The attitudes of high school teachers to open education resources: A case study of selected
South African schools
Alex van der Merwe, Durban University of Technology, South Africa
alexvdm@dut.ac.za
Abstract
South Africa's education system is in crisis. In spite of education enjoying the largest proportion
of annual budgeted government funding, performance generally remains dismal. Among other
factors, a lack of resources and poorly skilled teachers have been blamed for the widely
acknowledged deterioration of the country's educational quality at school level. It is improbable
that education will attract significantly more funding to address alleged shortages of resources
and/or skills. Rather, it is more likely that pressure will mount to achieve more with less in a
milieu of governments intent on shrinking national budget deficits.
Open educational resources (OERs) offer not only the prospect of substantial cost savings but
also a mechanism to assemble teacher communities of practice for the purposes of sourcing and
developing these materials for wide distribution. Such communities can also serve as repositories
of skills and experience which can be tapped by the wider teaching fraternity. This exploratory
study, on the basis of survey data and largely descriptive analysis, offers at least modest
empirical evidence in support of the proposition that teachers are likely to engage more seriously
with OERs in policy environments that recognise and reward such initiatives.
Keywords: education, open education, open educational resources, open education
resources, education policy
1
1. INTRODUCTION
South Africa faces a crisis in its education system (Newman 2008, Modisaotsile 2012). This is
evident from the fact that, of the 1 627 004 pupils who sat the matric (grade 12) school leaving
exams between 2009 and 2011, 54% failed (Masondo, 2014).
The systemic scale of this problem is clear from the reality that, during the same period, 37.4%
of Grade 11 pupils failed as did 23.1% of Grade 10s. Van der Berg et al (2011) note that,
according to a Southern and East African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality
(SACMEQ) survey in 2007 of Grade 6 mathematics and reading, South Africa was found to have
the third highest proportion of functionally illiterate learners (27%) and the fifth highest
proportion of functionally innumerate learners (40%) of the 15 education systems that
participated in the survey. A recent World Economic Forum report (Bilbao-Osorio et al, 2014)
indicates that South Africa performed worst (148th) out of 148 countries with respect to the
quality of its mathematics and science education and a dismal 146th for the quality of its
educational system.
The consistently poor general state of education in South Africa has been attributed to, among
other factors, a low quality of teaching and learning (Taylor 2008, Van der Berg et al 2011,
Masondo 2014). The country’s problems of poor quality education are acknowledged to be
significantly rooted in the primary and secondary schooling phases (Department of Basic
Education, 2012). Systemic poor performance at primary and subsequently, high school level is
likely to domino through to higher education. It was estimated in 2012 that just 40% of children
who started school wrote the matric examinations. Of these 28% passed, four percent went on to
enroll at universities and only one percent graduated (Jones, 2012).
It is in view of the allegations of a lack of educational resources and poorly skilled and equipped
teachers as important reasons cited for the poor quality of South African education (Newman,
2008) that this study set out to explore how open educational resources (OERs) could be
employed in a spirit of community engagement in South African high schools to improve the
quality of education and also widen access to it.
The attitudes, willingness and capacity of expert teachers to engage in OER development and
sharing are vital considerations for successful open education initiatives. It is, after all, this body
of professionals that must decide whether, and how much, it wants to share in terms of skills,
experience and resources with under-qualified, poorly equipped and inexperienced teachers in
the school system. The willingness and capacity of teachers to embrace OERS depends
significantly, in turn, on the adoption of policy measures that will create an enabling
environment in which the spirit and culture of open education can grow.
This exploratory study extends Van der Merwe’s (2012) exploratory analysis of the attitudes of
Pietermaritzburg and Durban high school teachers in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal (KZN)
province to open education resources. A culture of sharing skills and resources among teachers
in the spirit of open education could potentially serve to improve the quality of teaching and
learning. This study, in line with Van der Berg et al's (2011) 6-point vision for improving quality
in education, seeks to promote teaching capacity by gauging teachers' receptiveness to open
education resources as well as their willingness to share these materials.
