In-focus

Education

Quality education and quality of teacher training

Dunya News

Socio-emotional challenges faced by serving teachers in full time-training.

Through the Revised National Policy of Education of 1994, Botswana has become a leading country in the SADC region that has taken teacher qualification upgrading very aggressively.While the policy has set a diploma qualification as the minimum teacher training level for a teacher in basic education programmes, huge financial resources have been added to the Ministry of Education and Skills Development budget to upgrade teachers to degree qualifications.So, any teacher employed on permanent and pensionable terms and serving in public schools with a diploma qualification is assured of a privilege to be sponsored for a full-time degree programme.What socio-emotional challenges do these teachers face when they re-enter tertiary institutions to become students again? A recent qualitative study by Nkobi Owen Pansiri, Cynthia Mhozya, Philip Bulawa and Nelson Moletsane at the University of Botswana published in the Canadian journal, International Education Studies Volume 5, No.4 of 2012, discusses preliminary analysis of perspectives of adult learners in degree education programmes.One of the challenges that teachers as adult learners face is socio-emotional.The study establishes that chronological age and social commitments dictate that adult learners should inevitably have a divided span of attention in their academic engagement.The study presents the voices of learners and their experiences.They emphasise, many times that their individually valued social roles impacted negatively on their academic time and work. For example, concerns were raised, such as, sometimes when you try to concentrate on your studies, a message comes from home that your wife or husband is sick, or a child is sick, there is no food, electricity is out these problems affect us daily.The study reveals that learners believe that much as full-time training was befitting them, they have found that to some extent their social life has been negatively impacted. They cite some of the activities that they find difficult to partake in due to their academic commitment.As a result of their failure to participate in some social activities, there emerge misconceptions held by the communities that they either did not want to serve; where in the past they had committed themselves to their social responsibilities.This failure, in many cases, leads to family conflicts. Expressing the emotional conflict learners charged that full-time programme has created tensions in their families:Now people think that I no longer go to church just because I am now educated, but I am trying to tell them that, I am a student at University of Botswana, I am not going to attend full-time as I have been doing.Even at home people feel that she is now educated and is not coming home for funerals may even be deciding to divorce because she is more educated than her husband. The participants in the survey recognise the significance of their role in the social activities of the communities in which they live.They, however, express concern about the communities expectations that they should fulfill their social responsibilities even after they have gone for full-time further studies, as this puts them under some pressure.For the learners, trying to fulfill their social roles while continuing with their studies has proved very difficult due to the heavy academic workload. One learner lamented: Before I came here I was one of the people who are in the church committee, the main one.I remember last year, there were some rumours that since I came to school I think I am educated to the extent that I dont participate in church activities and so forth.Though I tried from the beginning to explain to them that since I will be going to school, some activities will be affected because I will have to weigh between [them] and doing my work at school.The participants also make an observation that while to them these social activities are significant, the university academic staff do not seem to be aware of the value they attach to such community activities and the extent to which this may negatively affect their academic work. Next week Issues will look at the synopsis of the academic challenges reflected in this study.