tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/education-theory-9949/articlesEducation theory – The Conversation2019-10-11T02:01:56Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1198192019-10-11T02:01:56Z2019-10-11T02:01:56ZTropic of Shakespeare: what studying Macbeth in Queensland could teach us about place and shipwrecks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289158/original/file-20190823-170931-9xeeuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5973%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Macbeth's Scottish heaths may seem a long way from tropical Queensland, but there are points of connection.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/OO8AEXFQtdI">Unsplash/Matt Riches</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When you imagine the setting for Macbeth, misty heaths, battlefields, and the brooding highlands spring to mind. Teaching the play in the midst of a tropical summer in Townsville, far north Queensland, highlights disjunctions and surprising correlations between play and place.</p>
<p>In their 2011 book <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315578637">Ecocritical Shakespeare</a>, Lynne Bruckner and Dan Brayton consider this relationship between our environment and our practices of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What does the study of literature have to do with the environment? … What is the connection between the literary and the real when it comes to ecological conduct, both in Shakespeare’s era and now?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One way of answering these questions is through the use of place-based education. Educational theorists Amanda Hagood and Carmel E. Price <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isle/article/23/3/603/2886715">reason</a> that “student learning is enhanced when course content is grounded in a particular place of meaning”. </p>
<p>This approach is neither new nor (on the surface) complex. Educational philosopher John Dewey prioritised experiential learning such as nature studies. More recently, Swansea University educators have <a href="https://theconversation.com/outdoor-learning-has-huge-benefits-for-children-and-teachers-so-why-isnt-it-used-in-more-schools-118067">published research</a> on the benefits of curriculum-based outdoor learning for primary school students.</p>
<p>But preliminary research on outdoor Shakespeare education conducted with Townsville secondary school students shows contradictory responses: some students found the location “calming” and “less stressful” than classrooms. Others believed that learning did not “rely on location”. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Christopher Gaze founded Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festivalin 1990. Attendance at the beachside performances has since topped 91,000.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Students’ sense of place</h2>
<p>In 2019, 60 first-year English students at James Cook University were asked to rate the importance of setting in Shakespeare plays, and the importance of their own place to the study of Shakespeare.</p>
<p>Of those surveyed, 85% felt that the setting was important to the play, while 96% believed that Shakespeare had little or no relevance to their local area. Few felt that their real life location was important in their study of the playwright’s work. </p>
<p>These results show a contrast between the perceived value of literary and of lived place. This is problematic: how do students engage with fictional, imagined literary places if their own lived experience of place is devalued?</p>
<p>When asked to explain their ratings, students said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I believe the setting plays a big part in the play as it allows the audience to understand why the characters are doing what they are doing. Shakespeare isn’t important in Townsville.</p>
<p>I live in a rural area. There is not a lot of room for Shakespeare - though given small town conflicts you would see his plots acted out in real life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is slippage here between the student’s reference to physical place and their conceptual space, which does not have a lot of cultural room for Shakespeare.</p>
<p>A third student wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My family doesn’t really care about Shakespeare, but I do enjoy some of his works personally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, place was understood to refer to relationships, not environment - an understanding backed by British social scientist and geographer Doreen Massey’s <a href="https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2016/03/the-geographer-of-space-and-power-doreen-massey-1944-2016/">theories</a>.</p>
<p>The disparity between students’ conceptualisations of place and their devaluation of their own location as relevant to their studies may be symptomatic of what Alice Ball and Eric Lai identify as “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/197067/summary">an ethos of placelessness in education</a>”. In Canada, David Gruenewald has argued that the curriculum is largely “<a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/joyann/EDLSP549Beadie_Williamson/gruenewald.pdf">placeless</a>”, with educational reforms and high stakes testing increasingly disconnected from our places.</p>
<h2>Shakespeare’s shipwrecks</h2>
