TEACHER ROLES AND GLOBAL CHANGE - UNESCOunesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001055/105528e.pdf · CONTENTS Introduction, 1 Why link teacher roles with global change?, 1 Changes in the

TEACHER ROLES AND GLOBAL CHANGE:

AN ISSUES PAPER

by Francis L. Higginson

Education Sector

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) document. WARNING! Spelling errors might subsist. In order to accessto the original document in image form, click on "Original" button on 1st page.

Preface

The theme of the 45th session of the International Conference on Education, Enhancingthe Role of Teachers in a Changing World, reflects two strongly held sets of views: firstly, aglobal preoccupation with why, in the view of many vocal interest groups, teaching seems unableto develop in the students of today the skills demanded by these groups for the society of thetwenty-first century; and secondly, the perception held by the teaching profession that it has beengiven an impossible mission to carry out with inadequate resources and few rewards.

A working group was setup to look at the present situation. A considerable volume ofdata has accumulated on this subject over the past decade. There have also been many relevantrecommendations adopted at recent Regional Ministerial Conferences and unusual prominenceattached to the problem by the print and electronic media. The working group emphasized theneed to highlight the precise ways in which the situation of today differed from that of 1975 whenthe 35th session of the International Conference on Education (The Changing Role of theTeacher and its Influences on Preparation for the Profession and on In-service Training) washeld.

I decided therefore to prepare an issues paper on how and why the teacher competenciesrequired today have evolved since 1975 in time to coincide with the convening of the Conference.

This document is intentionally unconventional in that, while it is informed in some measureby country studies and the conclusions of researchers, extensive use has been made of mediacomment about the subject of education today, perceptions which cannot be ignored. Althoughnot necessarily UNESCOs position, the paper is intended to stimulate debate.

I would like to express my appreciation to Francis L. Higginson and Gwang-Chol Changfor all the effort they put into organizing the working groups deliberations into a cogent paper.

Colin N. PowerAssistant Director-General for Education

ED-96/WS/24


CONTENTS

Introduction, 1

Why link teacher roles with global change?, 1

Changes in the force field, 2

Structure of the paper, 2

Chapter 1. Teachers around the world, 4

Teacher recruitment, 4

What the figures show, 4A sample of country trends, 5

The making of a teacher, 7

Pre-service training, 7In-service, 8Professional support, 9

Teacher status, 9

Continuing ambiguity, 9Reflections on accreditation, 10Salaries, 11Workloads, 11Women teachers, 11Teacher morale, 12

Teacher and societal expectations: two trains passing in the night?, 13

Chapter 2. New challenges for teachers, 15

Trapped in a web of falling means and rising demands, 15

No exit?, 15Economic stagnation and decline, 15The rising demand for education, 16A crisis of faith in government ideology of the market economy, 18What teachers can do, 19


Technologys challenge to teachers, 20

The origins, 20The place of standards and classroom assessment: ensuring quality and

measuring up to the competition, 21Improving the teaching of literacy and numeracy, 22Defining life quality is no easy task, 23

Technology for teaching: here to stay, 24

No boundaries for cyberspace?, 24The teacher as the guardian of quality and promoter of knowledge, 24Lingering doubts about technology, 25Overcoming teacher skepticism, 26Guidelines for action, 26

Planet Earth under siege: distress signals from eco-space, 27

Rio revisited, 27Passing through the revolving door, 28Initiating new partnerships, 29Some final rejections on new teacher roles in the context of environmental

education, 29

The effects of forced migration: entrenched diversity, 30

Indifference: rejection in a mask of tolerance, 30Suffering seen through the looking glass, 30Role-modeling peace, 31

Chapter 3. Planning teacher role enhancement, 34

Chasing a receding horizon?, 34

Towards a new paradigm, 36


Introduction

Why link teacher roles with global change?

The theme chosen for the 45th session of the International Conference on Education, Enhancingthe Role of Teachers in a Changing World, links teacher roles with global change. Why, you mayask, when has the world not been changing? When have teachers not been exhorted to redoubletheir efforts to counter these changes? Which world changes affect teachers as professionals?Which are they powerless to influence?

The basic questions that are worth examining can only be addressed after establishingcriteria for deciding which world changes should command the greatest attention, in what waythey impact on the education sector and how, through teacher role enhancement, they can beinfluenced for the better. The emphasis on the relation between teachers as practitioners and theworld around them provides the defining character to ICE/45 and is the subject of this paper.

Part of todays global preoccupation with teachers stems from their sheer numbers andfrom their substantial cost to the public sector. There are today an estimated 53 million teachersemployed in pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary establishments. About 16 out of every1,000 adults (15-64) are teachers, making this the largest single group of professionals in theworld. According to the World Bank, in the developing countries between 15 and 35 per cent ofnational budgets is spent on education; teachers salaries account for as much as 80-90 per centof national education sector budgets.

Since the global demand for education is increasing, it is easy to understand thepreoccupation of the major lending institutions with the potential for spiraling sectoral expenditureat a time when so many national economic plans are dictated by austerity. It is equally easy toimagine why teachers should figure at the centre of debate on structural adjustment.

More than ever before, society seems to expect teachers to solve all its problems.Employers want them to provide disciplined, pliable, easily-retrainable employees. Community,religious and political leaders want them to prepare young people who are willing to commit themselves to supporting the public welfare. The global tele-communications industry wants them touse their technology to support their work and to provide a conduit for selling it to their pupils,their future customers. The spokespersons for the fight against various social scourges (forinstance AIDS, drug abuse, community violence, the arms trade, environmental pollution) allwant teachers to ensure pride of place for their messages, each of which, with lives at stake, isliterally of vital importance, while others want teachers to give pride of place to traditional schoolsubjects.

Given what society expects of them, teachers could be expected to be placed on apedestal. Unfortunately, quite the contrary has occurred. In many parts of the world, they areunderpaid or unpaid for long periods; held in low esteem or attacked for failing to meet undefinedstandards, abandoned by the members of their own profession; posted to isolated, resource-poorschools and forgotten; shunned by some politicians and community leaders as social incendiaries;challenged or neglected by combative or disinterested parents; or, in parts of the world, taken


2

advantage of by rapacious money-changers who charge them exorbitant fees to cash their paycheques. Have things come to such a sorry pass, then? Many teachers think so and in manycountries teacher morale is at a dangerous low.

Changes in the force field

The world wants, needs, even cries out for teachers yet on the face of it does not do enough toattract either the numbers or, more importantly, the quality required. Many would in fact arguethat because the profession has become so demanding, so little rewarding, teachers, in increasingnumbers, are resigning and potential candidates are finding nothing attractive to them. Since theseproblems existed twenty years ago, one must wonder why they appear more serious today.

One important change, barely nascent at the time of Thirty-fifth session of the Conference,has become an incontrovertible fact today. The frontiers separating the outside world from theschool have been breached on all sides in both industrialized and developing countries. Thechanging world of the 1996 Conference theme, like the Trojan Horse borne by AgamemnonsGreeks into the fortified city of ancient Troy, is as surely inside the fortress school as it is withinevery other social institution. Many teachers feel threatened, challenged by forces that, for many,have no place in education.

Educators and teachers, once the sole and unchallenged masters of learning, are no longerfree to decide on the content, sequencing, pacing and method of instruction. And pupils for theirpart, have little in common with their counterparts of a quarter century ago. Today, for better butsometimes for worse, technology has not only radically modified their information base, butdemonstrated that young people can assume an increasingly large share of responsibility for themanagement of their own learning.

In the closing years of the millennium, teachers have good reason to feel distressed withthe current state of play in education. The growing place of technology in education is a majorproblem for many teachers. For essentially generational reasons, they feel far less sanguine aboutthe prospect of mediated interactivity than their pupils for whom the micro-chip is unburdenedby any inscrutable mystique. The ease with which a 10-year-old surfs through the Net(Internet) contrasts starkly with the sometimes abject terror experienced by some teachers whenmaking their first acquaintance with the Web (World Wide Web). And as if that were notsufficient, whether unwillingly trapped within or as a partisan participant in the tug and pull overthe means and ends of education, teachers not only feel they are excluded and disempowered: theyoften are.

