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Roles, Identities and Professionalism : Lessons from the Comparative Study of
Africa
Clive Harber, University of Birmingham
Introduction
There has been much discussion of whether teaching is a profession or semi
profession but here I want to focus on the issue of professionalism itself - the extent
to which teachers actually do what is expected of them in their role as teacher and
how there are different ideological interpretations of what it means to act
professionally. How do teachers conduct themselves at work and how should they
conduct themselves? The paper draws on work carried out in sub- Saharan Africa
since 1977 to ask both comparative questions about teaching in the UK and teaching
in general. But first a true story. In 1978 the writer of this paper was working as a
teacher in a college in Nigeria. At that time the British media was full of a story about
a giraffe called Victor who had fallen over in a zoo and couldn’t be helped to stand
upright. At the same time Steve Biko, the South African black consciousness leader,
was murdered in a South African jail. The Nigerian students were both mystified and
horrified about the priorities of the British media. Living, working and researching in
a foreign country was not only teaching him a lot about Nigeria but also about his
own country.
Teacher as Professional Authoritarian
One of the first lessons or insights from my first piece of educational research, which
involved studying schools as organisations in Nigeria was the dominant bureaucratic
and authoritarian model of schooling, not just in Nigeria but in the UK and globally
(Harber 1989). Education for and in democracy, human rights and critical awareness
is not a primary characteristic of the majority of schooling. While the degree of
harshness and despotism within authoritarian schools varies from context to context
and from institution to institution, in the majority of schools power over what is
taught and learned, how it is taught and learned, where it is taught and learned, when
it is taught and learned and what the general learning environment is like is not in the
hands of pupils. It is predominantly government officials, headteachers and teachers
who decide, not learners. While there are certainly exceptions, most schools globally
are essentially authoritarian institutions, however benevolent or benign that
authoritarianism is and whatever beneficial aspects of learning are imparted (Harber
2004:Ch.2) A professional teacher is therefore one that can perform his or her role
according to the characteristics of this set of power relationships – controlling the
classroom agenda and discourse, keeping control in the classroom and wider school,
enforcing rules made without pupil consent, carrying out punishment, enforcing
attendance at school, implementing the curriculum as designed by a government and
ensuring uniform and uniformity in appearance.
However, in Africa while schooling tends not only to be bureaucratic and
authoritarian in its formal organisation this often actually operates in a messy and
inefficient way. In a book on school management and effectiveness in developing
countries (Harber and Davies 1997) we explored how and why schools didn’t
necessarily operate according to the characteristics of an ideal type bureaucracy as set
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out by Max Weber or the behavioural norms associated with the efficient functioning
of bureaucratic organisations – efficiency, diligence, orderliness, punctuality,
frugality, honesty, rationality in decision making, absence of individual or group
favouritism, absence of superstitious beliefs and prejudices, preparedness for change,
willingness to take the long term view and forgo short term profiteering. We used
examples from developing countries, many from Africa, of teachers’ unprofessional
conduct according to the classic tenets of bureaucratic organisation - absenteeism and
lateness, of teachers having second or third jobs, of financial embezzlement, bribery
and corruption, of teachers colluding with cheating in examinations, of sexual
harassment or rape of female pupils by male staff and of favouritism and nepotism.
While some of the explanation for these behaviours can be found in the context of
poverty, the book discussed in some detail notions of ‘prismatic’ societies and how
and why such behaviours occur in societies where pre-modern and modern attitudes
coexist in the same institutions, not always comfortably with each other. As a result,
lip service may be paid to Western notions of ‘professionalism’ among teachers but
the reality is often very different.
This led us to stress the importance of contextuality and contextual realities in the
study of educational management and policy in an era (perhaps not over yet) when
Western representatives of educational management were circling the globe peddling
ring binder prescriptive lists of the characteristics of an effective school or the recipe
for school improvement in a tidy packaged while ignoring the culture, economy and
ideology into which they were to be introduced. One good example comes from
Papua New Guinea. How often have you seen the possession of a spirit duplicator in a
list of key elements for school improvement? Yet one study (Vulliamy 1987) found
just that. In rural areas without electricity, a school with a spirit duplicator can
produce handouts which can transform the processes of teaching and learning – group
work, individualised work etc all become more possible. This suggested that not only
did great caution need to be exercised in making generalised, supposedly context free
statements about school effectiveness and improvement in developing countries based
on Western experience but that it was necessary to take into consideration ideological,
organisational, cultural and even material difference between and within Western
countries. Such differences are particularly important when considering the roles and
identities of teachers in relation to change as will be discussed below.