<p>One approach to teaching Shakespeare through place-based education could centre on shared spaces in lived place and text. As a Shakespeare scholar living near the Great Barrier Reef, I’m interested in what Steve Mentz identifies as the “<a href="http://stevementz.com/the-green-and-the-blue-in-macbeth/">blue ecology” of Macbeth</a>; the play’s many references to the ocean, liquids, and bodily fluids. </p>
<p>One blue image common to both Shakespeare and Townsville is that of the shipwreck – a favourite trope of Shakespeare’s, essential to plays including The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and Pericles.</p>
<p>Macbeth invokes shipwreck imagery with a tale of changed fortune after Macbeth’s victory over the traitor Macdonald:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As whence the sun ‘gins his reflection,</p>
<p>Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,</p>
<p>So from that spring, whence comfort seemed to come,</p>
<p>Discomfort swells. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Witches offer a literal description of a ship or “bark”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1 WITCH</p>
<p>Though his bark cannot be lost,</p>
<p>Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.</p>
<p>2 WITCH</p>
<p>Show me, show me.</p>
<p>1 WITCH</p>
<p>Here I have a pilot’s thumb,</p>
<p>Wrecked as homeward he did come.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shipwreck is something that Shakespeare and Townsville have in common. Two of the most famous shipwrecks off Townsville’s coast are the SS Yongala (which sank in 1911 and is now a <a href="http://www.yongaladive.com.au/s-s-yongala-history/">popular diving site</a>) and the HMS Pandora (hulled on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 after capturing some of the Bounty mutineers; remnants of the wreckage are <a href="https://mtq.qm.qld.gov.au/Events+and+Exhibitions/Exhibitions/Permanent/Pandora+gallery#.XT_UxOgzZPY">on display at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville).</a></p>
<p>Our students could both explore Shakespeare through the shipwreck and engage more with the history and culture of their own local places. This approach requires us to think about place as real and imagined; fitting for Macbeth, a play <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/725102/summary">defined as</a> a “tragedy of imagination”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Hansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Seeking ways to engage students with Shakespeare’s Scottish play in far north Queensland, highlights disjunctions and surprising correlations between play and place.Claire Hansen, Lecture in English/Writing, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628022016-07-29T05:56:11Z2016-07-29T05:56:11ZAfrican philosophy of education: a powerful arrow in universities’ bow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131997/original/image-20160726-7023-154qoze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An African philosophy of education offers new ways of thinking about the continent.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To understand what an <a href="http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=3016">African philosophy of education</a> is and why it’s so important, consider the role that universities should play in any society. </p>
<p>Universities, no matter where they are, ought to be places where knowledge is internalised, questioned and considered. Such knowledge should respond to a university’s particular social, political and economic context. The pursuit of such knowledge happens in a quest for human development. What would a university be if its only purpose was to produce knowledge without considering its effects on a society and its people? </p>
<p>But it’s perhaps precisely this disjuncture – between what universities purport to do and what happens in society – that starts to explain why knowledge in Africa has become so misplaced. This has happened in several Arab and Muslim states, where some universities have seemingly become reluctant to encourage critical learning. Knowledge produced in such universities does not attend to public concerns, whether these are political, economic, social or cultural. </p>
<p>African knowledge can’t just be considered for some academic purpose. It must also keep in mind why and how such knowledge ought to affect society. This is why an African philosophy of education can be such a powerful tool for the continent’s post-colonial universities as they work to become producers of knowledge that has a public concern. This is particularly important for African universities. The continent’s citizens have to be initiated into ways of being and living that emphasise human cooperation, openness to debate and discussion, and responsibility towards one another. </p>
<p>Many of the continent’s political dictatorships could be avoided if citizens were encouraged to question and disagree. </p>
<h2>Search for meanings</h2>
<p>Simply put, an African philosophy of education is a way of asking questions about education in Africa. It allows education students to search for meanings that relate to their chosen field.</p>
<p>An African philosophy of education offers a discourse to address the continent’s many problems. These include famine, hunger, poverty, abuse, violence and exclusion of the other. One of Africa’s most common and major dilemmas offers a useful way to illustrate the approach I’m describing: the prevalence of <a href="http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-10-20-what-the-concept-of-democracy-means-in-africa">military dictatorships</a>. A student of African philosophy of education would ask how military rule affects education. How might education, in turn, address the restrictions of a military challenge?</p>
