Browsing Research articles (Dept of Languages & Social Sciences Education) by Author "Tabulawa, R."
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Tabulawa, R. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, June NaN, 2002)[more][less]
Abstract: Curriculum reviews during the past two decades in Botswana have had mixed fortunes for geography in secondary schools. While the subject has modernised over the years it has at the same time shrunk in terms of its spread over the entire secondary schooling period. This paper describes this contradictory development, teasing out some of the most salient forces that have shaped the geography curriculum in secondary schools in Botswana. It argues that the subject's future is precarious and uncertain. Deliberate and concerted effort to promote and 'sell' the subject is required of those with vested interests in it. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/515 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_IRGEE_2002.pdf (1.042Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Springer. http://www.springerlink.com, April NaN, 2007)[more][less]
Abstract: The University of Botswana has not escaped the reform fever currently gripping higher education institutions the world-over. In the late 1980s the University initiated an administrative/management restructuring exercise whose resultant structure was implemented between 1998 and 2000. The exercise, in many respects, was a response to globalization. The emergence, in the past two decades, of a global economy, the massification of higher education, and the globalization of neo-liberal economic thinking have compelled universities to recast their social and economic missions. Consequently, universities have had to restructure within the framework of a global ideology characterized by an emphasis on effectiveness, quality and efficiency. This paper explicates the restructuring exercise at the University of Botswana by locating the exercise within its global and local contexts. It argues that while the resultant structure reflected global influences and trends, it was as much a product of local concerns. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/511 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_HE_2007.pdf (2.309Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, February NaN, 2003)[more][less]
Abstract: Recent pronouncements by international aid agencies on their interest in and preference for a learner-centred pedagogy so far appear not to have attracted much scholarly attention. This paper attempts to explain this interest. It argues that although the efficacy of the pedagogy is often couched in cognitive/educational terms, in essence, its efficacy lies in its political and ideological nature. The fact that the aid agencies’ interest in the pedagogy became explicit soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall is in itself significant. The paper argues that aid agencies’ apparent lack of interest in pedagogical issues before 1989 lay partially in the very central hypothesis of the modernisation theory of development which became enshrined in policies of aid agencies soon after the latter were created. The hypothesis, coupled with human capital theory, viewed education in technicist terms. However, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as a development paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s elevated political democratisation as a prerequisite for economic development. Education, then, assumed a central role in the democratisation project. Given its democratic tendencies, learner-centred pedagogy was a natural choice for the development of democratic social relations in the schools of aid-receiving countries. Aid agencies, therefore, had to be explicit about their preference for the pedagogy. Thus, the pedagogy is an ideological outlook, a worldview intended to develop a preferred kind of society and people. It is in this sense that it should be seen as representing a process of Westernisation disguised as quality and effective teaching. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/518 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_CE_2003.pdf (1.336Mb) -
Tabulawa, R. (Routledge http://www.informaworld.com, April NaN, 1998)[more][less]
Abstract: Attempts to improve the quality of education in Botswana have, inter alia, included an emphasis on a learner-centered pedagogy. Attempts at implementing this pedagogy have been made within the ambit of the technical rational model of curriculum development. The attempts, however, have produced inconclusive results, and these results have often been rationalized in technicist terms, e.g. as being due to lack of resources and poorly trained teachers. Overlooked in this technicist model are the teachers' perspectives on the innovation. Using the case-study approach within the rubrics of the qualitative research paradigm, this study sought to establish the perspectives of geography teachers in a senior secondary school in Botswana vis-a-vis the learnercentered pedagogy advocated in Education for Kagisano (Social Harmony), a report produced by the 1977 Commission on Education. The findings indicated that teachers' classroom practices were influenced by many factors other than technical ones: these included the teachers' assumptions about the nature of knowledge and the ways it ought to be transmitted, their perceptions of students, and the goal of schooling. It also emerged that their assumptions were incongruent with the basic tenets of the learner-centered pedagogy. The findings, then, are an indictment of the technical rational model of change implementation applied in Botswana. They indicate that disregarding what teachers know and think about their taken-for-granted classroom practices when effecting change can lead to disappointing results. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/698 Files in this item: 1
Tabulawa_IJQSE_1998.pdf (1.076Mb)
Now showing items 1-4 of 4