Teacher as Sometimes Violent Professional
A further important lesson for the present writer learned while researching education
in Africa, but applicable globally, is that formal schooling is not only not
automatically a beneficial and benevolent institution but is also often a harmful and
violent one and that part of teachers’ professional identity in some societies and
context permits or even encourages both the active reproduction and perpetration of
violence against pupils and thus contributes to maintaining and increasing violence in
the wider society. The role schooling in adding to violence in society became clearer
to me when both living in and carrying out research on schools and violence reduction
in South Africa but led to ask me to question if and how it happens elsewhere (Harber
2004) . As argued above, for the majority of pupils schooling is an essentially
authoritarian experience and this has important implications for schooling and
violence. This is because authoritarian organisation provides an environment where
pupils’ rights, needs and feelings can too readily be ignored or suppressed and where
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it is difficult for teachers or pupils to act independently and to critique and challenge
dominant social and political orthodoxies, including those that lead to violent
behaviour and conflict. Authoritarian schools are therefore schools that reproduce and
perpetrate – not only the socio-economic and political inequalities of the surrounding
society but also the violent relationships that often go with them. However, it must be
stressed that the purpose of this discussion is very definitely not to criticise teachers or
teaching as a profession per se. The book was concerned with schooling as a
historical, social and political system that shapes and influences the behaviour of
individuals and therefore their interpretations of their role – their identity as a teacher.
Nevertheless, its clear that teachers in many societies do help to reproduce violence,
often through omission. Having persuaded, cajoled and forced children into schools
teachers ignore forms of violent behaviour by pupil to pupil because it is not seen as a
concern of the teacher as professional imparter of academic knowledge, because
teachers don’t know how to deal with it, because such behaviour is tacitly condoned
or because public recognition might harm the public perception of a school e.g. in
relation to league tables. Examples discussed in some detail in the book are the
globally widespread problem of bullying in schools, racism between pupils and sexual
violence by male pupils against female pupils.
Worse still are the forms of direct violence or encouragement of violence by teachers
when a teacher’s professional identity either doesn’t stop or even allows and
necessitates (as an agent of the state) the active perpetration of violence against pupils
and therefore the expansion of violence in the wider society. Four examples:
Corporal punishment is still widely used in African schools but it is also used
elsewhere. The World Health Organisation reports that corporal punishment in
schools in the form of hitting, punching, beating or kicking remains legal in at least 65
countries, despite the fact that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the
Child has underlined that corporal punishment is incompatible with the Convention. It
notes that ‘Where the practice has not been persistently confronted by legal reform
and public education, the few existing prevalence studies suggest it remains extremely
common’ (WHO,2000:64). In a further range of countries where it has been officially
banned, such as South Africa, it is still in use in many schools as will be seen below.
This suggests that corporal punishment is regularly used in schools in between at least
one third and one half of all countries in the world. Furthermore in others it has only
been banned relatively recently and there are still many people who have been
affected by the practice who are themselves now parents and teachers and who have
positions of responsibility over others. In other societies where corporal punishment
has finally been banned, there are still many who desire its return. A survey of 1,000
parents in England and Wales in 2000, for example, found that 51% thought that
corporal punishment should be reintroduced in schools (Carvel 2000). In Africa, the
same tensions exist around the question of abolition. In a survey of 45 educationalists
at a seminar on education for democracy in the Gambia we included the following
statement about corporal punishment: ‘Corporal punishment should be completely
abolished’. 18 of the respondents agreed/strongly agreed with this statement whereas
11 disagreed/strongly disagreed, again suggesting that while the majority of this group
(a group interested in, and generally supportive of, more democratic forms of
education) were opposed to corporal punishment, a significant minority were not.
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Schooling has always played a part via, socialisation and indoctrination, in the
creation, reproduction and modification of such group identities and stereotypes.
Colonial education, for example, played a major role in this and has left a legacy of
classifications, labels and negative relationships that still influence the politics of
post-colonial countries today (see, for example, Mangan 1993). Postman and
Weingartner in their book Teaching As a Subversive Activity wrote that ‘it is generally
assumed that people of other tribes have been victimised by indoctrintation from
which our tribe has remained free’ (cited in Meighan and Siraj-Blatchford,1997:356).
In recent history schooling has played a significant role in actively perpetrating ethnic
hatred. Well known examples are Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa but
Bosnia, Cyprus, India and Israel/Palestine are also examples.
Rwanda is another:
‘Neighbours hacked neighbours to death in their homes, and colleagues hacked
colleagues to death in the workplaces. Doctors killed their patients and school
teachers killed their pupils…’(Gourevitch,1998:114-5).
