Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

 

How do we prepare educators for a new role in the 21st century?

 

‘Every community (nation, my own)) should have a talented and dedicated teacher in every classroom …  (We have) enormous opportunity for ensuring teacher quality well into the 21st century, if we recruit promising people into teaching and give them the highest quality preparation and training’. In President Clinton’s ‘Call to Action for American Education in the 21st Century’

Abstract

No nation can grow beyond the quality of its education which, in all circumstances, should also be dependent on the quality of its teachers (Boaduo, 2006; Lawal, 2006). Our world will be a better place for the coming generation but only if teachers are given the required tools to do their work professionally and be recognised, in the strictest manner, as professionals, who require registration and professional certification by a nationally recognised professional teachers’ council. The training of teachers for the 21st century should take into account the ever-changing needs of society, the advancement and proliferation of technology and the way that traditional classroom teaching is losing ground to distance learning. In this paper, the authors have made a bold attempt to address the issue of preparing teachers for 21st century schools.

Introduction

From the time formal education was introduced, teachers and teaching have been synonymous with the educative process. Schooling has become a business and the businessmen and women have been teachers. Traditionally, teacher training used to take the form of stringent training where teacher trainees and the teacher trainers interrelated in an atmosphere that gave room for the acquisition of skills and the knowledge that would enable the teacher trainees to be able to provide the services expected of the teaching business person. The traditional teacher training was dictatorial and the teacher trainees had no room for the application of creativity.

In the 21st century there is an absolute need for an effective teacher training program that provides dynamic, reliant, relevant and applicable education that would lead to an excellent level of confidence in both the teacher and the learner, leading to a coordinated professional practice to rectify and solve problems in the educative process. The following would be required to be considered for implementation in any teacher training program for the 21st century:

• the use of technology
• distance learning strategies
• regular curriculum reform and innovation
• provision of sufficient instructional and other required materials
• creativity for the improvisation of instructional materials methods of teaching and learning, especially learning through the web, that is e-learning and virtual classroom instruction
• individual or personalised learning
• consideration of available natural resources within an environment for productive training that would keep learners in their locality after schooling.

Education: a tool for societal empowerment

We all agree that education is the most powerful instrument for society’s development and progress, without which neither the individual nor the nation could attain any level of advancement and development, be that social, educational, economic, industrial scientific or technological. The best way to achieve all that is to make sure that teachers are given the best form of training that would make them to teach our learners to be creative, talented researchers. Teacher education for the 21st century should be designed to produce a highly trained (academically and professionally) and intrinsically motivated teacher who is:

• sensitive and conscious in attitude, values and morals
• able to handle the teaching load and the learners effectively and efficiently for the best educational achievement.

In this provision, the teacher training program should have a dynamic curriculum that takes into account local needs related to available natural resources, which the learners should be made to convert into marketable commodities. It is only when the learners are able to make use of the natural resources within their environment, using the knowledge and skills acquired at school, that, after graduation, they are not, in any way, forced to migrate into urban areas. It is only through a new and dynamic teacher education program that can help to achieve this in the 21st century can we claim to have provided education for social empowerment.

The rational for a completely new teacher training program for the 21st century

There is a need to rationalise the objective of teacher training in the 21st century, especially in Africa. In trying to do this, there is a need to identify and understand, as well as recognise the value and worth of prospective teachers and give them the opportunity to enhance the progress of their professional training. To do this, the following are recommended by Adeniji (1972; Imig, 2002): Teachers of the 21st century must be:

• highly motivated, both intrinsically and extrinsically
• encouraged to develop the spirit of inquiry, creativity, nationalism and a sense of belonging
• made to fit into the social life of the community, both the immediate and the distant
• provided with both the intellectual and professional background adequate to face the challenges of ever-changing situations in society
• knowledgeable, progressive and effective, to be able to inspire learners to learn
• master of subject content, as well as methods of teaching, to be able to impart relevant, adequate and applicable, transferable, convertible knowledge and skills to the learners.