Structure of the paper

This issues paper is neither a sociological discussion of change theory nor a summary review ofways in which teachers can perform more effectively. This subject has been exhaustively coveredin such land-mark works as the International Encyclopedia of Teachers and Teacher Educationand teachers are constantly being told by anyone and everyone (especially non-teachers), how todo their jobs better. Rather it is an attempt to show how teacher effectiveness is tied up with the


3

concept of productivity and to suggest measures which can help teachers to deal more effectivelywith the pressures that rest so heavily upon them today.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of trends, an indication of how teachers in selectedcountries around the world are recruited and trained, and an overview of some of the criticalfactors affecting their status. Chapter 2, in a series of five sections corresponding to some of themost critical areas of world change, reviews the ways in which each challenges teachers. Eachsection ends with several proposed strategies for dealing with them. Finally, bearing in mind thatthe preceding chapter is above all concerned with the what of enhanced teacher roles, it isappropriate that the paper close with a discussion of methodological issues relating primarily tothe how. Planning teacher role enhancement is accordingly the subject of the final chapter.


4

Chapter l. Teachers around the world

Primary and secondary school enrolment has grown steadily over the past 15 years in responseto the global demand for education. Teacher recruitment and retention, major determinants of thequality of any education system, are influenced by many factors, including appeal of theprofession, quality and relevance of training and subsequent professional support, degree ofparticipation in decision-making, salaries and other conditions of work. Because this paper is morean investigation of new inescapable challenges to the teaching profession, and less a criticalanalysis of how to improve teacher status, the treatment of the status question will be brief. ThisChapter looks first at the growth phenomenon as a purely quantitative issue, subsequently at theprocess by which teachers become professionals and finally at some of the factors affectingteacher status.

Teacher recruitment

What the figures show

Throughout the world, the number of teachers in both developing and industrialized countriesincreased a half percentage point faster than the 2 per cent per annum evolution of pupilenrollments, even in those countries where enrolment and participation have reached 100 per cent.The global primary and secondary pupil-teacher ratio fell from 24 in 1980 to 22 in 1993 and from29 to 26 for primary education alone (See Table 1),

Table 1. Primary pupil:teacher ratios, 1980 and 1993

1980 1993

World Total 29 26

Developing countries 32 29

Sub-Saharan Africa 39 37

Arab States 30 23

Latin America and the Caribbean 29 24

Eastern Asia and Oceania 28 24

Southern Asia 43 46

Least Developed Countries 45 43

Industrialized countries 19 16

Source: UNESCO Statistical Yearbook/Annuaire Statistique/Annuarioestadstico, 1995

In some regions, the global primary and secondary pupil-teacher ratios decreased by morethan 10 per cent. The southern Asian countries were, however, a notable exception whereinincreases of 15 per cent have been recorded (32 in 1980 to 37 in 1993). In some developingcountries, however, pupil-teacher ratios averaged over 50 in 1993 (e.g. Afghanistan, BurkinaFaso, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, India, Mali and several Pacific Island states).


5

Despite the severe financialconstraints of the 1980s as well asthe relatively rapid school enrolmentgrowth rate over the last decade, itis clear that the developingcountries made tremendous effortsto increase the number of theirteachers at all levels. The totalnumber of teachers in the worldincreased by 26 per cent in primaryeducation and by 30.7 per cent insecondary education from 1980 to1993, passing from 38.1 million in1980 to 49.5 million in 1993. Thenumber of teachers in sub-SaharanAfrica increased by 58 per cent andin the Arab States, they doubled. Inthe Least Developed Countries

Fig. 1. Evolution of pupil:teacher ratios in primary

education in developing countries (1980-1993)

Sub-Saharan Africa

Arab States

Latin America and the Caribbean

Eastern Asia and Oceania

Southern Asia

Least Developed Countries

(LDCs) taken as a whole, primary pupil: teacher ratios averaged 43, class sizes are much higherand moreover there are about 110 million children in developing countries with no school toattend.

Post-primary teacher growthoutpaced that of primary-schoolteachers resulting in an unequaldistribution among different levelsof formal education in thedeveloping countries where 56.1 percent of all teachers in 1993 were inprimary education. This figurecontrasts with the 36.3 per centemployed in secondary schools and7.6 per cent in tertiary institutions(see Fig. 2).

A sample of country trends

Fig. 2. Percentage distribution of teaching staff

World Total 1980

1993

Developed countries 1980

1993

Developing countries 1980

1993

LDCs 1980

1993

I 0 20 40 60 8 0 1 0 0

The above advances notwith-standing, progress has been uneven between the developing and industrialized countries as wellas among developing countries themselves. In countries having achieved 100 per cent enrolmentof the primary-school-aged cohort, teacher recruitment was predictably slower than in those withlower enrolment levels. Increased enrollments could normally be expected to entail a concomitantrise in unit costs, provided that pupil-teacher ratios are maintained and teacher salaries are notsacrificed. In the event, deteriorating national economies and the effects of some structuraladjustment programmes resulted in a stabilized expenditure despite increased access: whenincreased numbers of teachers were recruited, it was made possible primarily by means of salaryreductions.


6

Table 2. Annual growth at all levels

Group of countriesDeveloping countries (total)

Sub-Saharan AfricaArab StatesLatin America and the Caribbean


Southern AsiaLeast Developed Countries

Industrialized countries

of education, 1980Enrolment (%)

1.92.94.12.0

0.04.1

3.20.2

to 1993

Teachers (%)2.53.65.93.2

1.52.93.8

1.2

Source : UNESCO Stalistical Yearbook/Annuaire statistique/Anuarioestadstico 1995

The higher the level of education, the more rapid has been the growth in the numbers ofteachers in the developing countries (see Table 3). In Eastern Asian countries, the total numberof higher education teachers more than doubled between 1980 and 1993, contrasting sharply withthe slower growth in the recruitment of primary- and secondary-school teachers.

Table 3. Index of increase in the teaching force by level and region, 1993(1980=100)

Group of countries primary secondary tertiaryWorld Total 126 131 145

Developing countries 129 145 190

Sub-Saharan Africa 143 207 223Arab States 194 243 181Latin America and the Caribbean 145 150 181

Eastern Asia and Oceania 112 130 206

Southern Asia 143 143 183Least Developed Countries 154 180 223

Industrialized countries 118 115 121

Source : UNESCO Statistical Yearbook/Annuaire statistique/Anuarioestadstico 1995

The rapid growth of the teaching force in the LDCs accompanied by significant increasesin tertiary enrolment is a promising development to the extent that higher education is typicallythe seed bed for the increased numbers of teachers required for the expansion of lower educationlevels. At the same time, while LDC development plans depend for their success upon a significantincrease in the numbers of national qualified professionals, the negative effects of growing


7

numbers of educated unemployed in these countries are cause for concern. And in many cases,primary-school teachers are not normally trained in tertiary institutions.

The majority of teachers in primary education, especially in the developing countries, enterthe teaching profession after completing secondary education (see Table 4). Based on countriesfor which data were provided, 17 per cent of primary-school teachers held primary- schoolcertificates only, 65 per cent secondary leaving certificates and 18 per cent tertiary diplomas. InCosta Rica and Cte dIvoire, 83 and 90 per cent respectively of primary-school teachers areuniversity graduates,

Table 4. Percentage distribution of teachers in primary educationby level of diploma and percentage wiih teacher-training 1992-95

Country* 1st level 2nd level 3rd level % with teacher trainingArgentina 18 64 17 89Burkina Faso o 100 0 62

Costa Rica o 17 83 90

Cte dIvoire 1 9 90 99

Cuba o 55 45 100Ecuador 76 23 0 86

Mali 71 29 0 100

Morocco o 100 0 98

Oman 7 92 1 96Republic of Korea 13 82 5 78Swaziland 75 24 1 89

Switzerland o 90 10 100. . . . . . Weighted average 17 I 65 I 18 I

* This table includes only the countries which responded by the end of February to therelevant questions of the IJNESCO/IBE questionnaire sent to all Member States for thepreparation of this Conference.