During the colonial period in Rwanda the Belgian colonial government consistently
favoured the Tutsi ethnic group over the Hutu ethnic group. The colonial education
system in Rwanda actively discriminated against the Hutu majority and in favour of
the Tutsi minority through the amount and levels of education provided and through
stereotypes used in school textbooks (Bush and Saltarelli,2000:10). Thus education
contributed to and exacerbated the resentment and hostility between the two groups
that began during the colonial period and finally erupted in the genocide of 1994 in
which some 800,000 Rwandans, most of them Tutsis, died in 100 days. Little changed
during the period of independence. As one analyst of Rwanda put it, the violent
massacre of Tutsis by Hutus was based on the ‘total dehumanisation of the Evil Other
and the absolute legitimisation of Authority’. Schools were a part of the authoritarian
social and political system and played a part in the indoctrination of hatred and the
killing itself – ‘Schools could not be places of refuge either and Hutu teachers
commonly denounced their Tutsi pupils to the militia or even directly killed them
themselves’.(Prunier,1995:142, 254). As one of the teachers told a French journalist,
‘A lot of people got killed here. I myself killed some of the children…We had eighty
kids in the first year. There are twenty-five left. All the others, we killed them or they
have run away. (Prunier,1995:254/5).
Sexual abuse of female pupils is a widespread problem in sub-Saharan Africa, or at
least the problem is well documented for that region, though it does happen
elsewhere. South Africa has a particular problem:
‘Statistical evidence tells us that South African women are more likely to be
murdered, raped or humiliated than women anywhere else in the democratic world,
including the rest of Africa’ (Mama,2000:3).
Estimates vary for how often a woman is raped in South Africa from every 26
seconds to every 90 seconds. Schools are far from being immune from this sexual
violence and indeed help to perpetrate it. In October 1997 the report of the Gender
Equity Task Team on gender equity in education was published (Wolpe et al 1997).
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This was the first of its kind in South Africa and is a lengthy document that provided
an authoritative and comprehensive account of the state of affairs with regard to
gender issues in South African education. On the back cover it states that ‘South
African education is riddled with gender inequities that impact negatively on girls and
boys, women and men – but especially on the quality of life and achievements of
women. These inequities exist throughout the system and include the extremely
worrying elements of sexual harassment and violence’. This document, however, did
not really examine the role of teachers in sexual abuse in any detail. However, in 2001
Human Rights Watch produced a detailed report entitled ‘Scared at School : Sexual
Violence Against Girls in South African Schools’. The report states,
‘Based on our interviews with educators, social workers, children and parents, the
problems of teachers engaging in serious sexual misconduct with underage female
students is widespread. As the testimony offered below demonstrates, teachers have
raped, sexually assaulted and otherwise sexually abused girls. Sometimes reinforcing
sexual demands with threats of physical violence or corporal punishment, teachers
have sexually propositioned girls and verbally degraded them using highly sexualised
language. At times, sexual relations between teachers and students did not involve an
overt use of force or threats of force; rather teachers would abuse their authority by
offering better grades or money to pressure girls for sexual favours or “dating
relationships” (Human Rights Watch,2001:37).
Perhaps the most startling figure was provided a Medical Research Council survey
carried out in 1998 that found that among those rape victims who specified their
relationship to the perpetrator, 37.7% said their schoolteacher or principal had raped
them (Human Rights Watch,2001:42). As someone very familiar with South Africa, it
took some time for this figure to sink in even with me.
Such shocking data provides an important stimulus in asking questions about more
familiar education systems – does the UK system harm its children in any way? The
evidence is not particularly difficult to find. For example, British school children are
now heavily tested and examined. What is the result of all this testing on British
children? One survey of more than 8,000 secondary school pupils in England and
Wales in 2000 led to a report entitled Tested to Destruction. The report claimed that
stress is damaging teenagers’ physical and emotional well being. It claimed that
children suffer severe stress from the endless tests. Physical symptoms included
difficulty with sleeping and eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. A cartoon
attached to the article describing the survey has a child returning home from school
and saying to her mother ‘We had a lesson in the break between tests today’ (Smithers
2000). More than a third of seven year olds suffer stress over national tests and one in
ten lose sleep because they are worried about them according to a poll of 200 parents.
The pressure starts in infancy and increases as children move through the school. By
the age of eleven two-thirds of children show signs of stress as they revise for national
tests. Around 34% suffer from general stress, a quarter have lost confidence and 20%
have are so busy revising they have no time to play with their friends. More than one
in ten children have been reduced to tears in the run up to the tests, 12% of eleven
year olds have refused to go to school to sit tests and 9% have suffered anxiety attacks
(Ward 2003). There is also evidence that the testing regime coupled with league tables
is forcing children to come into school even though they are sick (Ward 2002). 200
interviews carried out by one researchers from a psychotherapy unit at City
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University in London found ‘worryingly high’ levels of stress among children –
nearly a quarter of under 18’s said they often got stressed and only one in six never
suffered from it. A major source of this stress was the level of compulsory testing. In
the article reporting this the National President of the Professional Association of
Teachers is quoted as saying that young people are treated ‘like products on a
conveyor belt’ (Burke 2000). Childline, a phone line which children can call for help,
receives 800 calls a year from pupils suffering from stress. Childline’s director for
Yorkshire and the north east of England said that children often see failure as
catastrophic for their future – ‘They tell us that if they don’t pass this, there is nothing
else in life’. They come to see exams as the only measure of their worth (Williams
2003).