National recognition of teaching as a profession

To the list above, we would also like to add that teaching should be recognised nationally as a profession in its own right, where practitioners are tested and issued with professional practising certificates, as in medicine, nursing and law. The professionalisation of teaching should be taken seriously if we are to achieve a meaningful education in the 21st century. In fact, one should not expect someone who has not been trained for a profession to get into such a professional environment and start practising. Teaching has been proliferated in this way over the years where people with no professional training are recruited into classrooms to work as teachers. The 21st century teacher cannot be one of the untrained and un-certificated teachers. There should be no room for the recruitment of school leavers or graduates, not professionally prepared for teaching, into the classroom to teach. All nations and their education departments should join hands to end this illegal professional practice, which has undermined the teaching profession, completely swallowing its professional status and making it look like ‘anybody can be recruited into the classroom and given a piece of chalk to stand in front of kids and make noise’. The ending of such erroneous perception can be effected only when national governments recognise and, by decree, prompt the teaching profession to operate under an umbrella council, like other professions.

The use of technology

The introduction of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) into classrooms over the past few years has led to some of the most creative thinking about the way teachers would have to teach in schools in the 21st century and beyond. What needs serious thought is that the impact of ICT on the work of future teachers should make it a core component in the acquisition of teaching skills and knowledge in teacher training institutions throughout the world. In so doing, the future teacher would be able to reform and innovate the teaching and learning environment and the activities that take place in the future classroom.

The debate of ICT in the teaching-learning continuum will continue unabated for centuries to come. The view of the authors is that no matter what changes are ushered into the school environment, there will always be classrooms (even in homes), learners (as individuals and in classroom as they are traditionally known) and teachers (either self-tutorial programs or computer programs). However, the role and management of the teachers and learners, as well as the classrooms, would not be the same as they are today. The following would have to be ushered in (Carter, 2002):

• Teachers would have access to electronic whiteboards and networked computers, enabling them to exchange ideas and experiences at the touch of a button. Video conferencing is an aspect of technology that will replace face-to-face classroom teaching, and the 21st century teacher should be well versed in using it.
• Lessons could be planned and stored on disks for sharing so that the move will be from the replication of resources to a greater focus upon the outcomes of learning and the diagnostic signposting for every stage of the school system.
• Teachers should be trained to belong to each other and share ideas and experiences. Even there can be collaborative teaching through video-conferencing, where the same lesson can be delivered to several classrooms across the world. In this way, time will also be of the essence and learners worldwide can receive their tutorial from teachers they do not meet face-to-face.
• High quality online resources, which have been prepared by experienced teachers for sharing, would be available. Consequently, learners can also be accessed online, allowing teachers to interact with the data and the features of the learning that individual learners find difficult.
• There will be databases where the results of assessment can be stored and recorded from home because teachers will have access to school intranets to facilitate the capture of information required. Teachers would need training in this respect to be able to use the facilities.
• Teachers will be able to develop virtual learning opportunities that will help individualised or personalised learning by learners, to progress through their learning with little or no intervention by the teacher.

All these do not suggest that there would be no teachers. Teachers would still be around, however their role would change drastically from the commanding to the guiding or facilitating sphere. They should, therefore be given the training that would place them in a position where they would be able to meet the new challenges that are not envisaged today. The preparation of the 21st century educator should project into the future, and approximately identify the conditions expected.

The 21st century educator as a professional researcher

Since we entered the classroom as professional educators some 30 years ago, we have been convinced beyond reasonable doubt that a progressive educator should be a practical researcher who aspires to research on problems that are confronted in the teaching-learning environment. Teachers live in research communities. They naturally seek answers to questions and find solutions to problems of varying magnitudes. Educators are decision-makers and make thousands of choices on a daily and a weekly basis regarding texts, learners’ behaviour, integration of technology in teaching, revision of curriculum and pedagogy, assessment and management. Generally, teachers are reflective and sensitive to the needs of their learners.

