The Emergence and Teaching of the Social Studies Programme in Botswana

The emergence of the Social Studies Programme in Botswana can be traced to the international Social Studies conference attended by African, United States and British representatives which took place in Oxford, Britain in 1967. This conference called for the need to align curriculum development to the needs and priorities of Africans (EDC/CREDO, 1968). Preceding this conference was the Massachusetts Conference held in the United States of American 1961 where problems facing education systems in emerging nation-states in Africa were discussed (Adeyemi, 2010). Within this trajectory of events, the African Social Studies Programme (ASSP) was born (Merryfeild, 1988). This was indeed a good initiative. Social Studies scholars across the world working in conjunction with governments of the seventeen countries embraced the ASSP. These countries included Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia (Merryfield, 1988).

            Later on the ASSP came to include the Environmental Education component hence African Social Studies and Environmental Program (ASSEP) (Adeyemi, 2008). The Environmental Education (EE) component was added because of the global pressures on the environment due to climatic changes and activities like deforestation. Thus EE was critical for the conservation and preservation of fauna and flora in Africa (Cheruto & Peter, 2013). In fact, as the United Nations Environmental Education Programme (UNEP) (1994) states the “introduction critical thinking and problem solving skills in EE especially at primary schools, is fundamental if students are to become skillful in the identification and solution of environmental problems as students…” (p. 4).

            The ASSP inherited instructional pedagogies that were for practical purposes didactic, passive and fused with disregard for innovation and creativity in the learning of Social Studies (Educational Development Center & Curriculum Renewal & Educational Development Overseas, 1968; p. 6). For example, Social Studies teaching was overly based on textbook assignments, oral review of assignments in class, extensive teacher talk, recitation, and seatwork with some odd field tours and use of audio-visual materials (Bolinger & Warren, 2007; p. 70). These are practices that resonate with indoctrination of Social Studies learners and in the process negating the pursuit for citizenship education (Ajiboye, 2009).

            The ASSP advocated and recommended the use of inquiry to teach Social Studies. The intention was to afford students the opportunity to ask questions and solve problems independently (Merryfield, 1988). These child-centered pedagogies were later inscribed into the Botswana school curriculum to improve the quality of education (RNPE, 1994). Unfortunately for Botswana and other African countries, this pedagogical shift was and is still hard to achieve due to a number factors such as the culture of teaching and availability of resources (Mhlauli & Muchado, 2013).

            The inclusion of social issues was necessitated by calls for interdisciplinary studies and global education within Social Studies in tandem with high level thinking as well as inquiry based learning approaches (Bolinger & Warren, 2007; p. 69).

Put simply Social Studies was to be taught through the use of child-centered pedagogies. However, as Benette and Hinde (2004) rightly observed, this was not easy and required a lot of planning and sound pedagogical knowledge. The need for effective instructional strategies was summed up by Adeyemi (2010) when he observed that:

the resolution of the Mombasa Conference to employ the learner-centered approach in teaching and learning Social Studies was to make students active rather than passive in the learning process, a situation that would enhance democratic practices at classroom level (p.13-14).

                   

In principle, leaner-centered approaches and teaching pedagogies are dialectically opposed to indoctrination. However, the reality is that teachers’ pedagogical practices in Botswana schools are didactic. According to Tabulawa (2013) the sub Saharan African region has been experimenting with leaner-centered pedagogies without any success. More specifically, Botswana has over the past four decades theoretically embraced learner-centered pedagogies yet teaching still remains didactic and authoritarian.      

lesson plan challenges faced by Botswana primary school teachers

Hello everyone🙋💗  hope this latest installment finds you in good health. I felt i should for this blog post share with you an interesting issue on challenges of lesson planning faced by teachers and in particular elementary teachers in Botswana schools which might needlessly be relative to other contexts. It is something i previously did for my post graduate work pursuing my MEd. in Social Studies education. Feel free to read through and engage below.🙆🙆