<p>When the military is in charge, a country’s institutions of learning are expected to toe the line. Coercion and control are the order of the day. There is no room for dissent and democratic engagement. How, if at all, should an African university respond to a society that is under military rule? When students are taught to deliberate – to talk back to others and to listen to them – they would be serious practitioners of an African philosophy of education. Such students would not only willingly engage with others and their differences, but also be prepared to listen to dissenting views. </p>
<p>But adopting an African philosophy of education isn’t about just analysing the continent’s problems. Instead a student will go on to envisage how these problems could be resolved by considering education as one possible medium. Then they’ll need to examine what both the problem and its solving might imply for education.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Yusef Waghid explains what an African philosophical approach to education entails.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Theory vs practice</h2>
<p>As elsewhere, the idea of doing or practising an African philosophy of education is connected to bridging the pseudo-dichotomy between theory and practice. Some may claim that African philosophy is merely an act of theorising. They are wrong. It’s actually embedded with an energy and drive to change undesirable situations and conditions. </p>
<p>In any case, there is no separation between theory and practice. One cannot delink thinking from acting upon happenings in society. Any good theory on education should affect educational practices positively. What constitutes a positive theory of education? To my mind, the answer lies with practices that take shape through autonomous thinking, engagement and freedom made visible through deliberation. In this manner, theory and practice are intertwined.</p>
<p>An African philosophy of education also allows inquirers to look at how educational practices – teaching, learning, managing and governing universities on the continent – can be made to feel real. </p>
<p>Sadly, it’s rare for many of today’s universities in Africa to teach any philosophy of education. Philosophy of education is wrongly perceived as being some abstract exercise of the mind that’s not connected to real-life issues. Africa’s institutions of higher learning should seek to change this. </p>
<p>Any university that wants to advance its status as a knowledge producer ought to be responsive to knowledge claims. It’s here that the idea of an African philosophy of education can become so important. It’s a crucial element for enhancing the autonomy and freedom associated with university teaching and learning.</p>
<h2>Addressing injustice</h2>
<p>The other key feature of an African philosophy of education is that it’s invariably geared towards addressing the continent’s injustices and inequalities. A university education that is guided by a concern for educational justice – an advocacy for freedom, autonomy, democratic engagement and responsiveness to the other – is one that takes African philosophy of education seriously. </p>
<p>Africa’s concerns to move beyond its subjugation to repression and exclusion will gain considerably more momentum if its people can produce analyses and responses to the legitimate concerns that confront humanity on the continent. If this is allowed to happen, African philosophy of education would have acquired significant potency in its educational quest for justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yusef Waghid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Adopting an African philosophy of education can be a powerful tool to help the continent’s universities create real social change and justice.Yusef Waghid, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/622012016-07-14T18:24:59Z2016-07-14T18:24:59ZHow a theory born in the 1930s could transform African education systems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129727/original/image-20160707-30705-1dlhhas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brazilian educator Paulo Freire wrote extensively about education that oppresses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nic Bothma/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You may not have heard of Paulo Freire. That’s not surprising if you don’t work in the field of education theory, since it’s in this space that the Brazilian’s ideas are most famous. </p>
<p>In his seminal work, “<a href="http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/1335344125freire_pedagogy_of_the_oppresed.pdf">Pedagogy of the Oppressed</a>”, Freire calls for the transformation of education to create a more equitable society. The seeds of his philosophy were planted during his childhood after his middle-class family suddenly fell into poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s. </p>
<p>He found himself falling back four grades in school and was later to say this was because he couldn’t understand anything because he was hungry. “I wasn’t dumb. It wasn’t lack of interest. My social condition didn’t allow me to have an education.”</p>
<p>The lessons he learnt nearly 90 years ago and the theories he developed from painful personal experience still resonate across Africa’s schooling systems. They hold powerful ideas for those who function within the continent’s education system in any way – teachers, parents and pupils.</p>