The making of a teacher

Pre-service training

The minimum admission criteria for pre-service teacher training are set forth in the 1966Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers as follows:

Admission to teacher preparation should be based on the completion ofappropriate secondary education, and the evidence of the possession ofpersonal qualities likely to help the persons concerned to become worthymembers of the profession. (para. 14)


8

Innovations in the content and methods have been introduced in many national teacher-trainingsystems including the introduction of a core curriculum component in both primary and secondaryteacher education programmes an emphasis on child-centred education and the closer linking physical and theoretical of pre-service training with practical, in-school experience. Progresstowards satisfying the 1966 Recommendation is clearly everywhere at hand.

In many developing countries, however, systematic national policies for pre-servicetraining of teachers remain on the drawing board and indeed, in some instances certificationrequirements are waived. In others, training colleges are academically sub-standard and poorlyequipped. An especially persistent problem exists in respect to the preparation of secondary mathsand science teachers, particularly in countries obliged to send their post-secondary studentsoverseas or abroad for tertiary studies.

When these same students had a weak grounding in these subjects at the secondary level,it is common for them to under-perform and even fail at university level. Fear of this eventualitykeeps many potential secondary school science teachers from pursuing science degrees andaggravates teacher shortages in these subject areas. Examples exist in several developing countrieswherein education ministries have requested universities to lower standards to allow students topass their exams, receive degrees and take up teaching assignments, failing which they would beforced to hire expatriate teachers.

Many countries have recognized the need for newly trained teachers to receive guidanceand supervision during their first teaching appointment. In some, senior teachers are assigned tosupervise and guide the work of recently-recruited teachers. For example in Japan, beginningteachers are required to undergo a fill year of training immediately after their first recruitmentunder the guidance of accredited supervising teachers.

In-service

It has long been acknowledged that for both personal and professional growth, teachers at alllevels, irrespective of their age and experience, have the need, right and obligation to seek andundertake further study. Responses to the International Bureau of Education (IBE) questionnairesent to all Member States in preparation for the 1996 Conference indicate different types ofcountry responses to this imperative. In many developing countries, in-service training systemswere introduced to retrain or up-grade teachers hastily recruited during the period of rapidexpansion. In some industrialized countries, in-service training is compulsory. In Finland, forexample, teachers are required to devote three days a year to in-service training. In Turkey onthe other hand, in-service training is held on a voluntary basis.

The 1966 Recommendation and the Final Report of the International Conference onEducation emphasize the teachers right and obligation to stay current in education and indeedboth stress the absolute necessity to do so. Its appeal to teachers is, however, complex. In-servicetraining theoretically offers the possibility of tailor-making courses to suit individual requirements,yet many fail to live up the expectations. Typical causes of failure are:

the expense of running residential courses which severely curtails the number that can beheld;


9

the context of the training is divorced from the context of the school and its problems;

teachers with mixed, incompatible training requirements are lumped together;

colleagues to whom teachers may be accountable are not involved in the design, deliveryand assessment of in-service training;

teachers posted in isolated areas frequently miss out on training possibilities

Professional support

The structure for professional support for teachers is in place in many countries in the form of theinspectorate, in some countries curriculum advisors, and in all as head teachers or principals.Unfortunately these positions are normally defined in response to management concerns foraccountability, only rarely reflecting teacher development needs. As a consequence, since schoolinspectors are typically posted in the capital cities or district education offices and, along withhead teachers and principals, are paid higher salaries, these positions are sought more for careeradvancement purposes than from concern for the improvement of education.

A number of countries have discovered that they have a wealth of potential talent toexploit for staff development and for achieving goals of quality development. These countrieshave introduced a clinical or helping role into the duty statements of inspectors and Headteachers. When they interact with teachers, the encounter is framed to address and resolve specificteacher problems, Several Southern African countries, the Caribbean and Pacific Island States,India and Thailand are experimenting with the upgrading of Inspectors and Head teachers in thesenew skills using national networks of resource persons who are accessible and speak the languageof target groups. Such strategies do not overcome all problems but they do much to alleviatethem.

Teacher status

Continuing ambiguity

Ambiguity about the teaching profession is an endemic problem. In most countries, educationfigures as a stated national priority. In practice, however, although the world has voted foreducation with its feet, education budgets are sacrificed or maintained at a stable level toaccommodate the more pressing demands of the labour market. Whatever exists in the way ofincentives to encourage talented young people to enter the teaching profession appears to beinsufficient. A serious gap exists between stated and applied policy in respect to the profession,a gap which devaluates the profession and demoralizes teachers.

Teaching, once regarded as one of the noblest professions, was seen as the key to theintellectual development of a countrys human resources and the determinant of social andeconomic progress. Indeed it continues to be a very popular profession among young people insome countries (for instance Finland, Israel and Japan, where the number of applicants exceeds


10

the vacancies). In most countries, however, the profession has suffered a serious loss of prestige.Once prominent local officials, teachers today are more frequently regarded as simply ordinarycivil servants, a shift in status which contributes to declining standards. Governments areincreasingly obliged to seek new ways of attracting qualified young people to the teachingprofession.

Reflections on accreditation

The issue of accreditation is complex. Widely accepted to be the principal vehicle for imposingnational professional standards, it is also linked with the question of teacher status. Whileaccreditation requirements differ from country to country, countries which have as many as fourdifferent skill levels of practicing teachers are, by and large, embarked on national credentiallingprogrammes to bring them all to a common level.

Some developing countries continue to employ teachers with no training or certificate andonly a limited number of years of formal schooling teachers recruited out of necessity. At thesame time, many countries apply different certification requirements to primary- and secondary-school teaching. The practice is common whereby future primary school teachers enter a two-yeartraining college programme immediately after completion of their 11th year of schooling whilewould-be secondary-school teachers are required to complete 12 years of school and attend athree-year training course,

In recent years, increasing numbers of countries have recognized the need to raise theentry standards and certification requirements for primary teachers and have introduced legislationand changes into the public service regulations to that end. Moreover, formerly many countriesare combining formally separated teacher education and other tertiary institutions

A growing number of countries with the means to set and satisfy higher standards recruitteacher candidates for pre-service training after completion of between two and four years ofpost-secondary or university-level studies.

Many developing countries are committed to ensuring primary education for all by theyear 2000. To satisfy the demand and in an attempt to control large class sizes, they tend torecruit younger or even untrained teachers, and thus teachers in industrialized countries are onaverage about six years older than those in developing countries.

Moreover, because the populations of many developing countries live in isolated contextssteadfastly resisted by accredited teachers as eventual postings, the authorities are often obligedto waive the accreditation requirements if they are to open a school. To do otherwise would betantamount to denying access to some and, in effect, institutionalizing or reinforcing socio-economic and urban-rural inequalities.

The debate about the significance and purpose of accreditation continues simply becauseit is linked with peer status and conditions of work. It is significant that large numbers of non-formal and untrained teachers continue to seek the formal public recognition of the value of theirwork through formal accreditation. It is a lasting irony that whereas many non-formal


11

practitioners accept as self-evident the need to remain current through regular upgrading andrenewal, many accredited teachers implicitly assume that the certificate they hold is valid for life.

Salaries

The salaries issue is a sensitive and frequently discussed topic. Though comparable to salaries ofother public servants, teachers in many LDCs find that the level of their remuneration to beinsufficient to enable them to work without supplementing their incomes, In others, teachersalaries are far lower than those of other sectors and many practicing teachers seize the firstopportunity to leave the profession. In some countries, structural adjustment policies, public debt,rampant inflation and other political or development priorities have caused major (over 50 percent) reductions in teacher salaries.