The Democratic Professional
What then if a society wishes to move away from authoritarian forms of teaching and
learning and school organisation towards more democratic forms? Here the problem
is not just moving from unprofessional teachers to professionals who at least turn up
and plan their lessons but operate in an authoritarian manner but to create a new,
democratic forms of professionalism. There are important issues and lessons
stemming from the notion of the democratic professional for all education systems or
institutions genuinely interested in promoting democracy and human rights. South
Africa is a country which since 1994 has attempted to create new, democratic forms
of education to develop a political culture supportive of its democratic, post-apartheid
constitution (Harber 2001). The South African Department of Education is clear that
the goal must to create teachers who are democratic professionals :
‘..he or she is expected to play a community, citizenship and pastoral role, to practise
and promote a critical and committed and ethical attitude towards developing a sense
of respect and responsibility towards others, uphold the Constitution and promote
democratic values and practices in schools and society’ (Department of
Education,2001:28).
The South African Council of Education’s Code of Conduct for South African
teachers calls on teachers to,
‘…acknowledge that the attitude, dedication self-discipline, ideals, training and
conduct of the teaching profession determine the quality of education; to
acknowledge, uphold and promote basic human rights …and to act in accordance with
the ideals of their profession…In other words, to have internalised the ten
fundamental values of the South African Constitution themselves and to act as role
models for their students’ (Department of Education, 2001: 29).
Commenting on the South African Council of Education - a statutory body charged
with regulating the teaching profession – two reviewers noted that,
‘The locus of its strength lies in the drive for professionalism among educators, the
sensitivity to the unequal power relations that exist between educators and learners
(and among educators themselves) and the commitment to ideals of democracy and
human rights’ (Barasa and Mattson 1998 cited in Jansen,2004:56).
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However, democratic reform has not been introduced into a vacuum and there are
important lessons to be learned in terms of teacher response based on notions of role,
identity and professionalism. In 1997 the Deputy Minister of Education had this to
say,
‘In many of our education departmental offices, there is a chronic absenteeism of
officials, appointments are not honoured, punctuality is not observed, phones ring
without being answered, files and documents are lost, letters are not responded to,
senior officials are inaccessible, there is confusion about roles and responsibilities and
very little support, advice and assistance is given to schools…Many of our parents
fear their own children, never check the child’s attendance at school, are not
interested in the welfare of the school, never attend meetings, give no support to the
teacher or principal…Many of our teachers are not committed to quality teaching,
their behaviour leaves much to be desired, are more interested in their own welfare,
are not professional and dedicated, are never at school on time, pursue their studies at
the expense of the children, do not prepare for lessons….Many of our children are
always absent from school, lack discipline and manners, regularly leave school early,
are usually late for school, wear no uniform, have no respect for teachers, drink
during school hours, are involved in drugs and gangs, gamble and smoke at school,
come to school armed to instil fear in others…Many of our principals have no
administrative skills, they are the source of conflict between students and teachers,
sow divisions among their staff, undermine the development of their colleagues, fail
to properly manage the resources of their school, do not involve parents in school
matters. This has resulted in chaos, poor decisions, lack of imagination and a total
collapse of the education system in many schools…Many of our schools have no
electricity, no water, no toilets, no libraries, no laboratories, no furniture, no
classrooms, no teachers, no buildings, no windows, no pride and no dignity’
(Mkhatshwa,1997:14/15).
As this suggests, the physical conditions in schools, the values and behaviour of staff
and students and the intrusion of violence from the wider society are not seen as
conducive to an effective, safe and professional school environment in which genuine
transformation can take place. A study of the culture of learning and teaching in
Gauteng schools (Chisholm and Vally 1996) found that there was concern about the
high levels of absenteeism on the part of teachers and students as well as a lack of
teacher motivation. The principal of one school commented that teachers did not have
a knowledge of what a culture of learning and teaching might mean, having spent
their entire lives in disrupted schools. He spoke about poor class teaching, no marking
and no tests being given. Students also consistently raised problems of teacher
professionalism. These included lack of respect by teachers for one another and for
students, lack of cooperation and divisions among teachers, sexual abuse and
harassment of students, use of corporal punishment and drunkeness. Said one group of
students, ‘They do not seem to have a sense of duty and respect for existing
regulations Teachers are not teachers’. In the foreword to the report Mary Metcalfe,
the Gauteng provincial minister for education, commented that,
‘The report is a poignant testimony of the incalculable damage done to education by
apartheid and the enormity of our task of education reconstruction. Such
reconstruction provides an opportunity to do things anew, to find new and truly
transformatory solutions. The solution is not a panic-driven return to the external
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semblances of ‘order’, the safety of authoritarianism and rote learning, but the
opportunity to develop new conceptions of discipline, commitment and accountability
which are consistent with our new democracy’ (Chisholm and Vally,1996:i).