2
The question posed by Van der Merwe (2014) was whether the current levels of collaboration
and sharing within relatively well resourced KZN schools and departments can be leveraged and
scaled up to include other schools across the province. To answer this question, one would need
to know not only what motivates teachers to use OERs but also what barriers they perceive to
employing these materials as a central pillar in their teaching approaches. For the purposes of
this study “open education resources” and “open educational resources” are regarded as being
synonymous.
Section 2 reviews a sample of background literature, Section 3 explains the study's methodology
and Section 4 discusses its findings. The limitations of the study are pointed out in Section 5 and
Section 6 offers some concluding thoughts.
2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Problems and possible solutions
South Africa's education crisis is the product of various factors. These include poor management
and administration and a lack of support for teachers and learners in a society plagued by
conditions of poverty and inequality (Bloch, 2009). Additional complicating factors include
resident gangs, language barriers, poor nutrition, ill health, a lack of transport, overcrowding, a
deficiency of laboratories, and staff rooms and libraries in poorer schools. Teacher union
resistance to measures designed to address the educational system's deficiencies and corruptions
are further confounding factors that inhibit meaningful reform (Anon. 2011, Saunderson-Meyer
2011). These ailments, together with the general lack of suitable teaching resources and poorly
trained teachers (Newman, 2008), might well be expected to impact negatively on the quality of
education.
Van der Merwe (2014) speculates that, since education already enjoys the lion’s share of annual
national budget allocations with only very poor returns to show for it, it is likely that it will have
to be restored to health without the benefit of significant additional public funding. A real
possibility, thus, is that teachers' current stocks of teaching materials could be significantly
boosted by the selective adoption of locally developed and/or moderated free and open education
resources. That this type of model offers real promise of boosting the quality of education is
evident from the University of South Africa’s (Hart, 2014) recent adoption of an open
educational resource strategy. The university feels that this measure will allow it to focus its
efforts on providing its students with improved support/tutoring services as opposed to simply
generating and selling content/knowledge since much very good content is already available for
free.
A potential spinoff of a process in which teachers collaborate to develop and share materials is
that it may have the beneficial effect of reorganizing teacher training and development so that
more of it takes place within Communities of Practice committed to open educational practices
(OEPs). The term “Community of Practice” (CoP) has been used in different ways, and usually
refers to informal networks that support people to develop shared meaning and engage in
knowledge building (Hoosen, 2009).
OEPs have been defined as a set of activities and efforts that support the creation, use and
3
repurposing of open educational resources (Ehlers and Conole, 2010). The “term open
educational resources” (OER) was first adopted at the 2002 UNESCO Forum on the Impact of
Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries at which time it was defined as
the open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication
technologies, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for noncommercial
purposes (Friesen, 2009).The interest in OERs stems from the benefits they are expected to
afford.
2.2 The potential and challenges of OERs
According to Geser (2007) the potential benefits of OERs include:
• The creation of networks for the production and sharing of educational materials based
on a strong emphasis of re-usability. This would include the prospect of leveraging the
educational quality of content through quality control, feedback and improvements within
content alliances, communities and networks who share content.
• Increasing the pool of resources (content and tools) for redesigning curricula and
improving teaching and learning practices without having to worry about copyright
issues.
• Better returns on public funds invested in education through greater cost-effectiveness
when reusing resources (e.g. sharing development costs among institutions or
professional communities).
Importantly, open education may foster lifelong learning and social inclusion through easy
access to resources that might otherwise not be accessible.
In spite of their considerable potential, the promise of open education and OERs has often not
been realized (Kanwar et al, 2010) due primarily to the problem of their sustainability. The
majority of OER initiatives are introduced and sustained by donor funding. If this is withdrawn,
projects typically fail. The discontinuation of Utah State University’s Open Courseware
Movement in 2009 is just one example of this (Kanwar et al, 2010).
Other thorny issues include uncertainty regarding quality assurance, a lack of broadband and
other technical innovations, interoperability issues and a lack of time to produce shareable
materials (Yuan et al, 2008; Hodgkinson-Williams, 2010). Hoosen (2009) reports the findings of
two South African school case studies where teachers cited a lack of time to engage in OER
creation, admitted to limited knowledge and experience of information and communication
technologies (ICTs) and indicated that they were unclear about copyright issues.
