Using OERs to improve teacher quality: emerging findings from TESSA
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Date
2010
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning
Abstract
The last decade has seen tremendous progress in primary pupil enrolment across much of
sub-Saharan Africa but unfortunately in many areas this has not been accompanied by an
improvement in pupil achievement. Attention and priorities are now expanding to embrace
close scrutiny of the processes of classroom teaching and learning. Governments and donor
agencies across the region are engaged in promoting a pedagogical paradigm shift to
improve pupil attainment; a learner-centred classroom approach with pupil-teacher
construction of knowledge through active inquiry. But to date systematic adoption and
embedding of these progressive teaching methods has been limited and pupil learning
achievements continue to be low. Much recent research on African classrooms shows that
the dominant mode of teaching remains a teacher-led transmission style in which pupil talk
is restricted to short, often chorus, answers to closed questions. ( Pontefract and Hardiman,
2005; Akyeampong et al, 2006; Altinyelken,2010; Henevald et al, 2006; Mtika & Gates,
2009)
Recent UNESCO EFA reports draw attention to the importance of teacher quality for
improving pupil achievement in schools and the key role of teacher education in shifting
modes of interaction in African schools to those which more fully support pupils’ cognitive and
linguistic learning (UNESCO, 2010). Teachers are potentially key agents of change.
However such a focus on teachers is not unproblematic.
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Citation
Wolfenden, Freda; Umar, Abdurrahman; Aguti, Jessica and Abdel Gafar, Amani (2010). Using OERs to improve teacher quality: emerging findings from TESSA. In: Sixth Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, 24-28 Nov 2010, Kochi, India.