Yet,
‘..the entire edifice designed to transform South African education will stand or fall
on the basis of support offered to teachers in the implementation of the policy as well
as the extent to which the support deals with teacher beliefs and assumptions, and not
only the outward signs of practice’ (Harley et al,2000:301).
Teachers are key actors in educational reform in South Africa and elsewhere.
Understanding teachers’ present beliefs, understanding and practices - their identity is important if policy implementation is to be successful and if in-service courses are
to be suitably designed to facilitate change. While some of these beliefs are discussed
below, two immediate concerns must be borne in mind about the role of teachers as
agents of change. The first problem is that teachers can be quite unaware of policy
developments in the first place. One study, for example, found that on average only
19% of material leaving the national department of education actually found its way
into the hands of staff and governing bodies (cited in Harley et al,2000). A second
problem is that a commitment to teaching as a profession may not form a strong part
of all teachers’ personal identity. A National Teacher Education Audit in 1994
stressed that many students in teacher education colleges did not have a genuine
desire to teach and similarly in a study of teacher voice which included interviews
from a sample of sixty eight South African teachers, more than half attributed purely
instrumental reasons related to salary, status, the desire to urbanise and the attainment
of qualifications to their choice of teaching as a career. For these teachers ‘the teacher
was a person whom socio-economic circumstances had conspired to choose’ (Jessop
and Penny,1998:396).
The same study also found that there was considerable nostalgia for an imagined
golden age in which children respected elders and certainty prevailed. For some South
African teachers, nostalgia for the old order was coupled with suspicion of the new
and radical democratic values accompanying the end of apartheid. There were
difficulties for some teachers in reconciling the contradictions of the collapse of
apartheid ( a good thing) with the breakdown of traditional values (a bad thing).
Evidence suggests that there remains quite a low level of critical consciousness
among teachers. Under apartheid teachers were expected to follow rules and
implement prescriptive curricula established from above. Their job was to obey
orders and not to be creative. A study of black teachers in Gauteng in 1994 suggested
that the majority of teachers took for granted the structures within which they worked
and regarded compliance as necessary for survival and success. The teachers had
internalized the modes of thinking and behaviour that had been expected of them
under the previous regime. Some of the teachers described, for example, their roles as
follows,
‘We are just miserable rule followers…There is not much that you can do about
it…that’s how things have been and they will continue for a long time to come’
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‘Teaching is not treated like a profession because of the controls and administrators
on teachers’ backs…We teachers generally agree to occupying a subordinate position
from which we cannot influence anything within the system. It’s always been like
this. I don’t really plan things for myself’
‘Being a teacher and the freedom to decide on educational matters are not compatible
in this country’ (Modiba 1996).
Related to the need for certainty is a tendency to for South African teachers to see
knowledge as composed of uncontestable and objective facts to be transmitted for
memorization. Harley et al’s study of ten ‘effective’ teachers at six ‘resilient’ schools
in the Pietermaritzburg education authority in KwaZulu Natal suggested that as a
result of this view of knowledge the teachers were less likely to recognize learners’
own experiences as worthwhile resources and to make use of interactive teaching
methods such as classroom discussion and debate, therefore closing off most
opportunities for developing critical and creative thinking : ‘In short, teachers’ own
epistemologies left them rather uneasily at odds with the requirements of both
curriculum and teachers’ roles’ (2000:295). Another study also identified a tendency
for South African teachers to see teaching and learning as ‘rules without reasons’,
memorization and a fixed view of what constitutes knowledge,
‘It therefore supports a concept of the teacher and textbook as repositories of expert
knowledge, which need to be passed on to pupils unproblematically. Pupils are
expected to absorb ‘knowledge’ in a passive manner, and when assessment demands
it, to squeeze the facts out of their sponge-like brains. The focus for pupils and
teachers is to know ‘the facts’ without relation to the reasons for knowing them;
essentially, instrumentalism was to know what, without knowing how or why’ (Jessop
and Penny,1998:397).
