learning for 21st century skills in africa. how does 21st century learning differ from current...
TRANSCRIPT
In this presentation, I will not be considering
-ICTs as teaching/learning tools ( = a different sort of book), or ICTs as a subject,
but
some of the implications of virtuality in terms of learning,
and what they might mean for thinking about curriculum
A knowledge-based society
Have we not always had knowledge-based
societies?
Can there be a human society without knowledge?
Now the knowledge-based economy is being spread.
By whom? For whom?
New ways of thinking, new ways of knowing
Changing thinking changes ways of knowing
Changing ways of knowing changes thinking.
Put these 21st century skills in order of importance:
Digital Age Literacy (incl. global awareness, scientific and economic literacies):
Effective Communication (incl. interpersonal skills, collaboration);
Inventive/Innovative Thinking (incl. managing complexity, curiosity, creativity, synthesis, analysis);
High Productivity (incl. prioritization, planning, managing for results)
Are there any skills - or domains - missing which you think are also needed for the 21st century?
Make a note of those.
BUT...
...we are entering the second decade of the 21st century
- some African children are fully ICT literate
- ICTs are spreading
- and with other challenges, new knowledge, new ways of thinking, new ways of knowing are needed
Where are we now?
What is the nature of the last curriculum and/or assessment reform in your country?
When was it?
Why was it necessary?
Was it a back-to-the drawing board complete redesign?
How successful would you say it was, seen from a system perspective?
What were the constraints?
My experience:
- from objectives to competencies or outcomes
- complete redesign only in South Africa
- successful in “good” schools and teachers; not in others
- assessment to match curriculum is too resource demanding: compromise: backwash effect
- teacher education not in tune, teacher educators too far behind; teaching still mostly conventional
- the education system as a whole is under-resourced
- learning constrained by poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, impact of HIV/AIDS
Make bullet points:
What problems have you encountered when trying to get approval to redesign or change curriculum or assessment, or for changes that have been made?
What bodies does approval have to go through?
What constituencies do you have to negotiate with?
What sort of arguments supported changes you wanted to make? What sort of arguments constrained the changes you wanted to make?
In my experience, complete redesign of curriculum constrained by:
-power-knowledge relationships = vested interests
- lack of updated knowledge about learning, intelligence, knowledge, curriculum, assessment
- political and parental fear
- mindsets
- resourcing
PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
- COMMUNITY (family, village, town)
- VOCATIONAL TRAINING
- NON-FORMAL/COMPLEMENTARY
- FORMAL SCHOOLING
EACH OF THESE HAS ITS OWN WAYS OF ORGANISING
-knowledge-knowledge - time- time
-space-space - material/s - material/s
-grouping-grouping - instruction- instruction
-assessmentassessment - recognition- recognition
VIRTUALITY IS REVOLUTIONISING
- INFORMATION
- KNOWLEDGE
-TIME
- SPACE
- KNOWLEDGE-POWER RELATIONSHIPS
- THINKING
CURRICULUM USED TO BE THOUGHT TO BE GIVEN
(DELIVERED)
BUT IT IS APPROPRIATED BY THE LEARNER.
ASSESSMENT FINDS OUT HOW MUCH HAS BEEN APPROPRIATED OF THE GIVEN, BUT NOT WHAT ELSE...e.g.
Language Family life
Food & Health
Arts Traditions Locality Beliefs & values
Games & sports
Practical skills
Senior Puberty Š full adulthood
approx. 6 yrs. Š onset of puberty
0 Š approx. 6 yrs
...can be “curricularised” like schooling. It is still given...
...and appropriated. It used to be all you needed to know.
Mother
tongue
English
French
Portu-guese
Maths Natural
Science
Social
Science
Arts P.E. Tech nology
Commerce
Environ-ment
HIV/AIDS
Demo-cracy, Human Rights
Health
Population
Given this knowledge system, curricula are exploding in Africa.
Formal education to a large extent replaced the community curriculum.
Many countries are trying to revise curricula by
constructing frameworks of key skills or outcomes.
But that is not redesign.
The old theories and ways of thinking still underpin curriculum and assessment: taxonomies, hierarchies, linear stages...
Implications of new theories are not fully realised:
- multiple intelligences
-the zone of proximal development
- feminist pedagogy
Pedagogy is supposed to be
-constructivist
- learner-centred
- interactive
but is still largely conventional across the continent.
When pedagogy is practiced as intended, it often causes tensions in relation to community values and culture e.g. especially not questioning elders and traditions.
With virtuality, the changes will be much greater, e.g.:
The learner decides what s/he learns, when they learn it, how, and with whom
Virtuality is changing the way children think, changing intelligences, and changing meaning
Being self-directed, scope and sequence are not given
Intuition plays a very large role
The teacher/instructor is no longer
the arbiter of knowledge, only of schooling
So how do we develop 21st century skills
in teachers in Africa?
How do we develop 21st century skills
in teacher educators in Africa?
Now we are in a stage of formalising virtual learning,
and virtualising formal learning
Suppose we do something really different...
...it would be progress, but still not be enough
We could start with the skills, then select and shape the substance,
(but leave a lot open)
and decide what to assess and how
but that would not be enough, because virtuality is even changing epistemology
We have to start by thinking about:
- what is knowledge and what will it be?
- what is learning and what will it be?
- how can we adapt time, space, grouping to use the full learning potential of virtuality?
- how would we curricularise all that?
- how would we assess learning?
-how would we negotiate all that given our constituencies?
It could be a minimalist process curriculum:
Themes to explore and anticipated outcomes
The rest is up to the learners and teachers:
- learners decide how they will explore the theme, search, shape, present
- the teacher models, challenges, supports, gives input where needed
- learners and teacher assess
- the teacher supplements where necessary
Will 21st century learning in Africa be education for all?
or
Will it reproduce the existing structure of the system: an elite gain the skills needed to serve global economic interests? As for the rest....?