In almost all the transition countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia,high inflation rates have kept the teachers in the groups of the so called new poor, recentincreases not withstanding. In Hungary, teacher salaries in 1990 were 30 to 50 per cent lowerthan salaries in other sectors. In the Russian Federation, where salaries are 30 per cent lower thanthose in industry, a third of teachers live barely above survival level. In Poland, the averageteacher salary fell by 66.7 per cent since 1989 to the point where teachers earned in 199370 percent of that earned by their counterparts in other sectors. Sudden major cuts in salary can andhave too often produced teacher drop out absenteeism and school closure. Armenian teachersearn a mere $5.00/month. Gender inequalities in salary scales are an endemic problem throughoutthe region. In Azerbaijan, for example, women receive 70 per cent of what men are paid. In theconflict zones of former Yugoslavia, as in other countries in similar situations, salaries aretypically discontinued altogether, replaced in some cases by a system of consumer coupons,

Workloads

Teaching duties and workloads vary considerably not only between countries in general, but evenbetween neighboring countries assumed to be similar. Thus, for example, primary-schoolteaching time in Oman is half that in the United Arab Emirates, its neighbour to the north,Teaching time varies, in the sample, from 17 to 34 hours in primary school and from 14 to 36hours in secondary school.

In the industrialized countries, teaching duties vary between 15 and 25 class-hours/week,although teachers are required to be physically present in school between a total of 25 and 40hours/week. In some, teachers need not be at school on days when they have no lessons nor arethey required to work during the school holidays; in others, teachers are required to do asignificant amount of their work at school (e.g.

Women teachers

The relative prominence of female teachers in

class preparation, marking and supervision).

the profession is more than a matter simply ofgender equity; it is also a measure of internal efficiency. Research has demonstrated that primary

cf. J. Savova, Draft Report to UNESCO on Education in Central and East European countriesduring the 90s: Achievements and Obstacles, Successes and Failures, Sofia, 1996


12

enrolment growth (and especially participation rates, particularly of girls), is associated with therelative prominence of female teachers.

In some developing countries (particularly the LDCs), the percentage of secondary schoolwomen teachers is less than 25 per cent, whereas in most developed countries it is above 60 percent, In countries where most children are in school, the percentage of female teachers is high inrelation to that of male teachers (Table 5). In Latin America and the Caribbean, the industrializedcountries and Eastern Asia (with the exception of China) the percentage of female primary-schoolteachers is over 70 per cent in 1993.

Table 5. Primaty education: Gross enrolment ratios and percentage of femaleteachers in 1993

Groups of countries GER (%) % of female

F teachers

World Total 99.0 93.8 57Developing countries 98.6 92,6 51

Sub-Saharan Africa 72.8 66,3 42Arab States 90.6 81.6 52Latin America and the Caribbean 110.0 107,8 77Eastern Asia and Oceania 113.1 110.8 49Southern Asia 92.7 81.9 31Least Developed Countries 70.1 61.8 35

Industrialized countries 101.3 101.0 80Source : UNESCO Statistical Yearbook/Annuaire statistique/Anuario estadstico

1995

It does appear that the low proportion of female teachers at primary school has a negativeimpact on internal efficiency the girls in particular tend to drop out.2

Women teachers face the same problems of all working women: after work they must fulfilfamily obligations. Nevertheless, women are making extraordinary contributions to education ingeneral, and are contributing enormously to correcting gender imbalance and discrimination ineducation and to the cause of education for all.

Teacher morale

The determinants of teacher status and job satisfaction are many and interact in complex ways.Education levels, teaching load, class-size, peer contact, professional support, salaries, postingin isolated contexts, teaching modes (multi-grade, multi-shift, etc.) these are only some of thefactors responsible for the decline in the social standing of the teacher in the past two decades.

Cf. World Education Report 1995, Paris, UNESCO, 1995.


13

Low teacher morale is attributable, to a large extent, to serious salary imbalances, poorworking conditions, limited teacher career advancement opportunities and insufficient professionalsupport. Teachers who are paid at a level below that required to ensure a dignified existence forthemselves and their families seek outside work to supplement their salaries. Worse, because themost skilled teachers are also those who have the best employment opportunities elsewhere, it isthey who, too often, leave the profession, leaving behind less qualified teachers in the system.

A more insidious problem is absenteeism, a problem harder to track in the developingcountries where communication may be poor and professional teacher-support mechanisms weak.The typical school year is about 200 days in length. As Chapman has noted, however, teacherabsenteeism cut total teaching time in half in many developing countries.

Another cause of absenteeism is the poor social esteem in which many teachers are held,Seen simply as executors of irrelevant, low quality, centrally imposed school programmes,demoralized teachers gradually acquire the same attitude of apathy to their responsibilities as thatof the community where they are assigned. Too often, their views on educational policies,objectives and strategies are rarely sought and when offered, given but cursory attention. Theforums where their voices can be heard are rarely linked in any dynamic way with the officialdecision-making authorities in central ministries.

Teacher attrition is another serious problem, but one by no means limited to developingcountries. Beyond the attraction of better pay outside the teaching profession and unhappinesswith the low social status of the teaching profession, many students enter teacher-traininginstitutions as a stepping stone to university which, in turn, is expected to open the door to better-paid jobs than teaching. And of course there are many who enter for lack of a better alternative.

Under-qualification and inappropriate preparation is another determinant of low morale.Millions of teachers around the world come out of training colleges totally unprepared to teachin the contexts to which they have been assigned. Frustration, anxiety and depression rapidlyaccumulate. For those who remain in the profession, the job of teaching may soon be transformedinto a frustrating routine. The contexts of their assignment large classes, communitydisinterest, violence in schools and an environment not conducive to the development of a loveof teaching and learning add up to a career for which overused expressions like nobleprofession have a hollow ring.

Teacher and societal expectations: two trains passing in the night?

One of the most intractable problems in education today stems from a mutual frustration betweenteachers and society resulting from their respective unfulfilled expectations. Teachers feel toomuch is expected of them, that their basic requirements continue to be unmet and that they arepowerless to communicate, in a believable way, their needs and aspirations to the society theywere trained and hired to serve. Society - parents, community leaders and the like - is convincedthat a kings ransom is being paid for the education of its children and that many of itsexpectations remain unmet.

3 Cf. David W. Chapman, Reducing Teacher Absenteeism and Attrition: Causes, Consequencesand Responses, Paris, UNESCO-IIEP, 1994.


14

Dialogue has become more difficult as positions have become increasingly entrenched. Thenext chapter details some of the demands on teachers from the perspective of society. Most of thepoints appear disturbingly familiar and so they should: they are the subject of countless newspaperand magazine articles. Nevertheless many educators national and international continue tohave difficulty in coming to terms with them. It is hoped that what follows may contribute to amore constructive dialogue in the future.


15

Chapter 2. New challenges for teachers

Trapped in a web of falling means and rising demands

No exit?

The change that has perhaps had the greatest impact on teachers in the past decade is aphenomenon resulting from the convergence of three real forces: economic stagnation, a growingsocio-political demand for education at all levels and a global skepticism of the public service.None would, by itself, be able to cause so much damage to the world of education; combined,however, they constitute a web of formidable obstacles to be overcome.

What can a solitary, under-resourced teacher accomplish to lessen the negative impact ofthese three phenomen? Many argue that teachers were trained to teach to certain precise,examinable prescriptions, not to be social architects or welfare officers. Yet numerous studieshave shown that teachers are the ones to whom the communities they serve typically turn first forinformation, knowledge and help on a vast array of subjects affecting their lives. In the cities ofindustrialized countries, a high proportion of community action programmes are spearheaded byteachers (or educators). With the exception of the police, no other professional group has thesame degree of day-to-day contact with the challenges of society.

Economic stagnation and decline

While not a universal problem, sluggish and even declining economies are one of the key causesof privatizing, downsizing (the reduction of the work force in production to achieve economiesof scale in the manpower/technology mix) and out sourcing (the process by which managementgoes to wherever production costs are cheapest in the industrialized countries). The effects in thedeveloping countries typically take the form of structural adjustment policies, debt, corruption,political instability, rampant inflation and poverty. Although teacher salaries already account foras much as 90 per cent of some national education sector budgets, the salaries and conditions ofservice of teachers are poor simply because the funds available to governments are so limited andthe demands on them so great. When public expenditure is cut, it is inevitably the poor, and inLDCs this includes the teachers, who suffer most.