Finally, even when teachers are well aware of and understand the requirements of
government policy, they may disagree with it and prefer their own views, beliefs and
experience as a basis for behaviour and action. The study by Harley et al, for
example, found that teachers’ comments reflected some of the practical complexities
arising from the contradictions between policy expectations and the culture and
personal value systems of the teachers. When asked by a researcher whether he
personally believed in gender equality, one teacher, a union official and
knowledgeable about the rights of teachers and learners, said ‘Never ever! As a man, I
believe I am and will always be superior to a woman. Our culture is consistent with
this view’. There was also some resistance to the government’s promotion of the role
of teacher as a key person in community development and six out of ten of the
teachers taught at schools that still used corporal punishment, despite the fact that it
was illegal. There was also some active resistance to the idea of pupils as critical
learners:
‘The new policy is good but there will be conflict between the government and the
Zulu rural community. If children become more critical they will start to question
their parents’ authority and adopt values that conflict with their community’
(2000:295/6).
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Schweisfurth (2002a:76-82) found that South African teachers reacted in a number of
ways to democratic reform:







Reflective mediation where teachers thought about the reforms and then
decided their degree and nature of their compliance
Personal Identity Crisis and Protection where teachers were going through a
crisis as their personal and professional identities formed under the old regime
were threatened under the new regime
Espoused theory and theory in use where teachers were vocally supportive of
the changes but this was not reflected in their practices.
Persistent continuities and strange hybrids – where old habits died hard but
where these were sometimes mixed with new approaches
Frustration and demoralisation – where teachers could not resolve competing
imperatives of traditional professional identity, the cultural and resource issues
they faced and the demands of new legislation
The Ostrich response where teachers denied the existence of reform
Strategic compliance where teachers complied because they felt they had no
choice and would be punished if they didn’t.
None of these categories necessarily reflects whole hearted support for, and
implementation of, the new democratic order in education.
Overall, a recent study concluded that,
‘..teachers are caught in anxieties of transition, feeling trapped in the ‘old’ and
wanting to work in the ‘new’ ways. They also lack the professional autonomy and
competence to fulfil what is officially expected of them…South African teachers do
not currently see themselves as ‘owning the transformation of education in South
Africa but as subjects of it. They also do not see themselves as formulators of policies
but implementers of them, which are handed down to them from on top…teacher
education in South Africa would need to prioritise the sense of professionalism and
autonomy of teachers as well as their role to inform and formulate policies as much as
their own rights as human beings within a democracy are emphasised. Failure to
achieve these aims in teacher development is likely to result in acute feelings of
disempowerment and demoralisation of the teaching corps, albeit now ironically
within a democratic educational dispensation’ (Carrim,2003:319).
There’s much that can be learned from this experience on the difficulties facing those
who wish to make schools and teaching more democratic in Britain, including the
introduction of education for democratic citizenship from 2000 onwards.
Teacher Education and Democratic Professionalism
One of the problems facing teachers in South Africa confronted with democratic
reform in South Africa – and interestingly teachers faced with teaching education for
democratic citizenship in the UK - is that their teacher education has not necessarily
prepared them for it. It can be argued that teacher education has been characterised by
the ‘myth of the liberal college’ – that is the myth that there is a contradiction between
the liberal, progressive and democratic college or university on the one hand and the
traditional, conservative and authoritarian school on the other. This myth suggests that
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student teachers are exposed to the more radical, democratic forms of teaching and
learning during their courses in higher education but are rapidly re-socialised into
more authoritarian understandings and practices during their teaching practice and
their subsequent employment in education. Rather than there being a contradiction
between the two, in terms of power over what is taught and learned, how and when let
alone the contradiction between ‘do as I say and do as I do’ – it is argued that teacher
education is often an authoritarian preparation for teaching in schools (Harber, 1994;
Harber, 1997: ch.4). Moreover, it can also be argued that education for democratic
citizenship needs to employ a critical social and political perspective examining the
nature of the social structures that shape our lives, for example, the economy, ‘race’,
gender and power structures.
What about existing teachers – has their teacher education contributed to being able to
educate for a democratic society? A British survey of 679 teachers found that
citizenship education for democracy ‘barely figures as a curricular concern’. The
ability to handle the processes and content of teaching controversial issues in the
classroom is important in education for democracy. However, the teachers in the
survey had a de-politicised or apolitical view of citizenship and overwhelmingly saw
citizenship as about meeting our obligations to fellow members of a community. It
was perceived as being about active concern for the welfare of others,
‘Time and time again the language of caring, unselfishness, co-operation and
demonstrating respect is used to give substance to the distinguishing characteristics of
a good citizen, be the context school or the wider community…it is perhaps not
surprising that the notion of participation in the community emerged as a key theme
on how one discharged the responsibilities of being a good citizen’ (Davies, Gregory
and Riley, 1999: 50/51).