  The first problem that concerns lesson planning is that supervisors seem to have different understandings of what to include and omit in preparation books. The problem emanates from the fact that members of the school management team as supervisors are traditionally from various schools, clusters, inspectorates and regions promoted on transfer as such they bring with them varied expectations on lesson planning. It is an unfortunate scenario because one would expect them to be oriented on school culture and practices congruent to policy requirements. As an example, some supervisors would append their signatures on lesson plans that may show activities in listed form like “group work” whereas another supervisor within the same institution would not do such dismissing the plan as vague and skeletal demanding an extension to say “group work on finding the causes of…” Needless to say teachers tend to like the former in the sense that it is short and hate the latter because it creates more writing.

  Unlike the old method of daily planning and evaluation, the status quo is such that teachers plan for the entire week and get to evaluate their teaching at the end of the week, a time where most of what transpired during the lessons may have been forgotten rendering such evaluation  as guess work and less meaningful in offering insight. This arrangement defeats the purpose of lesson evaluation more so that teachers have to rely on memory when trying to make connections between lessons. If this evaluation was done daily and recorded it would be easier for teachers and learners to make connections between the previous lesson and the current one.

  Changes in attitudes and feelings are valuable and legitimate educational aims yet these are very difficult to state and measure in behavioral terms pointing the challenge that teachers face when planning for lessons with objectives that require change in attitudes and behavior. This challenge is witnessed in subjects which advocate for concepts like civic education and multiculturalism which in the case of primary education are social studies, cultural studies, religious and moral education and Setswana. The challenge does not end here, it even extends to testing whether such objectives have been met because criterion referenced testing adopted for assessment by the education system is not suitable to measure these intended learning outcomes. For example, learners may be expected to show appreciation of their culture by a specific objective and it will be near impossible to check if they indeed appreciate their culture using multiple choice questions which are the alpha and omega of testing at elementary levels of education in Botswana.

  It is unfortunate to state here that among the challenges that engulf lesson planning in schools, lower primary teachers happen to be the root cause of the problem even though there are other elements to the challenge. It is the view of this paper that lower primary school learners graduate into upper classes with a rather shaky foundation in terms of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The expectation is that they should leave lower primary classes with a mastery of these skills, however the situation on the ground is the exact opposite. Upper primary class teachers therefore find it difficult to plan challenging activities for their learners and instead revert to teacher dominated teaching with little input from learners. Lesson plans are consequently a prerogative of the teacher meaning that learners do not take responsibility for their learning. Teachers thus have a challenge of using higher cognitive methods of teaching and find solace in low cognitive approaches because the former advocates for learner engagement using the previously mentioned skills whereas the latter reinforces rote learning which is against pragmatic and democratic education found within our education policies. It is dismaying that the section of activities in preparation books is filled with low cognitive tasks that are not in tandem with what the syllabus recommends under the methods of teaching.

  Although teachers have been blamed for being the root cause of the use of lower thinking skills above, part of the problem rests with the syllabus itself. A careful analysis of the objectives listed therein reveals that our educational ends are mainly within the cohort of low level thinking thus forcing teachers to use low level thinking approaches and activities when developing lesson plans. The Blooms Taxonomy which is a guide to behavioral objectives reveals that low level instructional objectives and teaching techniques require learners to merely recall, remember and memorize facts which is an antithesis of educational aims and objectives.

  Lastly, teachers are faced with an examination oriented syllabus which is to be finished within a stipulated time to test whether learners have grasped the taught concepts. School managers are being reprimanded with letters regarding low achievement by their superiors and they in turn place pressure on teachers to finish the syllabus quickly so that they do revision for tests. Consequently teachers are forced to rush over the instructional objectives and sometimes combining two or three separate leaning objectives in a single lesson. For example, a standard seven social studies lesson may incorporate an objective on continents of the world, lines of latitudes and longitudes, major continental physical features, world climatic regions and calculating time using longitudes. This fabrication is done merely to finish the syllabus and create more time for revision forgetting that it leads to confusing learners precipitating failure. Thanks for reading through🙏

 with inspiration from

Boikhutso, K. (2010). The theory into practice dilemma: Lesson planning challenges facing           Botswana student teachers. Improving Schools, 13 (3), 205-220. doi: 10.1177/1365480210385668

IMRaD model: A blueprint to article writing

Hello! I hope you guys are keeping well. In this latest post, I wish to share with you, albeit briefly, an IMRAD model globally accepted as a blueprint to scholarly article writing.