While Ministry officials, teachers associations and many parent-teacher associations havebeen unrelenting in publicizing these problems, with a few notable exceptions, very few nationalleaders in the world campaign for election on an education platform. Indeed there are examplesof political opposition to teachers who, in some countries, have been portrayed as sources ofsocial unrest. A far more common phenomenon has been the freezing of teacher salaries or theirdelayed payment.

Another, less evident way in which economic stagnation has had an impact on schools hasto do with individual family reactions to the job markets reaction to downsizing and outsourcing.It is estimated that between 25 and 30 per cent of young people from the industrialized countrieselect to remain in school partly to avoid the frustration and indignity of joining the ranks of the


16

unemployed. Growing numbers of people seek further qualifications to give them a competitiveadvantage in obtaining technology-based positions, whether at home or abroad. Both groups aremaking additional demands on a relatively static or declining level of sector resources.

The rising demand for education

Controlling costs

The preceding section describes the problem in essentially supply-side economic terms, that isfrom the perspective of what Governments are willing or able to provide. The increasing strengthof the demand from primary and secondary education school-age children in most regions isadding to an already substantial burden. Table 6 shows the enrolment growth (1975-1993) alongwith an estimated index number for the projected enrolment, by region, a decade hence. Theworld total as shown is expected to grow by roughly a fifth for primary and by over a third forsecondary:

Table 6. Recent and projected enrolment growth patterns

Annual growth of enrolment (%)Group

1975-1980 1980-1990 1990-1993

Primary Secondary Primary Secondary Primary Secondary

World total 1.57 3.37 0.95 1.64 1.60 2.64

Developing countries 2.21 5.69 1.14 2.66 1.81 3.90

Sub-Saharan Africa 8.32 13.98 2.15 4.72 3.03 5.54

Arab States 4.35 9.06 3.60 6.19 2.66 3.67

Latin America & the Caribbean 2.88 7.01 1.46 2.67 1.96 3.09

Eastern Asia and Oceania -0.79 0.19 0.54 2.01

Southern Asia 2.22 4.74 3.39 5.23 2.94 5.91

Least Developed Countries 2.85 4.04 3.37 3.89

Developed countries -0.78 -0.07 -0.05 -0.09 0.37 0.08

Estimated indexnumber of

enrolment in 2005(1993=100)

Primary Secondary121 137

124 158

143 191

137 154

126 144

107 127

142 199

149 158

105 101

With the exception of Eastern Asia and the Pacific, primary and secondary schoolin the 1980s, particularly among developing countries. Secondaryenrolment increased rapidly

education in the developing countries has generally expanded at a more rapid rate than primaryover the past two decades. Yet while the world has decided to go to school, public expenditureon education varied little in the industrialized countries and East Asia in the past 10 years, andactually declined in Southern Asia (See Fig. 3). A number of countries do show increasedexpenditure since 1991, in part as a consequence of the push to basic education for all.4

4Mid-Decade Meeting of the International Consultative Forum on Education for All, 16-19 June1996, Amman, Jordan, Education for All: Achieving the Goal (Working Document). Paris,UNESCO, 1996


17

If expenditures remain staticdespite accommodating a risingdemand, it maybe assumed that percapita cost savings have beenrealized somewhere, whetherthrough the introduction of largerstudent: teacher ratios, longerteaching hours or multi-shiftsystems, cuts in maintenance ofbuildings or by seriously limitingexpenditure on textbooks andequipment. The option of preferenceand certainly the one to elicit anegative reaction from the teachingprofession is that of increasing classsizes. This highly contentioussubject merits a closer look.

The class size debate

Fig. 3. Public expenditure on education as percentage of GNP

World Total

Industrialized countries

Developing countries. Of which

Sub-Saharan Africa

Arab States

Latin America and the Caribbean


Southern Asia

Least Developed Countries

o 1 2 3 4 5

(( 1980 1985 1990 1993)

In an important review of the literature on class size contributed to The internationalEncyclopedia of Teaching and Teacher Education, 5 Finn and Voelkl summarize some of thefindings on class size/achievement.

In many studies, achievement scores were not found to vary significantly whenpupil: teacher ratios fell between 25-50:1. Other studies indicated that large classes lowerachievement. In homogeneous, lower primary classes, small class sizes not only contribute toraising scholastic performance in those years, but the gains in self-confidence and goal-directedness achieved in a small class settings are carried forward, even when class sizes increase.Reading and maths particularly benefit from small class instruction, which also helps culturalminorities and slow learners to maximize their potential. These findings appear especially relevantin the developing countries.

At the same time, the findings also show that whereas assumptions are often made aboutthe possibilities of forging closer teacher-student ties in small rather than larger class settings, fewteachers independently modify their teaching strategies: large class or small, they appear to spendthe same amount of time in talking about course content and classroom routines. The lesson hereis double: a) a successful small-class paradigm includes teachers who have been trained in small-class child-centred pedagogy and ready access to appropriate teaching/learning materials; andb) here as in every other aspect of educational change theory, one cannot treat inter-connectedvariables independently if one plans to generalize from the findings.

5 J. D. Finn and K. E. Voelkl, Class Size, in L. W. Anderson (ed,), The InternationalEncyclopedia of Teaching and Teacher Education, pp. 310-15 (2nd ed.), Pergamon-ElsevierScience Ltd., 1995,


18

The effect on teachers

Finn and Voelkl briefly touch on a still largely inadequately explained part of the problem, namelythe teachers place in the debate. They acknowledge by inference that teacher reskilling is essentialsince few teachers have adequate training in a more heuristic approach to education. Not explicitlymentioned, however, is that most teachers enter the profession in anticipation of satisfactionderived from personal contact with students in a learning setting. Take that away andmechanistic, dehumanized rote learning is all that remains.

When teachers are criticized in many parts of the world for the excessive use of lecturingmethods, their critics tend to overlook two factors which contribute greatly to the status quo.First, the only form of teaching most teachers themselves ever experienced was the same top-down approach used on them in school and subsequently in training college. Second, with classesway in excess of 50 (over 100 in certain countries in Africa), and virtually no textbooks orlearning materials, nor training in grouping, peer teaching and other multi-class methods, theyrevert to methods aimed at what they see as the need to control what they (and society) assumewould be undisciplined children.

Class-size studies that dwell excessively on cognitive achievement often overlook otherimportant issues. One is teacher stress, an increasingly common problem for sector officials.Linked to excessively large classes, it stems from the constant pressure of imposing discipline in increasingly violent settings. The short-term cost is reduced human contact and no sense ofhaving contributed to learning. The longer-term result is what is referred to as burn out,remotivation culminating in absenteeism and teacher turnover. If teachers have little directinfluence on school budgets and on class size, they can nevertheless lessen some of the negativeeffects. Before turning to some of their options, there remains a final social force to investigate,that of the widespread skepticism of public sector official effectiveness.

A crisis of faith in government ideology of the market economy

The last of the factors complicating the work of the teacher today is the transformation of theonce unassailable public image of the teacher, part of the general phenomenon resulting from acrisis of faith in public officials apparently circling the globe.

In countries having high levels of investment in the public sector, frustration with officialstraces partly to reduced staff budgets as a result of declining economic performance, and partlyto envy of those in tenured positions which shelter them from the vagaries of the economy. Inmany countries, the officials most commonly criticized appear to be the two professional groupshaving the greatest degree of contact with the social challenges of most societies, namely teachersand the police. And in still others, people in need of a scapegoat to vent the distress of theirpersonal dramas seize upon the symbol of a nations past and future culture, namely teachers.

To say that this challenge to the status and authority of the teacher is neither warrantednor productive offers little consolation. Even with due recognition of their work, teachers wouldbe justified in believing that theirs was indeed a profession of a Rubiks Cube complexity and thatthey deserve societys thanks, not its criticism. But even as teachers ask for greater recognitionof their contribution and more understanding of the stress caused by their working conditions, it


19

is not unreasonable to think that they too must accept that not all of the criticism aimed ateducation is unwarranted or unfair.

