Project Database
Walking on Two Legs - a teacher's response on development
| Country: | South Africa |
| Start Date: | 2008-01-01 |
| Deadline: | 2009-12-31 |
| Host organisations: |
South African Democratic Teachers' Union
(SADTU)
|
| Co-operating organisations: |
Gymnasieskolernes Lærerforening - National Union of Upper Secondary School Teachers, Denmark
(GL)
|
| Related Links: | |
Project Summary:
Aims:
To strengthen the capacity of SADTU and its upper secondary school members in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape to participate actively in a pedagogic and professional debate about the educational development and the role of the schools in a democracy.
Immediate objectives:
1. By the end of this project SADTU will be better equipped for their educational work in their regional and local efforts to inspire teachers to take an active part in educational issues and to strengthen their professional level. Moreover the project and dialogue with GL has inspired SADTU and its members to meet colleagues from other schools and discuss professional and pedagogic development.
2. SADTU’s teachers who have participated in the seminars have become involved in the debate about continuous assessment, the development of a democratic school management culture and a democratic school structure, where the students are involved and are trained in new competences e.g. IT in a dialogue with the school management, so that the teachers have an influence on the school development and their own situation as teachers.
3. The debate on the topical educational themes, treated at the seminars, has been spread to colleagues from other schools, so the debate has involved many more than the participants in the project seminars.
Expected Results:
1. Through the participation of ordinary teachers in the seminars an educational policy debate which might risk only to involve professional union members is brought out to each region in the two provinces
2. This effect is enhanced by the commitment of the participants of running cascade seminars in their province
3. The seminars create a rare forum for an educational debate around themes, in which the teachers gain contact to colleagues from other schools, so they can see their local problems in a broader perspective. The contact between the various schools will be strengthened by the common commitment to plan and participate in a cascade seminar.
4. During the seminars on democratic school management culture and school democracy it is planned to elaborate a catalogue as inspiration or framework for further work at the schools.
5. The idea of the 5th seminar targeting a debate about producing a policy paper to SADTU’s next congress will ensure that the outcome of the seminars will be treated in a South African context and will be put forward to political decision making which will assure a continuous educational debate about the chosen themes in the teachers’ organisation.
Working Methods:
The project’s basic idea is to equip SADTU and their members to debate and formulate an active strategy to the demands from the government’s reform process and the daily work in the schools. This will happen by discussing selected topics at the seminars. These have been chosen by SADTU, so they cover the most relevant themes in the educational debate. During the seminars the participants will discuss how to follow up on central issues, so the 4 first seminars will treat questions and topics that should be treated at the fifth seminar, where a SADTu policy paper will be elaborated containing the themes for the next SADTU congress in 2010. Thus the process is assured its position in SADTU’s organisatorial structure.
The seminar participants will function as master trainees who are obliged to disseminate their input from the seminars at local seminars in the regions of the two participating provinces. Thus the seminars contribute to the spreading of the topics to a larger number of teachers at the same time as strengthening SADTU’s organisatorial system in connection to the debate before the congress in 2010.
The seminars form the framework for a debate where priorities and attitudes to the tasks of subjects and schools are debated. In this debate it is important with input from outside concerning how Denmark has handled similar demands for change. Many of the problems facing the South African teachers now are identical to the those of the reform debate in Denmark in connection to the reform of the upper secondary education 2005. In south Africa teachers from 10-12 year have few possibilities of attending courses and discussing professional educational topics with colleagues from other schools. The project will offer such an opportunity.
The project centres around a number of 3 day seminars. The participants are selected by Sadtu to be trained as master trainees, who will disseminate the outcome afterwards. SADTU has earlier used a cascade model, which will be used here, where 35 participants in the seminars afterwards for instance form teams corresponding to the number of regions in the province. These teams will then be responsible for running a follow-up seminar. The project will train the master trainees who participate in the seminars, where after SADTU is responsible for the follow-up activity. A collection of materials will be elaborated in connection to each seminar, which will form the basis of the local follow-up seminars.
Number of Participants in this country:
350 in principal seminars plus 650 in cascade seminars
Target group:
SADTU teachers in upper secondary schools
Gender Perspective:
Equal gender balance when selecting seminar participants
Similar projects elsewhere in the region:
Algeria - EI MENA Initiative Burkina Faso - Capacity Building Burkina Faso - Capacity building Burkina Faso - Capacity building for SNEAB Burundi - Support to the Burundi Union of Teachers Burundi - Regional support to the East African Teachers Unions (Burundi) Cameroon - Capacity building Congo-Brazzaville - Capacity building Congo-Kinshasa - Capacity Building Guinea - Capacity building Guinea - Organizational development Kenya - Support to the Kenya National Union of Teachers for training its school representatives, Phase V Kenya - Regional support to the East African Teachers Unions (Kenya) Liberia - Capacity Building Liberia - Capacity Building Liberia - Liberia Consortium Malawi - Strengthening of Private Schools Employees Union of Malawi (PSEUM) Malawi - Malawi Capacity Building and training Mali - Capacity building of SNEC Mauritania - Strengthening of SNES Mozambique - Capacity building of ONP Namibia - Capacity Building Niger - Capacity Building of three African teacher trade unions Rwanda - Support to the Rwanda Teachers Unions Rwanda - Regional support to the East African Teachers Unions (Rwanda) Sierra Leone - Capacity Building Sierra Leone - Human Resource Development Tanzania - Zanzibar Teachers Union Development Project Tanzania - Support to the Tanzania Teachers Union for Training of its Representatives - Phase 3 Tanzania - Zanzibar Teachers Union Development Project Tanzania - Tanzania Capacity Building Tanzania - Regional support to the East African Teachers Unions (Tanzania and Zanzibar) Togo - Capacity Building Togo - Capacity building of FESEN Uganda - Capacity Building Uganda - Uganda National Teachers Union Recruitment and Leadership Training Uganda - Regional support to the East African Teachers Unions (Uganda) Zimbabwe - Membership education Zimbabwe - Capacity building of ZIMTA