If you aspire to publish in highly esteemed journals (i.e beginners like myself), this should serve as a starting mark.

This model was developed in the 1940s and began to be appreciated by the 1970s and has gained traction over the years to be accepted by most journals and editors-in-chief (Wu, 2011).

                                                      THE ACRONYM

1. Introduction  2. Methods

             3. Results &      4. Discussion

STEP BY STEP

1.     Introduction: The importance of this initial part of the scientific paper needs does not have to be over emphasized. Like in any kind of composition, the introduction should set the scene, open gates and entice the reader to go further. It should be well crafted to reveal gaps that exist in current literature that which you aim to address (in part as research can't cover every part of a phenomenon). The problem you are trying to address should be painted RED and explicit enough for the reader (Nenty, 2009). It also has to provide some background information about what you are writing such that readers can appreciate and trace the timeline of issue under investigation.

NB: Start as general & end as specific as possible (Todorovic, 2003).

2.     Methods: “Sedibeng go iiwa ka tesela” (a Setswana proverb) implies that there has to be a way which is to be followed if we are to achieve our targets. This also goes for empirical research. Researchers have to provide a clear map of how they intend to tackle the problem under investigation. In fact, the approach and design, subject/participants, sample & sampling techniques and the tools for data collection should be described to the reader & or researchers who would otherwise intent to embark on the same to try and replicate your study findings.

      NB: This should usually be described under suitbale sub-headings (Todorovic,             2003).

3.     Results/Findings: These should be presented subsequent from the data collection exercise. A rule of thumb is to present the results/findings that are only congruent to the research questions, objectives or hypothesis while anything else should be treated as surplus to requirements and beside the point. Apart from being presented in writing, illustrations, graphs and tables might be considered to help present the results/findings differently and for emphasis purposes.

4.     Discussion: This is one aspect of scholarly writing that is tricky to research rookies because it demands a different kind of creativity, analysis and writing prowess. However, practice and experience will lead you to the promised land. In discussing the findings, writers should try to position their results vis-à-vis what other writers before them have reported. As a point of caution, this step should not be confused with literature review (a part of step 1 above). Connections and inferences based on and between the findings discussed should be well laced as the writer makes their conclusions and recommendations.

The IMRAD serves as a path to follow if one is to publish their works. This post should not, however, be treated as absolute. It is not an in-depth description of the model but rather a stepping stone for beginners. That notwithstanding, I hope this rant helps a few starters out there in their pursuit to academic writing.

References

Nenty, H. J. (2009). Writing a quantitative research thesis. International Journal of   Educational Sciences, 1(1), 19-32

Todorovic, L. (2003). Original (scientific) paper- the IMRAD layout. Archives of Ontology, 11(3), 203-205

Wu, J. (2011). Improving the writing of research papers: IMRAD & beyond. Landscape Ecology, 26(10), 1345-1349

Mmegi Online :: Sudden Cardiac Arrest: What will you do if the person next to you collapses?

Mmegi Online :: Sudden Cardiac Arrest: What will you do if the person next to you collapses?

School Head's Birthday Lunch

It was an eventful day indeed! After the director's visit, the staff sat down for lunch to celebrate our school head's birthday. Jubilee years are knocking on the door! Enjoy...😋😋🍲🍲🍲

 ....hessi heepii

 ...and ma 1 1 to wash down

School Re-opens tomorrow