2.3 OER sustainability and policy
The sustainability of OERs depends on an effective implementation framework which, in turn,
must be founded on appropriate strategies and policies that embrace and foster a culture of open
education. Unisa’s Open Education Resources Strategy (Hart, 2014), for instance, recognizes the
challenges that need to be overcome if the full power of OERs is to be released as opposed to
such resources being perceived as merely interesting novelties lurking on the periphery of
respectable educational practice. Thus Unisa anticipates that teaching and course development
approaches will need to change to accommodate OERS meaningfully.
The university also accepts that its staff currently lacks incentives to use and produce OERs and
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that this fact is reinforced by the unfortunate reality that the institution does not have a culture of
sharing. The university notes, furthermore, that its academic staff members are reluctant to
relinquish their intellectual property and that there is much confusion regarding free (no cost)
and openly licensed content as well as uncertainty about, and fear of, copyright issues. Unisa also
acknowledges that searching for appropriate OERs is time consuming.
2.4 Educators’ attitudes towards, and experiences of, OERs
The peculiar challenges that OERs present are likely to be experienced by instructors at all
educational levels, including school. Experiences naturally condition attitudes and the attitudes
of instructors towards open education may, in turn, profoundly affect its pedagogic value in
terms of producing superior learning relative to traditional ‘closed’ modes of education (Elias
and Elias, 2001).
This paper extends Van der Merwe’s (2014) study of KZN high school teachers' propensities to
use, share and develop OERs by exploring educators’ beliefs about the merits of these materials
and their perceptions of barriers to employing them on a significant scale. This knowledge may
prove useful for identifying factors that may inspire local teachers to collaborate more closely in
developing openly licensed teaching materials for wide distribution. An investigation of this
nature should give some indication of the potential to leverage the current levels of OER sharing
and development in better resourced schools for the benefit of schools throughout the province of
KZN.
3.0 METHOD
This case study was based on an online survey of KZN public and private high schools in the
Midlands (Pietermaritzburg) and Pinetown and Umlazi areas of Durban. The study employs
descriptive analysis within an essentially qualitative research design.
3.1 The survey instrument
The electronic questionnaire comprised a general section in which some biographical
information was elicited and also a section dealing with open educational resources in the
classroom. The entire questionnaire comprises 32 items that are a mix of written,
dichotomous/multiple choice and five-point Likert scale questions.
Following piloting and some subsequent revision, the questionnaire was administered in the first
half of 2013 with a follow up invitation to teachers to participate in the survey in the second half
of the year. The questionnaire did not force responses and some respondents accordingly may
have chosen not to disclose certain information.
3.2 Data cleansing
Unfortunately the data collection process was plagued by significant unit and item non-response.
Perhaps this is to be expected in a survey of this nature where respondents’ knowledge and
experience of open education resources and copyright issues may be tentative. The relatively
high rate of questionnaire completion (95%) in the face of significant nonresponse on some items
suggests that this is probably the case. It is likely thus that the incidence of item non-response,
especially in respect of attitudes towards open education resources (the Likert scale items),
suggests uncertainty with respect to these items rather than indicating potential sample bias.
5
Notwithstanding this, cases with extensive item non-response were removed from the sample
including those with missing demographic data.
The incidence of item non-response was most notable with regard to the Likert scale items and
ranged between 8%-26%. Little's MCAR test (p = 0.462) suggests, however, that the missing
data with respect to the final sample are randomly distributed across all observations and that the
incidence of this missingness is therefore unlikely to be linked to respondents' characteristics.
Accordingly, all the sample cases were analysed using listwise deletion to exclude those with
missing data.
3.1 Population characteristics
Beyond working at public versus private/independent schools not much is known about the
population of teachers in these schools or their demographic characteristics. Table 1 reflects the
breakdown of the total number of high schools in the Pietermaritzburg and Durban areas.
