Let’s MIXit

Written by Dr Malcolm Venter, originally published on Teacher’s Monthly

One of the demands of OBE is that teaching should be ‘learner-centred’ rather than ‘teacher-/educator-centred’. This is probably one of the main reasons for the failure of OBE.

Before elaborating on the particular problem here, let me say that it is part of a bigger problem – the tendency to operate in terms of a simplistic ‘either-or’ mentality. This approach ignores the fact that real truth is most often found in a ‘both-and’ approach (except in the case of universal values) – what I like to call ‘the power of paradox’. So we find people who argue that capitalism is the only way to go when it comes to the economy, but they are howled down by the advocates of socialism who regard socialism as the basis of utopia. It took many years for people to realise that we need a combination of both, allowing for different economies (or the same economy at different times) to fuse together differing quantities of each.

The same paradox applies to the concepts of Eurocentric and Afrocentric – the one is pitched against the other in this country to suggest how we should think and behave. But this is nonsense – and it is contradicted in practice (e.g. fusion music, cuisine, fashion). Black South Africans have their own traditions, but they have grown up in a country which – whether anyone likes it or not – has been (and will continue to be) influenced by European culture. Similarly, white South Africans are of European descent, but have grown up in a country where they have been (and will continue to be, more and more) exposed to African culture. In other words, we are all cultural hybrids – and we should only acknowledge but also celebrate this.

To come back to teaching: We should, in similar vein, avoid the extremes of teacher-centred and learner-centred teaching. A purely teacher-centred approach has the disadvantage that learners are not encouraged to explore issues or to arrive at new insights (especially in the humanities) on their own; thus they do not develop their thinking skills. Nor does this approach allow the teacher to be able to use learner feedback to shape the lesson. In the end, learners are not prepared for an examination which demands thinking on the spot.

A purely learner-centred approach, on the other hand, deprives the learners of the teacher’s knowledge and often merely reinforces ignorance or leads to playing rather than learning and superficiality.

Thus the answer is not to reduce the teacher to being a mere ‘facilitator’. There are times when the teacher may indeed play that role, but within the context of the teachers’ knowledge of the subject and the requirements of assessments. There are, however, also times – either in terms of the subject matter, or the level of ability of the class, or because of time constraints – that the teacher will simply teach. We have to allow teachers to combine so-called ‘learner-centred’ teaching with ‘teacher-centred’ teaching, with more emphasis on one or the other as the teacher sees fit.

So let’s stop lambasting teachers for being ‘teacher-centred’ and making them feel guilty if they do what they were trained to do – that is, to teach; and let learners do what they are meant to do – that is, to learn. If effective teaching and learning are occurring, we’re wasting our time and frustrating our teachers by demanding that one particular approach be used exclusively. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not in the prescribing of a particular recipe.