Title:
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Teacher socialisation in Botswana junior secondary schools : a critical qualitative analysis of the teaching methods of seven new teachers
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This thesis is a critical qualitative analysis of the teaching methods of seven new
teachers in 5 Botswana junior secondary schools during their first term of teaching.
The focus is on socialisation during early childhood, their own schools, colleges of
education and their new teaching schools. Data were collected from new teachers
and stakeholders mainly through school and lesson observations, unstructured and
semi-structured interviews, document analysis and supplementary questionnaires.
The overarching conclusion is that authoritarianism in junior secondary schools is
rooted in the teachers' positivist view of knowledge as 'facts' to be 'delivered' to the
passive students. The behaviourist teacher training model reproduces the new
teachers' authoritarianism rooted in their own school experiences. There was
authoritarian school socialisation of the new teachers through the formal and hidden
Curricula. Lack of induction. programmes exposed new teachers to school
enculturation in the form of staff-room gossip, military-style morning assemblies,
strict enforcement of punctuality and school uniforms which amount to the imposition
of the 'cultural capital' of dominant groups in society.
Systemic constraints like large class sizes, mixed ability groups, teaching through a
foreign language, unwieldy syllabuses, examinations driven curricula and lack of
subject base rooms were contributory factors.
Furthermore, the prescriptive national curriculum reduces teachers to 'technicians'
rather than curriculum builders. The 'technical rationality model' pervades preservice
training. School climates, rules and regulations and student-teacher
relationships are undemocratic as structures for students' voice do not exist and
caning is routinised. New teachers had a fixation with 'class control' enforced by
caning. While the state sanctions and attempts to restrict the application of corporal
punishment there was no evidence of enforcement of the rules despite their frequent
infraction by teachers. However, the only urban school in the sample minimised the use of caning and it had the best academic results. The only new teacher opposed to
caning achieved the best class control with only a modicum of effort. On this basis
claims by teachers that caning works and is part of 'African culture' are questionable.
The historical roots of authoritarianism and its brutal face of corporal punishment are
traced to the advent of rationalist colonial education in Botswana and the evolution
of a positivist post-independence system of education. Behaviourism in colleges of
education and junior secondary schools cannot be divorced from the activities of
USAID - the aid agency which developed the curricula of the two sets of institutions
during their inception from 1980 to 1990.
By the end of the term much of the college-induced behaviourism of the new teachers had disappeared while the positivist outlook was retained. Whole class teaching,
usually with no teaching aids, became the norm, student participation was curtailed
and caning was commonly used and defended.
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