Table 1: Distribution of high schools in the study area
Area
Number
Rounded to nearest percent
Pietermaritzburg
60
59
Durban
42
41
Roughly 74% of these schools are public or state funded schools while the balance consists of
private schools.
3.3 Sample characteristics
Table 2 reflects the frequency distribution of responses received from KZN high schools.
Table 2: Frequency distribution of responses
Area
Number
Percent
Pietermaritzburg
61
61
Durban
39
39
The sample comprised more females (60%) than males. The average age of respondents was
44.65 years and the median age 45 years. The average number of years of service of respondents
was 18.69 and the median 18 years. The proportion of the sample who had masters degrees is
15%, and 41% were in possession of a National Higher Diploma/Bachelor of
Technology/Honours degree. The remaining respondents were qualified at national diploma/
basic degree level (37%) or had other qualifications (7%). A comparison of the sample
proportions of Pietermaritzburg and Durban respondents with the proportions of Durban and
Pietermaritzburg schools indicates that the former is closely representative of the latter. While
the proportions of respondents from private (58%) and public (42%) high schools does not
represent the proportions of public and private high schools accurately, the sample does ensure a
reasonable response rate from both public and private schools.
4. ANALYSIS
4.1 An overview of respondents’ experiences of OERs
The attitudes of teachers to open educational resources will naturally be informed by their
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experiences of these materials. Asked whether they use open educational content, 68% of
respondents confirmed that they do. Although 16% of the respondents confirmed that they source
materials online, they were not sure about copyright law in respect of these resources.
Even though online open educational resources were employed by 48% of respondents, the most
favoured materials remain those produced by teachers themselves (92%), media sources at 74%
(newspapers/magazine articles, YouTube etc.), resources developed by colleagues (72%) and
prescribed texts (71%). That the majority of respondents rely on shared materials (i.e. produced
by colleagues) as one of a few preferred teaching resources suggests promise in terms of building
sharing networks beyond specific departments and individual schools.
Respondents estimated that, on average, about 30% of their total stock of instructional materials
comprised OERs. These include materials such as notes (55%), tasks/assignments (43%),
exercises/quizzes (56%), other free online content (40%) and Videos/DVDs (56%). Most (68%)
respondents considered the quality of these materials to be at least reasonable, 16% were
uncertain of the quality and 15% thought it was at least below par. It is encouraging, however,
that close to 70% of the teachers surveyed felt that OERs are generally valuable. This evidently
general recognition suggests that they could play a potentially significant role in educational
outreach and in boosting the education system's resource base.
4.2 What motivates teachers to engage with OERs?
Respondents indicated that the main reasons they were interested in OERs include the prospects
of developing more suitable/flexible materials (88%), gaining access to the best possible
resources (84%) and outreach to teachers and pupils in disadvantaged schools and communities
(84%). Most respondents (60%) indicated that they would engage more with open education
resources if dedicated technical support was on hand and a further 27% stated that they probably
would. Respondents also indicated that, given their current circumstances, they would be
prepared to devote an average of 10 hours per month to developing OERs.
The adoption and implementation of appropriate OER policy is vital for creating an environment
in which the culture of openness is recognized, valued and promoted as a central pillar of the
education system. For such policy to be effective it must be founded on a sound knowledge of
the incentives teachers require to develop OERs and share them more aggressively. It should also
be closely informed by an awareness of factors that may be discouraging teacher interest in these
materials.
4.3 What is the psyche of latent developers/producers of OERs?
Perhaps the most vital consideration for the successful development and distribution of open
education resources is the inspiration of teachers to be involved in this movement. Without their
passion and essential belief in the philosophy and culture of openness, the transformational
potential of these resources will remain limited. Badarch et al (2012), for instance, note that
reward/encouragement systems for introducing OERs into practice are nonexistent at educational
institutions. Furthermore, the production of these materials does not rank as a performance
indicator for promotional purposes.
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Respondents were asked to indicate their attitudes as potential developers of OERs for use by
others given different scenarios. Their responses to the question “if you were to
create/develop/produce open educational resources for use by other instructors, how important is
it for you to…. (various scenarios presented)?” are summarized in Table 3. The responses to the
different scenarios were recorded on a Likert scale with 1 = very important and 5 = unimportant.