What teachers can do

Teachers overworked, underpaid, unappreciated, misunderstood the preceding picturesuggests that futility and frustration are the ineluctable harvest of any effort to change their statusand improve their professional effectiveness. But is such a conclusion warranted? Has everythingbeen already tried and failed? A dispassionate look at the social landscape seems to suggest thata number of avenues have been inadequately explored, that if the judgement of society seemsunder-pinned more by sentiment than hard facts, perhaps teachers too have not fully grasped thetrue nature of the problem.

It is proper to emphasize, as Education International and other professional teachersbodies do, that the professional freedom of teachers must be respected but to go from theretostating that the prescriptions of how teaching should be done should never come from personsoutside the classroom reality carries the argument so far that it inhibits finding a realistic solution.

The reality of the classroom has obviously changed in twenty years. It is logical to expectthat if due acknowledgement is to be given to teachers as trained professionals, they in turn shouldmaintain both competency and relevancy which accurately reflect social change. Instructionalexpertise is no longer the sole province of credentialed teachers; it is already in the hands of theprivate sector. Increasingly quality instructional packages and distance education packages andcourses via Internet provide alternatives to conventional forms of teaching. What is thecontribution of face-to-face teaching as contrasted with the new information technologies? Themanufacturers of interactive instructional software hire the technical expertise they require fromthe ranks of the teaching profession. When they complete their assignments, these advisers leavetheir skills behind with the private sector.

Teacher roles could usefully be strengthened regarding their relations with the parents oftheir pupils. It is widely believed that, after that of the teacher-pupil dyad, the most importantpartnership in education is between the teacher and the parents. In fact in most countries, parentalsupport for the education of their children is the major determinant of pupil achievement. Inothers, however, parents unfortunately take little active interest in the education of their childrenand in some cases, aggravated by poverty, socio-cultural factors precipitate early drop out.

Partnerships can be strengthened by promoting a frank exchange about institutional andparental expectations in respect to a childs education in order to ensure that the home and schoolenvironments are mutually supportive. By means of such partnerships, teachers can obtain a bettergrasp of parental attitudes which might support or hinder a childs progress as well as explain theirown methods of work. They can explain how parents can support a child in the carrying out ofhomework assignments, how diet and adequate sleep contribute to learning, why the behaviourof a given child is hurting not only his/her learning but that of the other children. In short, teacherscan reinforce a parents interest as well as a childs work.


20

An area proposed for greater teacher intervention is in role-modeling the democraticprocess both in school and community.6 Outside the school, teachers can support candidates forpolitical office who, through word and deed, demonstrate a concern for education and reinforceefforts to promote tolerance and the protection of the environment.

Teachers having affiliations with teachers associations can work for a strengthening oftheir mandate by initiating a frank internal debate about means and ends. Vigorous professionalassociations are an essential component in any model of educational reform but their effectivenesscorrelates to a willingness to undertake a dispassionate analysis of the present obstacles. Certainobstacles, it is argued, arise from a confusion about priorities and a tendency to dichotomize andeven to staunchly defend issues which may be of secondary importance.

The teachers association priorities which appear common around the world area) acceptable conditions of work which attract and retain high quality teachers; and b) the rightand obligation to continuing professional education. In many respects, these two priorities areinterdependent since the willingness of society to back claims for higher salaries is predicated toa degree on the willingness of teachers to respond to societys requirements. Today, teacherresponsibilities must be more than those associated with the profession twenty years ago; teachersmust be leaders and change agents as well. To fulfil their new roles, most will have to join the restof the world in going to school to acquire a battery of new skills; and teachers colleges, theinspectorate and even the public service will have to reassess duty statements, certificationrequirements and professional assessment criteria.

Technologys challenge to teachers

The origins

Most agree that technology contributed to the ending of the Cold War and to globalization,including the twin phenomena of economic downsizing and employmentoutsourcing. Technology provides the principal means by which, through information gathering,analysis and exchange, countries combat global pollution, fish-stock depletion and internationalterrorism. Unfortunately, technology is also a major factor behind the success of trafficking inarms, drugs, illegal migrants, industrial secrets, and child pornography and prostitution.

More than any other single factor, technology and economic competition have hadmutually accelerating effects. Competition has created opportunities for some, hardships forothers. It has also provided the means whereby these same entities can and do co-operate for theglobal good. For better or for worse, technology is one of the primary causes of the growingpolarization of the work force, of increasingly glaring distributional inequities.

With each passing year, growing numbers of those who, in the industrialized countries,have provided middle-level manpower are forced, if they wish to stay in paid employment at an

6See Jacques Delors et al., Learning: the Treasure Within. Report to UNESCO of theInternational Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, Paris, UNESCO, 1996


21

acceptable level, to enter the struggle to maintain relevance in the work place. Some, through on-the-job or institutional reskilling, succeed in laying claim to the higher level but fewer jobsrequired by the new sectors informatics, communications, transportation, tourism, energy andthe like and percolate to the higher echelons of the modern sector. Many do not, and of these,some accept shorter work-weeks as semi-skilled or unskilled labourers while others join the ranksof the unemployed.

Twin challenges are posed here to the individual, to society and to the school. For theindividual, competing successfully is linked to technical standards. But success is no guaranteeof job security and individuals must remain competitive; those who are successful today realizethat, one day, they might, themselves, lose their jobs. Thrust without warning into a situationwithout structure, the semi-employed and unemployed face the imperative of learning a whole setof new skills which are not typically associated with the demands of the work place life skills,They must reflect on what makes life significant, what contributes to its quality, in relation notjust to themselves but to their families and communities as well. The alternatives are sadly all toowell known: domestic violence, child neglect, family break-up, alcoholism, crime, alienation.

Teachers can create the foundations which can enable people in the active population tocompete more effectively, if that is their choice, and to improve the quality of their own lives aswell as those of their loved ones and their community. They can contribute to ensuring that theoverarching importance of standards to the future lives of their pupils is reflected in their workby promoting a community awareness of the importance of standards, by using them asbenchmarks for structuring and monitoring their own teaching, and by more systematic classroomassessment. They can assist their pupils in their efforts to remain competitive in the market placeand to be effective contributors to the welfare of their families by ensuring that each of themattains an acceptable level of mastery of literacy and numeracy, the two skills essential foracademic advancement, for subsequent proficiency in applied technology and for improving thequality of life for all.

The place of standards and classroom assessment: ensuring quality and measuring upto the competition.

Teachers who are unaware of standards or fail to teach to them are effectively teaching blindsince they have no idea either of where they started instructionally speaking or where theirinstructional course is leading them. More important, neither do their students. Teachers whohave little if any idea of how their pupils measure up to external standards are vulnerable to publiccriticism about a neglect of quality. Teachers aware of national standards and able to relatethem to their own work are better equipped to take corrective action when necessary.

Assessment skills involve more than classroom diagnostic testing and summativeevaluation. Teachers must be able to play their part in national efforts to mount computer-basededucation information management systems. They must be part of pre-service trainingprogrammes and reinforced by head teachers/principals and the inspectorate. Teachers whoseassessment skills need upgrading should take it upon themselves to seek help to that end.


22

Improving the teaching of literacy and numeracy

As regards sub-standard literacy and numeracy levels, teacher responsibilities are more diffuse,more defined by context. Comparative studies have shown that while poor achievement scoresin these subjects are a common phenomenon among two extensively tested groups (the 9- and 14-year-olds), teachers are not the primary cause.

Where reading is concerned, the major positive correlates are the home environment, thepresence of an ample supply of good books both at home and at school, and having ample timeavailable for reading. Television watching, excessive drilling and written homework are, however,among the negative correlates for many industrialized countries. As regards maths and sciences,8

similar patterns have emerged. Typical school inputs (class-size, school facilities, per pupilexpenditure, instructional time and teacher education) are less powerful determinants of outcomesthan are home background and the presence of books at home.

