Suchergebnisse

The paper discusses data from an open distance learning programme 'Supporting women into teaching in rural Malawi' funded by the Scottish Government and designed and led by the Open University UK in partnership with FAWEMA ( Forum for African Women Educationalists in Malawi). Recruiting more women into teaching is seen as supporting girls' continued participation in primary schooling, particularly in rural areas. This access programme offers participants distance learning study to achieve the qualifications necessary for application to a formal primary teacher training course combined with practical experience as a 'learning assistant' in their local primary school. Support is provided by a local tutor, usually a secondary school teacher. Programme materials adopt a participatory approach to learning recognising learning as a transformation of identity, where identity is the pivot between the individual and the collective. This focuses attention on the affordances made available to learners to negotiate ways of being a student within the systems of relations in the programme. Hence the tutor –learner relationship is crucial. School subjects have values attached to them that reflect their gendered sociocultural legacies. These influence tutors and learners and mediate their interactions shaping the possibilities for female learners to develop identities as successful students. Tutor mediation thus poses critical challenges to achieving programme aspirations. Interview and workshop data indicate that for many tutors the approach is in tension with their 'teacher –centred' pedagogic practice and reveal how they attribute learners' previous lack of success to particular behaviours and innate abilities that reflect gendered beliefs. The discussion considers how to disrupt tutor beliefs and practices so that identities of competency and belonging as subject learners and novice teachers are extended to, and experienced by learners. The implications for tutor induction and practice on distance learning programmes to advance gender equality are also drawn out. // Paper ID: 230

The last decade has seen tremendous progress in primary pupil enrolment across much of sub-Saharan Africa but unfortunately in many areas this has not been accompanied by an improvement in pupil achievement. Attention and priorities are now expanding to embrace close scrutiny of the processes of classroom teaching and learning. Governments and donor agencies across the region are engaged in promoting a pedagogical paradigm shift to improve pupil attainment; a learner-centred classroom approach with pupil-teacher construction of knowledge through active inquiry. But to date systematic adoption and embedding of these progressive teaching methods has been limited and pupil learning achievements continue to be low. Much recent research on African classrooms shows that the dominant mode of teaching remains a teacher-led transmission style in which pupil talk is restricted to short, often chorus, answers to closed questions. ( Pontefract and Hardiman, 2005; Akyeampong et al, 2006; Altinyelken,2010; Henevald et al, 2006; Mtika & Gates, 2009) // Recent UNESCO EFA reports draw attention to the importance of teacher quality for improving pupil achievement in schools and the key role of teacher education in shifting modes of interaction in African schools to those which more fully support pupils' cognitive and linguistic learning (UNESCO, 2010). Teachers are potentially key agents of change. However such a focus on teachers is not unproblematic. Several issues act to inhibit or constrain progress: - many teachers in primary schools in Sub Saharan Africa have little or no formal training for the role (Mulkeen, 2009) - for many teachers the greatest influence on their teaching is their own experience of classroom learning as pupils but new teachers cannot be assured of finding examples of good pedagogic practice either in their own experiences of schooling or in the performance of their colleagues when they begin teaching. - a dearth of materials which encourage teachers to enact 'constructivist' ideas within their classrooms on a regular basis. Many teachers find it difficult to translate ideas from training courses into classroom practice and to use textbooks in other than a formulistic way (Heneveld et al, 2006). - limited opportunities for continuing professional development opportunities (Mulkeen, 2009). - a dissonance between the teaching and learning approach as described in the primary National Curriculum and the curriculum of the teacher training colleges, for example in Zambia. // Without intensive in-service training the move towards more interactive classrooms with more effective teaching and learning will be slow. And without shifts at scale new teachers emerging from colleges will become quickly socialised in the predominant teacher-centred pedagogic practices of the schools in which they work. (Mtika & Gates, 2009)