Table 3: Teachers’ requirements for developing/creating/producing open education
resources
If you were to create/develop/produce open
educational resources for use by other
instructors, how important a
requirement/inspiration is it for you to…
Important
to very
important
(%)
Not too
important to
unimportant
(%)
Neutral (%)
49
30
21
52
31
17
52
56
63
25
19
17
23
25
20
41
39
20
33
38
29
35
39
26
76
10
14
1. Be acknowledged as the creator of the
resource when it is used?
2. Be acknowledged as the creator of the
resource if it is adapted or changed by
someone else?
3. Know WHO uses the resource?
4. Know HOW the resource is used?
5. Know what changes are made to the
resource?
6. Be personally financially
recompensed for the use of the
resource?
7. Be personally rewarded by means of
promotion, award or other mechanism
for the use of the resource?
8. Have your department or school
recompensed for the use of the
resource?
9. Have a quality review of the resource?
A pattern that suggests itself in Table 3 is that respondents have strong proprietary sensibilities in
respect of their work in the sense that they want to be acknowledged for their original work
(49%) as well as in instances where their products are adapted (52%). Most respondents clearly
also care about who (52%) uses the materials they might create and how (56%) they are used.
Significant proportions of respondents felt that some sort of personal (financial 41%, other 33%)
or institutional (35%) reward/compensation system would serve as an encouragement/incentive
to produce OERs. A strong majority (76%) of respondents indicated that they would value peer
review of the resources they might produce. This is an attitude that bodes well for future efforts
to establish and grow communities of OER developers and users.
4.4 Barriers to using/developing OERs
8
Policy aimed at promoting the accelerated development and more widespread use of OERs
should be informed not only by a knowledge of the incentives that are likely to inspire teachers
towards this end but also by a keen awareness of potential barriers to developing/using these
materials. Respondents were invited to rank the importance of various potential barriers to the
use and/or development of OERs. Their responses are summarized in Table 4. The responses to
the various potential barriers were recorded on a Likert scale with 1 = very important and 5 =
unimportant.
Table 4: Teachers’ perceptions of barriers to using/developing OERs
Various issues could be the reason for not
Important
Not too
Neutral
using and/or developing OERs. In
to very
important to
(%)
your own teaching environment, rate the
important
unimportant
importance of the following as
(%)
(%)
potential barriers to the use and/or
development of OERs
1. Lack of technical/computer skills (staff
members)
2. Lack of technical/computer skills (pupils)
3. Lack of time to find and learn to use
suitable open education resources
4. Lack of time to develop open education
resources
5. Lack of hardware (computers, printers)
6. Lack of software (programmes)
7. Limited access to computers
8. No/limited internet access
9. No reward system for staff who make
time and effort to develop resources
10. Lack of interest by staff in contributing to
pedagogical innovation
11. Lack of interest by learners/pupils
12. No/insufficient support from school
management
13. No/insufficient support from the
Department of Education
14. Generally poor quality of OERs in terms
of usage value
47
35
17
35
70
44
15
21
15
82
9
9
25
32
24
22
44
57
45
64
63
38
18
23
12
37
18
32
38
30
24
29
57
46
18
25
39
33
28
38
32
30
The most significant barriers to the use/development of OERs cited by respondents include a
lack of time to develop (82%) and find and use suitable materials (70%). These are followed by a
lack of technical/computer skills amongst staff (47%) and a lack of reward systems (44%) to
entice teachers to make time and expend effort on the development of OERs.
Notable too are the significant proportions of respondents who felt that the national department
of education does not offer material support to its teachers to develop and share OERs (39%) and
9
the reported lack of support from school management (29%). Although not majorities (reflecting
that sampled respondents were generally all from relatively well resourced schools), significant
proportions of respondents felt that a lack of computers and printers (25%), limited access to
computers (24%) and no/limited internet access (22%) present important-to-very important
barriers to OER engagement.
4.5 Identifying factors that may impact on OER engagement
Insight into factors that might motivate or discourage potential developers and users of OERs
would be useful for imagining what sort of environment would need to be created to harness the
full potential of these materials.
