Teacher Professional Development Outside the Lecture Room: Voices of Professionally Unqualified Practicing Teachers in Rural Zimbabwe Secondary Schools
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84 Global Education Review 3(4) Teacher Professional Development Outside the Lecture Room: Voices of Professionally Unqualified Practicing Teachers in Rural Zimbabwe Secondary Schools Tabitha Grace Mukeredzi Durban University of Technology, South Africa Abstract Attempts to address global pressure to achieve Education for All have been hampered by two fundamental challenges in developing countries, namely an acute shortage of teachers and large rural populations in these countries. In addition, qualified, competent teachers shun working in rural settings. While recruitment of professionally unqualified graduate teachers into the teaching profession has become recognized internationally as a way to address staffing rural schools and Education for All commitments, there remain outstanding questions regarding how such teachers professionally learn and grow in these rural contexts outside the Teacher Education Institution lecture room. An understanding of how they develop professionally is crucial. This study explored professional development experiences of professionally unqualified practicing teachers in rural secondary schools. A qualitative design was adopted and three-interview series complimented by photo elicitations were employed to explore the teachers’ professional development experiences. Data were transcribed and manually analysed inductively utilizing open coding. Findings suggest that professional development experiences for these teachers occurred in four sites: school structures, wider professional sites, planned and unplanned gatherings, and the classroom. Drawing on concepts of professional development to describe, analyse and understand data, the author illustrates that professionally unqualified practicing teachers in rural secondary schools experience professional development outside Teacher Education Institutions in interaction, through domains of formality and experience: non formal, informal and experiential. Keywords Rural education, unqualified teachers, professional development, experiential learning, Education for All Background to the Study adequately trained teachers. UNESCO points out Of late governments have been experiencing “rights of children within education global pressure to achieve Education for All internationally are compromised by untrained (EFA) goals, consequently nations have made education systems cannot produce enough new commitments to every child, indeed, every teachers to meet projected demand and EFA person having access to basic education ______________________________ Corresponding Author: (Mukeredzi, 2009). However, in developing Tabitha Grace Mukeredzi, Durban University of Technology, countries, attempts to meet these EFA goals Indumiso-Midlands Campus, PO Box 1334, Durban 4000, have been confronted by two significant South Africa challenges. Firstly, an acute shortage of Email: [email protected] Global Education Review is a publication of The School of Education at Mercy College, New York. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Citation: Mukeredzi, Tabitha Grace (2016). Teacher professional development outside the lecture room: Voices of professionally unqualified practicing teachers in rural Zimbabwe secondary schools. Global Education Review, 3 (4). 84-106 Teacher professional development outside the lecture room 85 and poorly trained teachers” (UNESCO, 2004, p. quality of teacher education provision is to be 138). Lewin, Samuel and Sayed add that “many enhanced (Mukeredzi, 2013). This study sought development targets” (2003, p.133). Secondly, to understand how the PUPTs in rural secondary many developing countries have large rural schools professionally develop outside TEIs. populations. In Zimbabwe 80% of Black The study addressed one research question: Zimbabweans live in rural areas (Chikoko, 2006) How do the PUPTs experience professional consequently most schools are located in these development outside TEIs in rural secondary settings. Globally, close to 70% of all school age schools? children are in rural schools (HSRC SA, 2005; UNESCO, 2004) which creates problems, as Conceptualising Professional qualified, competent teachers generally shun Development working in these areas. Given these global Professional development is understood as problems, an understanding of these big issues representing the growth of teachers in their becomes worthwhile. Through personal profession. Villegas-Remers (2003) defined it as experience of teaching and coordinating the Post “a long-term process that includes regular Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in opportunities and experiences planned Zimbabwe and South Africa, governments systematically or unplanned to promote growth recruit university graduates into teaching who and development in the profession” (p.12). In have no professional teaching qualifications. many countries, proposals to reform/transform This coincides with international trends where schools emphasize teacher professional professionally unqualified graduates are being development as pivotal for improving education persuaded to join teaching and given special quality and student achievement (Nakabugo, dispensations to develop them to qualified status Bisaso & Masembe, 2011) as the success of any (UNESCO, 2004). education reform for student improvement The sample group in this study were hinges on teacher professional development. professionally unqualified practicing teachers However, as professional development is context (PUPTs) in rural Zimbabwe secondary schools. dependent its nature remains diverse (Komba & In this study, PUPTs are practicing, possess Nkumbi, 2008; Villegas-Remers, 2003). content knowledge from undergraduate degrees, Professional development may be initiated have teaching experience, but do not have a by the ministry, school or teachers. Hurd, Jones, professional teaching qualification. It is the McNamara and Craig (2007) reported professional development experiences of this centralised government teacher professional category of teachers outside a Teacher Education development activities in the United Kingdom. Institution (TEI) lecture room, which is Government funded school initiated professional investigated in this study. The PUPTs were development activities focussing on particular enrolled in an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) policies have also been recorded in Tanzania Programme - PGDE offered by the Zimbabwe (Komba & Nkumbi, 2008). Other approaches Open University (ZOU) in order to become have included meetings, workshops, conferences qualified. and seminars organised by school subject Knowing how such teachers professionally departments, school-to-school subject clusters develop outside TEIs in rural schools is essential and associations (Chikoko, 2006). for reviewing professional development efforts In developing countries, professional undertaken by institutions, which is vital if development has generally relied on 86 Global Education Review 3(4) government, subject clusters, and associations (Chikoko, 2008) which often reinforce for disseminating policy initiatives (Kruijer, deficiency scripts like poverty and 2010). In South Africa however, Graven (2004) unemployment (Ebersohn & Ferreira, 2012; discovered that government workshops were Islam, Mitchell, De Lange, Balfour & Combrink, ineffective, and in Zimbabwe, unproductive 2011; Hlalele, 2012; Myende & Chikoko, 2014). cascaded professional development workshops Other researchers believe that the elusiveness of were reported (Mukeredzi, 2009). These the definition emanates from the ambiguity of multiplier styles were also adopted in South the term and arbitrary nature of the distinctions Africa in order to reach many participants within with urban which often overlook the contextual a short period (Harley & Wedekind, 2005). differences because school curricula and Critics of cascaded models of teacher practices are similar (Abd-Kadir & Hardman, professional learning argue that such models 2007; Anaxagorou, 2007; Kline, White & Lock, often have no meaningful impact on classroom 2013). practice. In Zimbabwe, the legacy of the colonial There is concurrence on what effective rule delineated land into three classifications: professional development entails. But agreement First, the former sparsely populated white notwithstanding, a mismatch still remains farming areas, with distinctive developed between speechmaking and practice. Hence, infrastructure, close to towns and cities, across merely knowing what constitutes effective watershed with rich agricultural farmlands professional development is insufficient; what is (Mlahleki, 1995). Second, sparsely populated, important is to have it actively embedded in the black owned small-scale market gardening cultures, practices and structures of schools. farming areas located on infertile soils and with Similar observations were documented by Ono & limited infrastructure, further away from towns. Ferreira, 2010, p.63 who lamented that: “It is Third, the traditional village- rural, remote, not so much about knowing what good communal lands called tribal trust lands or professional development looks like; it’s about reserve’ (both descriptors signify derelict land knowing how to get it rooted in the institutional assigned by the colonial government but not structure of schools.” This study set out to owned by the