A necessary shift for teacher agency?

 

Taking the South African educational context into careful consideration, changes needs to be made in terms of developing new and effective teaching and learning strategies that aims to achieve the necessary 21st century and 4IR skills that are needed in the country in order to tackle the big crises of unemployment. With teacher-researchers in our corner, better and effective decisions can be made to benefit both the teaching and the learning process and to support the growth of the learners. In terms of skills shortage, why not deal with the gap between high school and higher institutions first? This gap is one of the factors that contributes to youth unemployment, the gap is unrealistic, most lower quantile schools focus on content knowledge and not how to apply that specific knowledge and other skills like technology skills that learners are not even taught. A lot of learners from those schools only learn how to use a computer only when they get to university, saying this from experience. Closing this gap will require well-trained teachers who are also eager to develop skills that learners need for this ever-changing world, especially 4IR skills. With learners acquiring these skills, this may be the key concept in reducing if not eliminating youth unemployment in the country and some of these skills includes problem solving skills, collaboration, creativity, analyze, cognitive and interpersonal skills, critical thinking skills, character quality (persistence, curiosity, initiative, etc.) and 4IR skills like software development, data science, digital content production, etc. And also, what is the South African educational system doing about developing TVET colleges in order to enroll more student into higher institutions where they can acquire more of these skills. We can learn from countries like Norway, their system is mainly based on making sure that everyone has access to education regardless of their socio-economic background and provide free education based on the principle of equal and adapted education for all in an inclusive comprehensive school system (Brandstrup).

Reference

Brandstrup, P. (n.d). General information about education in Norway. NOKUT.