Yet,
‘Issues to do with racism, sexism, embracing one’s democratic responsibilities,
recognising the democratic rights of others, encouragement of an awareness of
national and international issues, the importance of human rights concerns, the
significance of parliamentary democracy are suggested as part of a school curriculum
recognising an obligation to prepare young people to be citizens in their community’
(Davies, Gregory and Riley, 1999: 55/6).
The teachers were reluctant to get involved in teaching about controversial views and
one of the most common ways that teachers thought schools could promote good
citizenship was by encouraging pupils to pick up litter, though obeying school rules,
coming to class on time and taking pride in your school were also seen as important.
South Africa is faced with an HIV/AIDS epidemic and this is one crucial but
controversial area where schools need to play a positive role through open and honest
classroom discussion of sexual practices and gender relations. Yet here as well there
is considerable resistance among teachers to the classroom approaches required. The
Minister of Education has, for example, said that
12
‘There are many teachers who are uncomfortable with issues of sex, sexuality, sexual
preference and condoms. They prefer to take the easy way out, which is to say that
HIV/AIDS will be halted when pupils “behave” and practice abstinence and delayed
sexual initiation’ (cited in Motala, Vally and Modiba, 1999: 28).
Four days after this speech at an in-service training session for 200 teachers who were
given a talk on sexually transmitted diseases, half walked out because of the explicit
nature of the slides. When the next lecturer spoke about contraception and sexual
protection the remainder of the audience, except for about eight people, got up and
left the hall. One of the few teachers that remained said, ‘I couldn’t believe it. How
can we expect to teach our children about the realities of a national crisis when we
want to ignore those realities ourselves’ (Dyanti, 1999).
In a study of student teachers in England and South Africa (Harber and Serf 2007)
the students were then asked whether their course had prepared them to teach
controversial issues in the classroom. The responses from the English students who
were training to teach history/citizenship/geography were that some remembered that
there was a section in the general course handbook they were given at the beginning
but that they hadn’t had a seminar explicitly on the topic, though they would like one,
and didn’t really feel sufficiently prepared and confident as they hadn’t experienced
it. This seems to be an important gap. One of the students had taught about the Iraq
war on teaching practice but noted that teaching about such issues by teachers who
didn’t know what they were doing could be ‘very dangerous’. When asked how other,
non-humanities students on the course would feel about teaching controversial issues,
one student replied ‘I think they’d run a mile’, though clarifying that she was mainly
talking about maths and science students. This comment was echoed by one design
and technology student who stated, 'I'd never even thought that it's all about how to
teach controversial issues'.
The South African students said that they had done sessions on relevant teaching
methods such as classroom discussion but they also said that they hadn’t examined
how to handle controversial issues in the classroom.
When asked whether their course had made them familiar with ant-racist and antisexist educational strategies, the students at the English Universities said that there
had bee an equal opportunities section in the ‘whole school issues’ course but that it
was rather ‘idealistic’ and based on theory rather than practice and would ‘probably
be lost on some people’. These students had also had some experience of this in their
methods courses in terms of the nature of their subjects though one again made a
comment echoed by others that ‘how to deal with those issues in the classroom is a
different thing, isn’t it? We haven’t really’. Masculinity as an issue didn’t seem to
have been discussed. The South African students had been exposed to sessions on
inclusion that involved discussion of the politics and history of multi-racial schools
(though this was phrased in a way that suggested academic input and not the
discussion and practice of school and classroom anti-racist strategies). They did not
seem to have discussed gender issues, including those of masculinity, at all.
The final question concerned whether the teacher education course had prepared them
to teach about sexuality e.g. in relation to HIV/AIDS and homosexuality/homophobia.
13
The English students unanimously said that they had encountered nothing on their
course in this regard,
‘That’s a big no-no. From a personal opinion I obviously know about it because of
personal interest but I don’t think the course has prepared anybody for homophobic
comments, I don’t think the course has prepared anybody for dealing with issues
around sex, sexual diseases or anything’.
One student described a the area as a ‘can of worms’, another said that he didn’t want
to because of the potential embarrassment and another that she wouldn’t know how to
cope with the intimate questions that would be asked. One student had taught sexual
health on teaching practice and was surprised that it didn’t feel uncomfortable or that
different from teaching anything else. One student commented that it sounded more
like a Personal, Social and Health Education issue, though, while this is true, it is
quite possible for any teacher to have an involvement with PSHE. Moreover, such
issues are likely to be dealt with in an individualised, coping, personal needs way in
such a course rather than also being set in a critique of wider social structures that
affect the lives of individuals and which asks questions about the how and why of
social issues (Harber, 2002). Unlike the students from England, the South African
students felt that their courses had informed them about AIDS. However, none of the
students, from either country, said they had discussed homosexuality and
homophobia.