School inputs generally have more impact on achievement among developing-countrychildren than in the industrialized countries. In both cases, however, evidence of pleasure in spare-time reading and owning a calculator have been found to be reliable measures of motivation ineducation in general and a predictor for raised achievement in maths.9 Teachers can help byencouraging the building of home and school libraries. The most promising strategy, however, ismaking greater use of the environment of the child as the means of levering the development ofliteracy and numeracy skills. Using the rich socio-cultural matrix of the daily life of the child asinspiration and instructional content increases relevance, reduces the school-community gap andstimulates interest and motivation of the children and of their parents who, for the first time, canrelate directly to what their children are experiencing.

For the development of literacy skills, teachers should teach reading as a discrete exercise,not leave it to be acquired as a side benefit in a completely different subject. One teaching strategywhich has shown promise is known as the language experience approach. It involves helpingchildren understand the importance of reading and writing in their own lives so that what theyexperienced can be talked about, written down and read by themselves and others to enable themto become immediate and personal, and to reflect the way of life of their community.10

As regards numeracy, problem-solving in small groups, doing exercises by onesellf andworking with objects and instruments all appear to improve achievement test scores. Tests andquizzes are effective assessment tools; they constitute another strategy of instruction and a device

7cf. Warwick B. Elley, How in the World do Students Read?, Hamburg IEA, 1992.

8 cf. Zhao Shangwu, Chinese Science Education, Stockholm, IIE Stockholm University, 1993.

9 UNWRA-NCHRD, Comparative Math and Science Achievement across the UNRWA Fields ofGaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the West Bank, Amman, UNRWA, 1995.

10 cf. South Pacific Literacy Education Course, Suva (Fiji), Institute of Education, University ofthe South Pacific, 1992, p. 106.


23

for increasing student motivation by clarifying what is expected of them. Active parental supportof pupil achievement in maths and sciences is even more important than in the case of literacy.

Defining life quality is no easy task

Technologys connection with life outside the work place is sometimes planned but more oftenis not. While the tourism and entertainment businesses could not exist in their present formwithout a sophisticated technological sub-structure, technology also leads, for some, to the needto provide new meaning to free time resulting from reduced work weeks or loss of a regular,paying job. For growing numbers of people, the problem they face is what to do with their freetime so that it is not wasted, not destructive to themselves and to others. The task they face is togive definition to, and eventually improve, the quality of their lives, If the problem is broachedearly enough, i.e. in school, teachers can help.

Preparing people to understand and ultimately act to influence the quality of their lives isno simple matter. The first difficulty, faced by curriculum writers and teachers alike, is to definethe competencies, attitudes and behaviors that promote it. Some like adequate shelter, child-care,health, nutrition and the like, are more universal, easier to define operationally, and are alreadytypically part of the core curriculum. Far more problematical is reaching an understanding of therelationship between cultural norms and day-to-day living, of how beliefs and values can or shouldinfluence how people behave, of what teachers can do.

Teachers have very few resource persons to whom they can turn for advice abouteducation for life quality. The nascent interest in the subject in various parts of the world hasscarcely touched the average teacher training college, curriculum writer or school inspector. Auseful first step is the promotion of discussion among professional colleagues on what, exactly,life quality means to each of them and on the extent to which life quality questions are coveredin the syllabus. Ghanaian sociologist Nii-K Plange proposes four levels through whichinvestigation can be usefully conducted: dialogic, content analysis, delivery assessment andrecipient assessment. Institutional peers, school inspectors, curriculum adviser within the sector,parents, employers and community and religious officials outside these are the necessaryparticipants in such an exercise.

The dialogic method, essentially subjective and action-oriented, aims at creating a basisfor communication between concerned parties about definitions, observed problems, curriculumgaps and the like, A content analysis relates the conclusion of the above discussions to the vertical(chronological) and horizontal (across all subjects) coverage and delivery of the curriculum.Delivery assessment should detail how, using examples, tradition and culture will be linked withthe formal curricular intent. Finally, the question of recipient assessment strategies should beclarified to ensure that methods and instructional goals are consistent. Clusters within which lifequality indicators can be expected to be grouped are: Health, Behaviour, Responsibility, CulturalAwareness, Life Skills (basic education) and Environmental (Community, National, International)Awareness.

Plange, Nii-K, Cultural and Life Quality Indicators for Pacific Island Countries EducationSystems, UNESCO/Apia, 1992,


24

Technology for teaching: here to stay

No boundaries for cyberspace ?

Reference has been made throughout this paper to the many ways in which the relative privacyof the school has been invaded. The most powerful vehicle of this phenomenon is unquestionablytodays information technology, a mix of informatics and telecommunications. While the Internetand World Wide Web the global computer equivalents of hardware and software arecomparatively recent inventions (the latter up and running for barely five years), they tend to bethe symbols of the new technology.

In the highly-publicized Kasparov v. Deep Blue, man-against-machine world championchess face-off, the IBM Deep Blue support team was the primary voice to be heard favouringthe victory of the machine. When, however, Kasparov at last triumphed, most of the watchingworld heaved a sigh of relief Yet apart from the informed view that it is only a matter of time and not much time at that before the power of the megabyte asserts itself in a re-match, thereare other areas where technology already has the upper hand. One such case is the capacity ofthe western-dominated telecommunications industry to cover and transmit a certain interpretationof the human drama, of world events and of life styles to the living rooms and bush shelters ofpeople around the world.

Never has McLuhans theory of the medium being the message come home with suchforce. The relevance of information, the foundations on which knowledge and eventually wisdomare built, is determined not by context, not by its relation to matters of high principle but by so-called sound-bites, i.e. lengths of programmes broadcast time between commercial breaks ortakes. Peoples attention spans one precondition for the processing of information intoknowledge seem to have been reduced to nano-seconds. The risk: the transformation of theworlds citizenry from thinkers and doers into observers, devoid of sentiments of responsibilityfor others.

Instant gratification mechanisms like portable mini-cassettes, multi-channel satellite serviceand television cable systems, CD-Roms, the Internet and the World Wide Web, have taken rooton virtual soil. This technology is judged user-friendly in the first instance because, in additionto making no demands on the user, it reserves no surprises, neither preaches nor enforcesbehavioral codes and, if short on praise, can be counted upon neither to chide nor demean. Thechallenge to the teacher in the first instance is one of convincing children who know nothing butpassive learning delivery systems that the mastery of a subject and setting high standards foroneself are worthwhile endeavors.

The teacher as the guardian of quality and promoter of knowledge

Many today are deeply concerned about the unfolding of this state of affairs and fear that theworld is slowly but inexorably becoming mono-acculturated. Indeed there are clear indicationsthat these concerns are justified. Signs abound of people in search of meaning as a guide tochoice. Some have already engaged in collective action to improve life quality. Others, however,take refuge in cults, tribal ties, violence-filled causes or the downy, sloe-eyed appeal of the


25

characters of the Disney world. It is argued that, more than any other category of professionals,teachers have by far the greatest potential to impart a hierarchy of universal values, to establishindicators of relevance, to furnish measures enabling individuals (or their machines) to sift, sort,rank order, save and discard technology-mediated information in accordance with objective,humanizing criteria.

How realistic is this expectation? The telecommunications industry and UNESCOsGeneral Conference both believe that if technology is part of the problem, it also holds the keysto a partial solution. The preambular paragraph of a resolution on The Use of New Technologiesin Education adopted at the twenty-eighth session of UNESCOs General Conference includesthe following: Considering the potential of the new information and communication technologiesand their impact on education processes and the functioning of education systems. The resolutionconcludes by calling on the Director-General to develop research on and promote mastery of thenew technologies of education. But this enthusiasm is tempered by reticence in certain quarters.

Lingering doubts about technology

This confidence in the surpassing merits of technology did not, however, prevent the GeneralConference from foreseeing a safety net in the form of a provision to evaluate these programmes.The care to include provision for an evaluation suggests a mix of caution and optimism on the partof the General Conference and provides a glimpse of one important aspect of the problem, namelythe passionately-argued but widely diverging views on the subject.