One wonders how teachers are able to do all this and be successful in the teaching-learning environment. In the 21st century school environment, the educators would need high level knowledge and skills, especially in the research environment. Research of all categories can make a significant contribution towards the achievement of set aims and objectives. The 21st century educator should be given extensive training in the conduct of research, both minor and major. Research should be considered as an evolving methodology and must be responsive to the teaching-learning environment and its complexities. The training in research for teachers should allow for inquiry conducted in the full and messy context of the life of a classroom, providing rich descriptions of learners in action, so they are able to receive the required and applicable help from educators when the need arises (Atwell, 1993: iii).

Among the necessary skills that the 21st century educator should be equipped for in the research arena should include the following.

• They should be given a thorough coaching in action and participatory research, so that they take immediate remediation of problems they encounter by bringing in the whole community for the necessary action to avert the identified problems.
• They should be given the tools to be able to frame researchable topics from identified problems, prepare research proposals, and use these proposals to formulate research questions to help gather the required data to be able to investigate the problems.
• They should be trained to write reports from the data they are able to collect for the study being conducted and, if possible, make the findings and recommendations known to stakeholders, so that action can be taken to remediate the situation.
• In the process of collecting data for the investigation of the problem, they should be equipped with the skills of keeping field notes, interviewing respondents, as well as any other skills they might need to be able to take a research study to a conclusion.
• They should be given both the basic and advance skills and knowledge in writing for publication. This will enable the 21st century educator to become a publisher and thereby make a fuller contribution to the store of world knowledge.

What has been sketched above on research is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot needs to go into teacher preparation in this regard because the research being advocated here should inform practical teaching experiences.

Publication of research reports, articles and papers of interest

We would also like to emphasise that the training of the 21st educator should take into account a course in writing publishable articles, papers or research reports. In fact, it is only through this medium that the millennium educator can share ideas and experiences, and also keep permanently on record what have been identified and written about. In this way, there will always be sources for reference, should similar problems arise in the future that demand redress.

Conclusion

In the light of the above discussions, we would like to indicate that the preparation of the 21st century educator requires the acquisition of a high level of knowledge and skills acquisition, without which the 21st century educator would find him or herself in a quandary. The teacher training program should incorporate a lot of knowledge areas – basic philosophy, basic psychology, and basic research methods in education, basic history of education, sociology and philosophy of education, and much more. Apart from all that, several skills would have to be incorporated in the teacher training of the 21st century educator. What needs to be mentioned here, as a final reminder, is the fact that the 21st century educator will be a walking question mark where answers to all questions regarding the teaching-learning environment - immediate or future - should be anticipated. The educator ready and able to make a contribution, to find answers. Teachers would have to function as theorists and be able to propose theories in order to find solutions to the problems they would confront from day to day. The 21st century educator must be well placed if the training program becomes reflective, progressive, dynamic and projective into the future.

References

Adeniji, A (1972). ‘Summary of discussion and recommendation in a Philosophy for Nigeria Education: Report on the National Curriculum Conference’. Nigeria: Heinemann Educational Books.
Atwell, N (1993). Foreword. In Patterson L, Santa CM, Short, KG & Smith, K. (eds.) Teachers are researchers: reflections and action. (pp. vii-x). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Carter, D (2002). The role of teachers in the school of the future. Cirencester Deer Park School, UK: Technology Colleges Trust.
Imig, D (2002). Making teacher education responsive to the needs of 21st century student learning. Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Lawal, HS (2006). ‘Teacher education and the professional growth of the 21st century’. In African educational research network. Volume 3, Number 2, pp. 1-4.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr Nana Adu-Pipim Boaduo FRC lectures in the Department of Languages and Social Sciences Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Botswana.

Ms Saline Monicah Babitseng is Language Teacher Adviser at Gabane Primary School, in Botswana.

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