Science Education in SA May 4, 2010
Posted by Diane in : Projects , trackbackProf Diane Grayson, Committee Member, ASSAf STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Education Committee
South Africa can never produce enough scientists, engineers and technologists until the quality of science education offered at schools improves. The factor that affects this quality the most is the quality of teaching. This, is turn, is affected by the school environment and available resources. But most of all it is affected by teachers’ understanding of the subject matter and how to teach it effectively, sometimes called content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). For many of South Africa’s maths and science teachers, their preservice education did not adequately equip them with either of these two forms of knowledge. On the other hand, no professionals can be expected to acquire all the knowledge they will ever need in their initial qualification. This fact is recognised in other professions such as medicine and engineering, where members are required to obtain continuing professional development (CPD) credits throughout their careers. In many countries teachers are subject to the same requirement.
Part of our problem in South Africa is that there is no CPD requirement of teachers (although a policy was gazetted in 2007). Many of our teachers have bought no reference books for themselves and attended no extended courses in which they developed their CK and PCK in a sustained and integrated way. In-service education, with a few exceptions, has tended to focus either on chasing after qualifications that do little to improve teachers’ CK and PCK, or on one-shot interventions with no follow-up. A related problem is that most of our maths and science teachers do not see themselves as part of a community of mathematicians and scientists. Their identity is more often that of teacher who happens, at this moment, to be teaching a particular subject.
For several years the Department of Science and Technology has funded an Educator Support Programme. Part of the funds have gone to the South African Institute of Physics, the South African Chemical Institute and the South African Mathematics Association to enable these professional bodies to offer support to subjects advisers and teachers to implement the new curricula. Each of these bodies has subject specialists who focus on the educational aspects of their subjects and are therefore ideally placed to participate in such programmes. If the Department of Education implements its CPD policy, then university maths and science educators will be able to offer courses on CK and PCK that teachers will be required to attend. And then our chances of improving the quality of school maths and science will be a whole lot better.
Comments»
Any pre or inservice training of Teachers should be seen as aligning capability with continuous development. I agree that isolated interventions are partially effective.
A Framework needs to be developed that replaces the current IQMS system with a more streamlined CPDT point system. To implement this a network of Professional Practice Schools with a central District Educational resource centre needs to be put in place. This would then serve Teacher learning communities.
The idea of ‘Knowledge Practice standards’ for Teachers needs to be developed starting with Numeracy and literacy as foundation. Teachers need a firm foundation of knowledge and skills in order to teach the subjects. The education department needs to work with relevant roleplayers such as academics, other depoartments, NGO’s, training organisations but most notably to engage with excellent and experienced teachers.