<h2>An education that oppresses</h2>
<p>Formal education in most African countries was introduced during <a href="http://voxeu.org/article/british-and-french-educational-legacies-africa">colonial times</a>. Formal education was a means by which the colonial machinery trained low-level <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=xlD0JS16w9oC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA172#v=onepage&q&f=false">clerical staff</a>. It wasn’t really aimed at developing thinking persons. Most of the content in this system described a world alien to Africans, in languages that were also alien. Those who best conformed to the norms and expectations of this alien world were then rewarded with the title of “educated”.</p>
<p>Today many of the continent’s existing systems are still largely based on those early models. Since these systems are divorced from most people’s realities, they tend to produce individuals who don’t understand their own world – but don’t fit into this other alien world either.</p>
<p>This, to use Freire’s language, is a system that oppresses. It neither acknowledges our reality as Africans, nor presents us with any opportunity to engage with that reality. Instead, formal education proceeds by the practice of what Freire calls “banking”. In this kind of education, the best teacher is the one who is most expert at making “deposits” – to continue the banking metaphor – and the best student is the one who can best return these deposits at exam time.</p>
<p>Banking education presupposes that the students know nothing, and the teacher knows everything. This, Freire says, does not acknowledge students as an active part of the education process. Students are simply objects upon which action is taken rather than subjects who can participate, reflect and <em>become</em>.</p>
<p>In this way, Freire says, the education system is really a weapon of oppression and those who run it are the oppressors.</p>
<p>Unfortunately after enough time in this system the students come to believe the only things of value are those that someone else tells them. They believe that nothing of what they feel, think or initiate can be of any value. Rather, they come to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[internalise] the image of oppressor and his guidelines, [and are] fearful of freedom. Freedom would require [them] to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is no wonder, then, that in Africa, even after half a century of “independence” in some countries, we tend to look outside ourselves to define our values and find guidance on what we should do to solve our problems instead of looking inward to critically analyse the nature and causes of the problems that plague us – disease, conflict, poverty – and develop the appropriate solutions. Instead, we continue to count on the very system that perpetuates our oppression to liberate us, and are afraid of engaging in the midwifery of our own liberating pedagogy.</p>
<p>Freire poses the central problem here as follows: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>How then can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>His work holds some ideas about how to go about this.</p>
<h2>An education that liberates</h2>
<p>Freire advocates for a “<a href="http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-2/paulo-freire-on-education-that-liberates">problem-posing</a>” rather than a “banking” education. In this system, teachers and students are in a dialogue that advances both parties’ understanding of how their world functions. This, in turn, gradually reveals the true nature of this world. </p>
<p>In an education that continuously presents students with questions relating to themselves and their world, they cannot help but feel challenged to respond in order to transform it. Liberation, as he says, is active: “The action of men and women acting upon their world in order to transform it”.</p>
<p>Recently a friend told me that her son’s swimming instructor had approached her with the following proposition: “For the upcoming inter-school competitions,” he said, “why not enter your son as a seven-year-old instead of an eight-year-old? In that way he can compete in the five-to-seven-year category. Otherwise, if we enter him as an eight-year-old, he will have to compete against children as old as ten, and that will be to his disadvantage.”</p>
<p>As one might expect, my friend was greatly perturbed by this. When she questioned him, though, the instructor assured her: “There is no problem, Madam – that is what everyone does.”</p>
<p>This story, for me, encapsulates the essence of oppression. Even though this swimming instructor operates in a system that he perceives as unfair, that is to say, oppressive, his response is to conform. Because oppression interferes with our ability to <em>become</em> (a process that requires purposeful questioning and conscious decision-making), Freire says that our only option is to <em>become like</em>. As was the case with this swimming instructor, the thing that we <em>become like</em> is whatever the status quo suggests. So we perpetuate, or even worsen, the very systems that prevent us from transforming as a society. </p>
<p>On the contrary, we as Africans must have the courage to stop and look critically at our own world. We need to name this world with our own words and pose our own questions about it. We must believe that we have the ability to <em>become</em> whatever we choose, and <em>choose</em> that which we should become. We need to stop always looking outside ourselves just so we can pursue <em>becoming like</em>. </p>
