Teaching can no longer remain stagnant
Correspondent | Tuesday June 10, 2014 14:52
Overtime however, varying professions nurtured by teaching proliferated, organized themselves, and bargained for superior conditions. Many have over-time realised self-regulation and have long successfully integrated technology to form part of their modus operandi.
Whilst these developments took place, I dare say, Teaching did not change much. It is only now that we are talking about a Teaching Council that should among other things ensure that Teaching as a profession, is left solely for qualified Teachers to practice in.
As a result of the modesty of Teachers and our otherwise sluggish response to the referred developments, the Teaching Profession has arguably lost the respect, reverence and dignity it was associated with in the earlier years. We can hardly talk of any well-defined and widely accepted ethics of the Teaching Profession that would have otherwise galvanised us. Consequently we have lost grip on the struggle to determine our own destiny.
I know I have somewhat deviated from the theme of this occasion over the last few moments. It was a deliberate strategy on my side, intended to underscore the importance and appropriateness of your theme, which calls for Teachers’ unity as we contend with global technological changes, en-route our strive for provision of quality education. The theme of this event is timely in that it resonates with the spirit of thae e-education programme the MOESD wishes to embark on. It also indicates that its crafters are aware that certain technological developments such as the advent of the Open Education Resources Movement and MOOCS, are sweeping through the global educational landscape and are likely to leave irreversible damage to our traditional teaching methodology if we do not expeditiously respond.
Whilst the Teaching Profession in Botswana has arguably stagnated, within the context of the developments I have alluded to, what Teachers exist for has undergone phenomenal change and continues to change. The curriculum has constantly changed, calling for change in Teacher – Learner roles in and outside the classroom, as well as change in mediation and instructional leadership practices.
There has also been a major shift in communication, where distance between interactants has been relegated to the dustbin of history. A closer look at these changes would reveal that they have been and continue to be underpinned by global technological changes of the current century.
It is a well-established fact that Botswana has a relatively young population with 35.6% of it having been aged below 15 years by 2006. This youthful structure of our population has important implications for education, training and skills development. We have an obligation as the Teaching Fraternity, to variously provide vide differing technological media, for the development of our young people so that they may live creatively in their environment, maintain the legacy of Botswana as a progressive, democratic and stable country, as well as a Nation that embraces global challenges, and is desirous of seeing its citizens compete successfully with the best there is, internationally.
This state of affairs urgently calls for re-valuation of intentions and purposes of the Teaching Profession and/or fraternity. The teaching-learning space we inhabit in the developing world exhibits contestation between what worked well in the classroom yesterday and what works well in the classroom today.
A Teacher who takes leave for a single semester will find disturbing and phenomenal changes when he/she reverts to the classroom after the three months. What more of some of us who have been away from the classroom for more than a decade? We would be as out-lawed and irrelevant as dinosaurs.
This is because students of today are demanding more appropriate technology that arguably has become more authoritative than the teacher’s voice.
We have to understand this phenomenon in toto and come to terms with the fact that without clear conceptualisation of technology as a foundational entity in the 21st Century’s educational praxis, the mismatch between intensions and classroom reality would become regrettable. The clarion call I wish to make to the Teaching Fraternity is that unity of conceptualisation among ourselves is more urgent today than ever before.
This is an extract from the speech presented by BOCODOL Executive Director, Daniel Tau at the Gaborone commemorations of Teachers’ Day, June 6, 2014.