Teachers to be forced to undertake research
Pini Bothoko | Thursday February 9, 2017 12:59
The Director of the Department of Educational Planning and Research Services SirWonder Masebola revealed this during the on-going stakeholders’ engagement workshop on the importance of research in education held at Gaborone Senior Secondary School.
The workshop is held under the theme, ‘Delivering education through research: A must for the post 2015 agenda’.
Masebola said teachers are the ones who interact with students on one-on-one basis, daily and are therefore better placed to know their charges’ strengths and weaknesses.
He said the Ministry is faced with numerous problems contributing to students’ low performance. Masebola stated them asdrugs, which continue to flood schools as students continue to come up with new methods of breaching security.
“Students are even more advanced than us when it comes to research,. They always come up with new ways of invading schools with drugs as well as its use,” Masebola said.
He said that students are also involved in love affairs at a tender age, something that leads to teen pregnancies.
“This calls for teachers to carry out research which will help the Ministry on how best it could respond to these social ills,” Masebola said.
He stated that some schools in areas like the North West region, which perform badly, compared to schools in urban and peri-urban areas, there is a clear need for research to establish the cause is Masebola noted that some students do not attend school properly, only returning to school to sit for their final examinations.
“One can wonder how the Ministry can register improvement in results whilst there are some students who spend most of their times at cattle posts, or working in farms having absconded from lessons.”
He added “This is a serious challenge that needs immediate attention and we can only win it with proper research that will lead to proper findings and solutions”.
With a decline in academic results, Masebola said this should challenge teachers do focus more on research.
“Gone are the days when teachers only came to class to teach. We need teachers to contribute towards the improvement of the results,” he appealed. He said the Ministry has identified problems that schools are faced with, but is unable to come up solutions.
“Researches have been carried out in the past, but usually they do not address the problem that the Government has identified. Our focus is to change from this old traditional way of doing things. We want researches that could bring in solutions to the problem,” Masebola said.