<p>Fortunately, there are some promising initiatives aimed at addressing the continent’s challenges appropriately. One example is the local language policy in my own country, Uganda. This specifies that the language of instruction in the first three years of primary school should be whatever local language is dominant in a given region. It makes sense: imagine a rural six-year-old entering primary school for the first time and being presented with a book written in English, full of scenes of children “running through meadows” or “riding a pony”. What is this child to make of any of it? </p>
<p>Why not allow this child to use the words she already knows to name things that she is familiar with. This, Freire would argue, is the place to start her education about those things she does not know yet, and gives credence to such a language policy. Unfortunately, these initiatives are sometimes poorly communicated and implemented. In Uganda, for instance, there’s been a lot of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ugandas-private-schools-must-stop-snubbing-language-learning-policy-46819">resistance</a> to the local language policy. </p>
<p>What’s worse, even some Ugandan leaders <a href="http://www.parliament.go.ug/index.php/about-parliament/parliamentary-news/227-kadaga-warns-on-thematic-school-curriculum">do not support</a> the policy. They believe that it is a tool to keep certain of the country’s regions underdeveloped. As the victims of oppression themselves, they believe that education is only of value if it is conducted in English.</p>
<h2>So much potential</h2>
<p>Africa is faced with many challenges. But it’s also a continent bursting with potential. To realise this, however, its education systems must be altered so they no longer simply produce individuals who unquestioningly conform to the status quo.</p>
<p>Freire’s work holds valuable ideas about how to transform Africa’s education systems and its children from oppressed to truly liberated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Connie Nshemereirwe is affiliated with Kigo Thinkers, which is a think-tank in Kampala.</span></em></p>The lessons Paulo Freire learnt nearly 90 years ago and the theories he developed from painful personal experience still resonate across Africa’s schooling systems today.Connie Nshemereirwe, Senior Lecturer in Education, Uganda Martyrs UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555152016-03-09T12:18:12Z2016-03-09T12:18:12ZHow education theory could be used to help shape genuine democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113417/original/image-20160301-31030-1tbxqax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supplication to authority -- through pleading or vehement protest – is hardly the only way to bring about change in a democracy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sumaya Hisham/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Come 1994, many South Africans assumed that the official end of apartheid meant “job done – we are a democracy.” But despite an excellent constitution and world-class public institutions, the country looks increasingly dysfunctional. </p>
<p>So if a great constitution and carefully designed public institutions don’t make a democracy, what was left out? I believe that, crucially, civil society was not retooled for freedom. Two concepts drawn from education research may hold a possible solution to this shortcoming: first, the idea that knowledge is socially constructed and, second, the notion that self-efficacy is a significant factor in ability.</p>
<h2>Issues of agency</h2>
<p>In an authoritarian state, there are a limited number of levers of power. Control of those levers is centralised. Ordinary citizens cannot easily fix societal wrongs, nor safely organise themselves into groups that aren’t sanctioned by the state.</p>
<p>In a democracy, though, ordinary citizens should have access to lesser levers that work to their personal or, in small groups, collective benefit. The workings of government are open to ordinary citizens. They can attend public meetings and access government policies and documents. This is particularly valuable at a local government level, where officials who control the processes that affect ordinary people’s lives are close to hand and should – in theory – be easy to reach.</p>
<p>But such levers are not familiar to most citizens in a country like South Africa, which has a strong culture of protest. This culture does not recognise that there are other levers of power besides those held by leaders in high places. At my own university, I’ve asked <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall">protesting students</a> how the institution’s management could do better. Their response? “Don’t ask me. We have highly paid leaders who should be solving these problems.”</p>
<p>This suggests that change can only be achieved by <em>supplication</em>. Whether this is polite but possibly ineffectual or expressed with extreme anger, such supplication starts from the same place: the view that an individual or small groups of individuals lack agency. One of the biggest drawbacks of this approach is its short-term nature. An example from my own small town: in 2014, <a href="http://www.green-grahamstown.org/2014/08/save-our-station.html">3,000 residents signed a petition</a> calling on the owners (government rail monopoly Transnet) to save the historic railway station from being dismantled by looters. The municipality and the provincial heritage authority had failed to act on earlier complaints.</p>