Principal components analyses (exploratory factor analyses) were carried out on the two sets of
questionnaire sub items as reflected in Tables 3 and 4 with the objective of extracting a reduced
number of components that might be associated with OER engagement. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin
measures of sampling adequacy for these analyses were .74 and .84 respectively, above the
recommended value of .6. Furthermore, in both instances Bartlett's test of sphericity was
significant (χ2 (36) = 446.91, p < 0.01 and χ2 (91) = 565.58 respectively). All communalities
were above .3 confirming that each item shared some common variance with the other items.
The average score of the Table 3 item communalities was .79 while that for Table 4 items was
.71.
In the expectation that variables - whether likely to encourage (Table 3 items) or discourage
(Table 4 items) OER engagement - are likely to be largely independent of one another, varimax
rotation was employed to extract components that may be useful for identifying patterns of OER
use/development. The initial Eigen values in respect of Table 3 items (important requirements
for potential OER developers) showed that the first factor (respondents' need for
acknowledgement) explained 46% of the variance, the second factor (the role of
compensation/financial incentives in encouraging OER engagement) explained 22% and a third
factor 11%.
Factor 3 (respondents' sense of personal intellectual property) was discarded in line with Costello
and Osborne's recommendation (2005) of dropping factors comprising fewer than three items to
ensure a “clean” factor structure. It is likely that respondents' sense of personal intellectual
property is, in any event, captured to some extent by Factor 1. Higher composite factor scores
indicate greater importance with respect to respondents' need for acknowledgement for engaging
with OERs and greater importance of compensation/financial reward as an incentive to promote
OER use/development. The internal consistency of the scales of the various items defining factor
dimensions was examined using Cronbach's alpha. The unstandardized alphas all ranged from
good to excellent and are suggestive of solid factor structure.
Table 5: Factor loadings and communalities based on a principal components analysis with
10
varimax rotation for the 9 items listed in Table 3
The role of
Item
Need for
compensation/
How important is it to...
acknowledgement
financial
(alpha = .864)
incentives
(alpha = .826)
10. Know HOW the resource is
.927
used?
9. Have a quality review of the
.801
resource?
3. 8. Know WHO uses the
.784
resource?
5. Know what changes are
.767
made to the resource?
6. Be personally financially
.865
recompensed for the use of the
resource?
7. Be personally rewarded by
.850
means of promotion, award or
other mechanism for the use of
the resource?
8. Have your department or
.781
school recompensed for the use
of the resource?
1. Be acknowledged as the
creator of the resource when it
is used?
2. Be acknowledged as the
creator of the resource if it is
adapted or changed by someone
else?
Factor loadings < 0.5 suppressed
Sense of
personal
intellectual
property
(alpha = .951)
.932
.907
Varimax rotation was employed once more in a principal components analysis of Table 4 items
(perceived barriers to OER engagement). The initial Eigen values in respect of these items
indicated that the first factor (lack of resources) explained 46% of the variance, the second factor
(professional environment that does not support OER engagement) explained 15% and a third
factor (lack of time to engage with OERs) 9%.
The third factor was again discarded in keeping with best practice in principal components
analysis to ensure clear underlying factor structure. Cronbach's alpha values for the rating scale
items comprising the various factors were all at least good indicating reasonably sound factor
structure.
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Increasing composite factor scores indicate increasing importance of barriers to OER
engagement with respect to a lack of resources/expertise, a deteriorating OER environment and a
lack of time to explore and experiment with these materials.