The Inspector As Democratic Professional
So perhaps what is required is more in-service workshops and training with educators
specifically and overtly on education for democracy? The writer has been involved in
two such projects in The Gambia, the first with teacher educators (Schweisfurth
2002b) and the second with inspectors, advisers and headteachers all of whom act in
some sort of monitoring role (Harber 2005). Here we focus on the second set of
workshops which took place in all six education regions of The Gambia so that a
cadre of key inspection and supervisory personnel (about 100 in all) would at least
have some awareness and tools to make education for democracy an element of their
work. Workshop participants were asked to state one thing in their practice that they
would change as a result of the workshop. The responses summarised here are
perhaps instructive of current inspection and supervision practices in The Gambia and
very possibly elsewhere,










Listen more attentively to teachers
Using more dialogue with teachers and pupils
Allow teachers to talk about the constraints they face
Be more transparent and open
Give teachers a chance to think for themselves
Give feedback after my inspection (
Liaise with the school authorities before I go into the classroom
Discuss observations with person I have inspected
Observe at random children’s workbooks and interview pupils about teacher
performance
Discuss with students how to achieve improvement
14






I will let them know I am not there to find faults but to share and express ideas
and opinions
When there has been conflict between teachers and pupils I don’t normally
listen to the pupils…after the workshop I see the need for dialogue with both
Positive reinforcement of teachers – minimise fear
More mutual respect
More respect for evidence in making judgeents
Do to others as you would like others to do to you!
Overall, the responses suggested a strongly felt need for more openness, dialogue,
trust and collegiality aimed at school improvement and a move away from more
hierarchical, authoritarian and fear and blame-led approaches to inspection. In terms
of changing their practice or introducing new ideas as a result of the workshop,
respondents noted the following :
‘Before you wanted to do things but there was no reference point. But now I can say I
can do this and this is wonderful…I knew it was right but I didn’t have a vocabulary
and the workshop provided reasons and enabled you to defend your position’.
‘I used to just turn up to school but now warn ahead. We were seen as a threat, a
witch hunt, now they are ready for us and are happier as previously they were very
uncomfortable’
‘Now talk to people more, urge them to attend meetings, use the phone and visits to
show that each and everyone is important. I urge people to collaborate and consult.
This is an idea coming from you people …but it needs sacrifice’.
‘Inspectors used to go to the village in the night and then sneak into the school to spy,
now it is more collegial and there is more fair play’
‘Now when I go to a school I look for gender equality …my colleagues say I am
pressing too hard..’
‘I been involved in a survey using a score card to try to get the views of students
teachers and the community about what makes a good school – they score the school
in terms of priorities they expressed and this sometimes leads to a hot debate. It helps
participation and is a good way of identifying problems…it helped to solve a problem
concerning PTA meetings’
‘I have become more accommodating and the workshop is at the back of the mind…I
think, this Principal is not delegating…’
‘I give people a chance to come up with their own thinking more’, though the same
person also noted that efforts by the regional office to promote more democracy in
schools was meeting resistance from some PTAs who were ‘scared of children’s
rights’.
‘Our methods are becoming more democratic, involving the people we inspect.
Although we wanted to do this anyway but we didn’t know how to do it’.
15
One headteacher who was also an inspector said that he now works more closely with
teachers in running the school – ‘ A headteacher alone cannot run the school’. On the
other hand one inspector noted that ‘We have some headteachers who are dictators’
and that he was now working with heads to try to bring about better treatment and
more involvement of staff.
One respondent said that he had been thinking about a self-help group that took one
chapter at a time from the teacher education guidebook distributed at the workshops
(Davies, Harber and Schweisfurth 2002). Another said that he was organising a
cluster level workshop for 6 schools on education for democracy and that the
inspiration had come from the workshop – he wanted new ideas about democratic
decision-making and openness to be debated in the cluster. One inspector noted that
he had said that he wanted to get involved in promoting AIDS sensitisation and that
he had now managed to get funding and had organised meetings on the subject since
the workshop.
Interview respondents were therefore generally positive about the impact of the
workshops and many could provide specific examples of changes in outlook and
practice. I wonder how many OFSTED inspectors or local authority advisers or
headteachers at the nation college for school leadership have attended a workshop on
education democracy aimed at enabling them to work in a more democratic fashion?
Conclusion
The comparative study of education makes clearer the geographically contextualised
nature of teacher professionalism and teacher identity. Further it also makes clear that
while there may be baseline notions of efficient and professional teacher i.e. turning
up and doing the job (not a given everywhere) equally important is the ideological
question of which can of professional – the benign authoritarian, the efficient but
violent teacher or the democratic professional? Comparative study suggests the need
to ask such questions and to consider the implications for initial and in-service
education not only of teachers but all education professionals.
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