<p>That is an instance of supplication – asking or trying to order the authorities to fix things. The property was fenced off, security guards installed and the worst of the damage was repaired. But it was just a quick fix: residents were not empowered in any way. They have been excluded from planning the future use of the station site. They do not have the leverage to demand such inclusion unless they start another petition campaign.</p>
<p>This illustrates how problem solving has stalled in South Africa. The government is trying to take on too much and failing. Many transitional societies run into the same problem: there is too much to do and government becomes bogged down. With a more activist civil society, the weight of doing everything can be lifted from government so it can focus on bigger problems.</p>
<p>But how can these alternatives be introduced to South Africans?</p>
<h2>Can we learn from education?</h2>
<p>The idea that knowledge is socially constructed deviates from the earlier view of education theory that was <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08993400600971067">more cognitive</a>. In the social construction view, knowledge is not just about what you know, but also about how you interact with others and what you are.</p>
<p>What is missing in South Africa is the knowledge of what it means to <em>be</em> a citizen of a free, democratic society. That is not just about knowing that one <em>is</em> a citizen, but knowing <em>how one should behave</em> and <em>interact</em> with others. A social discourse is part of that knowing: when we enter a situation where we are unhappy with how others perform, how do we interact with them? How do you react when someone criticises the way you perform? These are not trivial questions in a multicultural country.</p>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0836/abstract;jsessionid=761A91DAA64CA0B69CABD22D1E28BDD6.f01t01">Self-efficacy</a> is the perception that individuals are able to control events that influence their lives. In education, that sort of belief <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-6868-5_10">leads</a> to better educational outcomes. It confers a kind of self-belief that you will be able to solve a hard problem.</p>
<p>This idea fits well with what Black Consciousness leader and activist Steve Biko called <a href="http://libpsy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Libeartion-Psychology-Reflections-Nov-16-20141.pdf"><em>psychological liberation</em></a>, which calls on oppressed people to liberate themselves from the externally imposed idea that they’re incapable and so should be looking for external salvation.</p>
<p>These ideas apply equally well in understanding how to reconfigure a failing society.</p>
<h2>What is ‘normal’?</h2>
<p>In a dysfunctional society, the norm becomes doing what is actually antisocial. In a place like South Africa that has <em>never</em> been “normal” in the sense of a free, open society where individuals have agency, there is no norm on which to build. Antisocial behaviours become the new normal when the shackles are loosed. There are some who <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-demanding-more-of-their-leaders-and-democracy-54755">believe</a> that a return to an authoritarian society is the answer. It’s not.</p>
<p>Instead I propose drawing on those two ideas from education theory to build a functioning civil society in which the “normal” involves behaving in a socially aware manner, rather than doing what you like.</p>
<h2>Many levers for democracy</h2>
<p>I am not dismissing protest as a tool, but merely arguing that it is not the only tool. Stopping at protest implies that a society is not really democratic because treating supplication to the powerful as the only option for change implies that power relations cannot shift.</p>
<p>Ultimately a society can only work if the levers of power are effectively wielded. In an authoritarian system, that means the levers are centralised and tightly held. In a democracy, they are distributed and loosely held. For a genuine free democracy to work, citizens need to learn what it means to live free. A large part of that involves grasping the levers of power at their disposal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55515/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Machanick is chairperson of the Grahamstown Residents’ Association and national coordinator of SA Win, both of which aim to promote active citizenship.</span></em></p>There are two concepts in education theory – the social construction of knowledge and the notion of self-efficacy for development –- that could help build a true democracy.Philip Machanick, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/256362014-04-16T05:19:35Z2014-04-16T05:19:35ZExplainer: what is the mastery model of teaching maths?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46462/original/yztxmbzs-1397561599.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mastered numbers? Let's make it harder. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/1776038187/sizes/o/">Arenamontanus</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever-envious of Singapore’s <a href="http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/asian-countries-top-oecd-s-latest-pisa-survey-on-state-of-global-education.htm">much-heralded success</a> in teaching maths, politicians are keen to see its methodology arriving in UK classrooms. </p>
<p>Education minister Elizabeth Truss explained some of the background to the government’s current proposals for teaching maths in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/elizabeth-truss-speaks-about-improving-teaching">a recent speech</a>. </p>
