers, and offering improved conditions for lifelong learning, encompassing
people that are outside the formal education process, and improving professional
skills.”
In order to best achieve these aims it seems inevitable to us that most
teacher education provision will become school based. The resources just
do not exist to take millions of teachers away from their classes. Course
structures, therefore, will also need to be more flexible with teachers
acquiring the knowledge and skills, individually and with others, to develop
their own professional learning. The Fort Hare University–Open University
partnership has contributed to strengthening the agenda around these themes.
Looking to the future
The two universities are now actively planning a further range of activities
and co-operation. They have jointly helped establish an international
consortium of organisations and institutions to provide the resources
for the many emergency training courses being established where UPE is
being expanded with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. The Teacher Education
in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) project, building on the joint teacher training
experience of the universities, particularly DEEP, is working with ten
countries in a programme planned to start from 2004 to 2008. The potential
of the DEEP model in the health sector is under active consideration.
The Open University will be contributing to the University of Fort Hare
Liberation Archive project which will be bringing together new and existing
papers and other artefacts from the liberation struggle in a unique international
library to be established on the Alice campus of the University. In 1990
when the liberation organisations of South Africa were ‘unbanned’
the leaders of the resistance movement decided that the University of
Fort Hare should be earmarked as the repository of the ‘struggle
history’ of South Africa. The signatures to this agreement include
the African National Congress (ANC), Pan-Africa Congress (PAC), Azanian
People’s Organisation (AZAPO), Black Consciousness Movement of Azania
(BCMA), and the New Unity Movement (NUM). It is, and will become, an archive
of enormous international significance.
The Open University, as well as contributing to the establishment of the
archive, also plans to exploit the resources from pupils and teachers
studying the history of the liberation movement in UK schools. The Open
University is also actively involved in the work of the UK Fort Hare Foundation
which seeks to raise consciousness and financial support for the new role
that the University plays in South Africa.
‘One of the interesting things about the partnership’, OU
Vice-Chancellor Brenda Gourley, has written, ‘is that it now transcends
personal contacts, good and long lasting as they are. It is inconceivable
that our joint work will not flourish to the mutual benefit of our different
institutions and the wide communities we serve.’ For Derrick Swartz,
the Fort Hare Vice-Chancellor, ‘both Fort Hare and The Open University
has fought to provide educational opportunity to the underprivileged.
This mission continues. The world faces new challenges today. The innovation
and creativity that has come from our work together over the past decade
bode well for the future.’
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