Table 6: Factor loadings and communalities based on a principal components analysis with
varimax rotation for the 14 items listed in Table 4
professional
Lack of time to
Item
Lack of
environment
engage with
How important are the
resources and
that does not
OERs
following as potential barriers
expertise to
support OER
to OER engagement?
engage with
engagement
OERs
(alpha = .917)
(alpha = .830)
(alpha = .862)
7. Limited access to computers
.916
6. Lack of software (programmes)
.854
8. No/limited internet access
.843
5. Lack of hardware (computers,
.828
printers)
2. Lack of technical/computer
.767
skills (pupils)
.720
1. Lack of technical/computer
skills (staff members)
10. Lack of interest by staff in
.814
contributing to pedagogical
innovation
13. No/insufficient support from
.782
the Department of Education
.681
12. No/insufficient support from
school management
.670
9. No reward system for staff
who make time and effort to
develop resources
11. Lack of interest by
learners/pupils
4. Lack of time to develop open
education resources
3. Lack of time to find and learn
to use suitable open education
resources
Factor loadings < 0.5 suppressed
.577
.912
.844
12
The composite factor scores were transformed into rank scores and Spearman's Rho test was
used to identify possible correlations between respondents' use or non-use/engagement of OERs
in their teaching approaches (measured as a binary dummy variable 0 = No, Yes = 1) and the
various factors that might be expected to impact OER engagement. Only one factor
(professional environment that does not support OER engagement) was significantly, although
weakly, correlated with respondents' OER use/engagement (rs (59) = -.354, p = .005 < .01).
Unsurprisingly, a more difficult OER environment results in lower OER use/engagement. This
empirical result, although modest, has potentially significant policy implications. However, its
import should be appreciated in the context of the study’s limitations.
5. LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH
The relatively small size of the sample on which this study is based and the fact that it is more or
less representative only of teachers' attitudes to OERs at public and private high schools in the
Pietermaritzburg/Durban areas count as distinct limitations for claims of the generalisability of
its findings. Furthermore, the exploratory factor analysis technique employed in this study
remains an error-prone procedure (Costello and Osborne, 2005) which is tolerable, nonetheless,
for exploring data.
This study accordingly offers no substantive conclusions but rather points the likely way for
researchers to more rigorously examine factors that may promote more vigorous OER
engagement. This will require larger samples and sampling across different population
subgroups. More sophisticated research could include approaches such as confirmatory factor
analysis and other variable modeling techniques.
6. CONCLUSION
South Africa's education system is in crisis. This state of affairs has been blamed on various
factors including poor quality schooling. A lack of resources and low levels of teacher expertise
have been implicated as contributing factors to the deterioration of the country's quality of
education particularly at school level.
Given that education has historically received the largest proportion of budgeted annual national
government expenditure but with consistently poor returns, it is unlikely that more money will
simply be thrown at the problem in future. At a time when national governments are concerned
about budget deficits and mounting public debt, the pressure to cut costs and increase efficiency
is sure to grow.
Suitable OERs, expertly sourced and adapted or developed for local conditions, offer a real
prospect of plugging the country's current educational resources gap at reduced or even no
additional cost. Furthermore the collaboration and networking that often attends the sourcing,
adaption and development of OERs lends itself quite naturally to the establishment of teacher
communities of practice. These communities are potentially rich repositories of experience and
expertise that can be tapped by teachers willing to learn.
The findings of this study tentatively suggest that there exists a core of teachers at both public
and private high schools in the Durban and Pietermaritzburg areas who are making at least a
moderate level of use of OERs. Their employment of these materials is evidently significantly
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associated with how conducive their professional environments are perceived to be to such
engagement.
In particular, the modest evidence produced by this exploratory study suggests that OER
engagement is likely to remain subdued in work environments where teachers are not rewarded
or not offered incentives to undertake such initiatives. Similarly, a lack of support from school
management and/or the department of education for OER initiatives is likely to further suppress
the uptake of these materials and truncate their potential pedagogical reach.
These are realities that must be addressed aggressively at school and national education policy
level if the obvious potential of OERs is to be realised. Thus the school day, for example, could
be rebalanced to raise the profile of OER development/production so that it ranks alongside the
normal teaching and coaching duties expected of teachers. Similarly, the school calendar should
schedule regular inter-schools staff development workshops around subject-specific OER
projects. OER development/production should be rewarded both financially and as an
achievement that could qualify teachers for promotion and hence career progression.
The notion that OERs are destined only ever to play a peripheral and subordinate role to
relatively expensive proprietary educational materials is a luxury that South Africa, as a country
facing major socio-economic challenges, can ill afford.
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