Obtaining reliable advice on which path to follow has proven difficult for many developingcountries. Many have had the same experience as the Pacific States which undertook, withoutsuccess, to obtain a straightforward answer to a simple question: can distance education be cost-effective in the region? Certain simple but useful truths exist which can offer guidance indetermining new teacher roles. Anderson, has provided the following points for reflection:

b the appropriateness of technology is determined by context; in fact the good use of basictechnology is a prerequisite to harnessing modern technology;

b different technologies provide different educational services; some are excellent fordelivery of content, some for drill, some for inter-activity and some for database scanning;

b no matter how diverse the opportunities, no matter how sophisticated the technology, nomatter how desirable and even essential the learning outcomes might be, it is the individualwho always decides when, how, what, why and whether or not she or he learns.

1 2 Jonathan Anderson, contribution to the UNESCO-sponsored international conferencePartnerships in Teacher Development for a New Asia (Bangkok, December 1995).


26

Overcoming teacher skepticism

Many teachers are highly sceptical of and in some cases actively threatened by the newtechnologies. For some, it is a generational problem; for others, the issue is deontological.Whatever may be the merits or draw-backs of educational technology, one issue remains whichis often either overlooked or underestimated. It concerns the improbable and certainlyincompatible interface between two fundamentally different learning environments. The type oftechnology that most interests educators today is interactive yet the most common educationalparadigm throughout the world is the top-down or lecture approach in which interactivity isincompatible without a radical shift in views about educational provisions.

IMAGE sees technology, concretely multi-channeling, as a device for levering traditionalone-way, single-source teaching practices into the real world of information and, ultimately,learning menus. 14 The outcome is not, however, dependent on right and wrong choices. If theenvironment is not conducive to interactivity, if the system preaches child-centred learning butpractises one-way communication, the pupils mind set will be dysfunctionally influenced througha lowering of self-esteem, diminished sense of personal efficacy and the reduced capacity toappreciate, not to say influence, causality.

Here the full implications of the holistic treatment imperative can be best felt: technologyin education cannot be treated as a discrete input. The teacher and other partners must be part ofa systemic approach to the problem. As with the other challenges discussed in this paper, it is re-emphasized that teachers do not act alone and should not be obliged or expected to do so.Interactivity must be reinforced across the fill spectrum of the learning process if interactivetechnology is to become a realistic pedagogical option in any multi-channel intervention strategy.

Awareness-raising about the place of technology in education, though it will not leadinexorably to behavioral change, is arguably an early necessity for most of the worlds teachers.Teachers should become at least conversant on the central issues in the new technology debatemuch as doctors who are supposed to have a working knowledge of the major disease vectorslikely to affect their communities.

Guidelines for action

To conclude this section, a few specific suggestions for modified teacher roles are made:

(i) If new technologies pose as many problems as they hold potential solutions, the teacherhas a curious role - that of seeking the most powerful individualized instruction sourcesfor each of her/his pupils all the while ensuring that a safety net is close by. In this

13International Multichannel Action Group for Education, NGO with Consultative Status withUNESCO.

14 Steve Anzalone, Multichannel Learning: Connecting All to Education, Washington, EDC,1995.


(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

27

connection, it is well to remember that, as Roy Singh cautioned, no education systemcan rise too far beyond the level of the teachers in it.15

Because teachers are not necessarily versed on all the available channels on the potentiallearning menu, they owe it to themselves and to their pupils to avail themselves of evento insist on their right to be provided with opportunities for learning about newinstructional tools. Only then can they legitimately claim that, because they know best thelearning needs of each of their pupils, they are best qualified to select and apply, on a caseby case basis, the new appropriate technology.

Teachers must make individual judgments about how isolation may limit the usefulnessof technology isolation, the cultural relevance of the soft-ware, erratic schoolparticipation, cultural and learning level impediments, new spatial and psycho-motor skilldemands, and information overload.

Teachers must judge whether the new technologies will create new, or aggravate existingproblems (gender and minority inequalities; achievement disparities traceable to thegeographical location of the school in relation to the transmitter);

Teachers must make use of the new technologies to build professional and personalsupport networks and inter-school student linkages to, for instance, teach science betterand extend peaceful relations between potential antagonists.

Planet Earth under siege: distress signals from eco-space

Rio revisited

In an increasingly environmentally-conscious world, planners are often asked what happens whennational poverty alleviation efforts conflict with global or industrialized country eco-concerns suchas the preservation of rain forests, a question that seeks to impose the obligation to choosebetween two inescapable imperatives.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, Rio deJaneiro, 1992) succeeded in moving back the margins of ignorance on the issue of eco-tide. Itsgreater achievement, however, was in illuminating the popular understanding of cause and effectin the management of global change and in linking the concept of sustainable development withenvironmental concerns and life quality concepts. Thanks to its follow-up, the public formed abetter understanding of the inter-connectedness of the animal, plant and mineral components ofthe planet and became more sympathetic to the message think globally, act individually.

Rio showed how conventional environmental concerns, traditionally associated withecology alone, were but part of the total picture, Environmental awareness, the Conferencestressed, involves more than a concern for trees and endangered species: human dignity must

15 Raja Roy Singh, Education for the 21st Cetury: Asia-Pacific Perspectives, UNESCO-APEID,Bangkok 1991 (p. 75)


28

figure prominently in any environmental protection agenda. It is thus not sufficient to save thewhales in one breath it in the next, one turns a blind eye to the intolerable conditions in whichso many of the worlds children live, to take one example. For them, a healthy environment mustbe symbolized by more than the colour green, by more than the image of a rain drop.

Behavioural change in respect to environmental protection is extremely difficult toachieve, especially if instruction is limited to the anecdotal. To be effective, environmentaleducation must occur in context. The specific acts of violence which occur within and eventuallyactually define the environment of the learner are what must provide the instructional content foran environmental education lesson. For environmental education to be internalized and ultimatelyresult in individual decisions to react, to combat violence to the environment in this expandedsense, the environmental education teacher must enter the environment of the individual even asthe individual must, in turn, not be cut off from that environment by the vicariousness ofclassroom learning. The door to the school should be seen as a revolving door, one which isconducive to entry as well as egress.

Passing through the revolving door

At an important inter-Agency conference on environmental education, Scoullos remarked thatsome of the credibility of the instructional intent of environmental education can be traced to itsnewsworthiness and some to the extent that it bespeaks wisdom and manifest common sense.Issue investigation and ultimately ownership together with empowerment are clearly centralpreconditions to the creation of attitudes and behaviors which are consistent with environmentalprotection.17

For teachers, the outstanding challenge is to link eco-concerns with sustainabledevelopment and a culture of peace. The empowerment of women as agents of change inpopulation programmes and the development of a more comprehensive information base wouldfigure prominently on any list as well. The cognitive sides of the problem, however, must beconsidered as comparatively minor hurdles to clear.

If, as is herein claimed, the task of the teacher is to bring environmental education intoclose proximity with the environmental arena, then it is clear that the problem is far more oneof how to do so than of what to teach. How is the teacher to counteract the negative effectsof the massive counter-productive attitude formation vehicles like state-sponsored consumerismand the mass media? How is the teacher to sustain the necessary commitment to environmentaleducation when it receives but scant attention in most countries? Regardless of how the teacherchooses to confront these problems, there is no alternative to passing through the schoolsrevolving door to the world outside in order to form new partnerships. Many will be the same asthose engaged in the collective struggle to extend peaceful relations parent-teacherassociations, teacher colleges, the inspectorate. Others must, however, be entirely new.

16 UNESCO/UNEP/MID-ECSDE Inter-regional Workshop, Athens, June 1995, Draft Report.

17 Scoullos, Prof. M., Chailman/Director, Towards an Environmental Education for SustainableDevelopmenl, in UNESCO/UNEP/..., op. cit.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) document. WARNING! Spelling errors might subsist. In order to access

Documents

TEACHER ROLES AND GLOBAL CHANGE - UNESCOunesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001055/105528e.pdf · CONTENTS Introduction, 1 Why link teacher roles with global change?, 1 Changes in the