<p>She mentioned the term “mastery” and enthusiastically welcomed Singapore Maths, a series of textbooks following the “mastery model” by Marshall Cavendish Education, that <a href="https://global.oup.com/education/content/primary/news/primary_news_singapore_announcement?region=uk">will be published in the UK from 2015</a> by Oxford University Press. </p>
<p>One might be tempted to assume Singapore Maths might have something to do with the Ministry of Education in Singapore. I am a huge admirer of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-singapores-school-system-so-successful-and-is-it-a-model-for-the-west-22917">education system in Singapore</a> and have even done some consultancy work for their ministry, but I doubt that the title reflects their direct involvement.</p>
<h2>Learning for mastery</h2>
<p>The mastery method has been around in educational circles for a while. The term <a href="http://programs.honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/sites/programs.honolulu.hawaii.edu.intranet/files/upstf-student-success-bloom-1968.pdf">“learning for mastery”</a> was introduced by American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom in 1968. His idea was that a learning goal has to be broken down into a number of small learning objectives. </p>
<p>This is a methodology that predates computers, but it is often so protracted it needs computer power to be practical. It also relates to precision teaching, pioneered by another American pyschologist <a href="http://www.fluency.org/lindsley1991.pdf">Ogden Lindsley</a>, again where a goal is broken down into miniscule progressive steps. </p>
<p>So in a maths lesson, a goal for a student might be to: “carry out whole number addition”. One objective that would contribute to this goal could be to “add two three digit whole numbers with carrying in the tens”. In 1983, Robert Ashlock and his colleagues went further, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guiding-Each-Childs-Learning-Mathematics/dp/0675200237">breaking down</a> addition into 23 objectives and subtraction into 24 objectives.</p>
<h2>Not for everybody</h2>
<p>I would argue that learning in this way might handicap understanding because the process can be so slow that learners forget the early stages when, and if, they reach the later stages. </p>
<p>Such methods are often prescribed for children who are having difficulty in learning maths. But they are usually inappropriate, particularly if it is the only methodology. It is inherent in the detailed nature of the structure that children who are lagging behind will not catch up by sole use of this methodology. The emphasis, for all learners, should be understanding maths concepts, which will then support memory.</p>
<p>There are other concerns about an over-emphasis on mastery, especially when it is closely linked to behavioural methods of teaching. The level of mastery has to be defined. If, as the word implies, it is a 100% performance, then many children will never achieve that level. If progression to the next topic is denied until mastery is achieved, then too many children will not progress.</p>
<p>All pupils learn differently, and so it <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00302376#page-1">may not be possible</a> to establish a strict hierarchy in the different components of arithmetic. In fact, Ann Dowker at Oxford has noted <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/2505/1/ma_difficulties_0008609.pdf">a child may perform well</a> at a difficult task while performing poorly at an apparently easier task. By limiting progression to an inappropriate hierarchy of steps, many children may be denied success in maths. </p>
<p>On an anecdotal note, an ex-student of mine, who was very dyslexic, never mastered recall of all his times tables. He did, however, achieve a degree in maths. When I asked him about times table knowledge in the third year of his degree, he assured me that such knowledge was not a huge component of his programme.</p>
<h2>Model students?</h2>
<p>In her speech, Truss said that, “The mastery model of learning places the emphasis on understanding core concepts.” Actually mastery is not often about understanding concepts, but instead is about what <a href="http://teaching.uncc.edu/sites/teaching.uncc.edu/files/media/files/file/GoalsAndObjectives/Bloom.pdf">Bloom’s Taxonomy</a> called “knowledge-remember” – remembering knowledge, not about understanding and higher levels of cognitive ability</p>
<p>I have concerns about exactly what the minister means by “core concepts”. A pre-school child might have mastered the accurate recitation of the core numbers, but they may not have acquired any underlying sense of number. </p>
<p>The mastery model, as with all models, will work for some children, but not for all. There is no data available on which profiles of children respond best to this teaching model. However, thirty years of experience of teaching children who have difficulties with maths tells me that it will rarely be appropriate for that population.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Chinn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ever-envious of Singapore’s much-heralded success in teaching maths, politicians are keen to see its methodology arriving in UK classrooms. Education minister Elizabeth Truss explained some of the background…Steve Chinn, Visiting professor, University of DerbyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.