The country needs to acknowledge that teachers have not been adequately trained to manage diversity, according to a senior staff member of the SA College of Applied Psychology (Sacap).
Natalie Donaldson, head of teaching and learning at Sacap, who participated in a recent webinar, said after apartheid ended “we suddenly had diverse students in our classrooms and no-one told us how we are meant to meet the needs of all these students”.
“This is not necessarily any fault of our own. Teacher education and training, for example, hasn’t actually been that effective in preparing teachers for the reality of their classroom space.
“While teaching pupils with diverse needs is a challenge, we do need to be able to cater for the needs of all the pupils in the classroom space if we want to ensure our pupils not only receive a quality education but can also be successful in their learning processes.”
Donaldson said diversity in the SA context “is often thought to relate specifically to race, religion, culture, language, gender sexuality and other identities”.
“But as teachers we also need to acknowledge that diversity is more than just this. It also encompasses things such as thoughts, actions, personalities, values, beliefs, interests, upbringing, worldviews and so much more.”
According to her, there still existed in classrooms “the assumption that pupils must abide by the monoculture of school rules, but these school rules and traditions are often insensitive to diversity”.
“Rules and regulations that were not questioned in the past are now being challenged, as our schools have become more diverse and the expectations of our students and pupils have changed.”
She cited several examples where pupils had “rebelled” against school rules, including the 2016 protests by black pupils at Pretoria High School for Girls over its discriminatory hair policy.
According to research, the biggest challenge teachers spoke about in the classroom was “language differences”.
“Pupilsin the majority of our schools are being taught in English. They speak different home languages and have different levels of competence in the language of teaching and learning which is often English.”
This meant teachers cannot adequately support pupils whose primary language is not English.
“What also tends to happen is the pupil whose home language isn’t the dominant language in school, is often made to feel that their home language is a second-grade language and this often results in poor self-esteem.”
In June, basic education minister Angie Motshekga told parliament of her department’s plan to promote the teaching of different subjects through African languages from grade four upwards.
Kiara Parsuram, the student liaison coordinator for Sacap’s Durban campus, said four-million children and teens experienced learning difficulties and many of them coped with more than one difficulty at once.
“Individuals who have a learning difficulty may not learn in the same way or as quickly as their peers, or they may find certain aspects of learning such as basic development of skills a bit challenging.”
She said a learning difficulty might often be termed a “hidden disability”.
“A person challenged by a learning difficulty is generally of average or above-average intelligence. Many are able to hide that certain aspects of academic learning gives them issues for years, leaving these issues unaddressed until high school or even later.”
She said it was a hidden disability because “a lot of students feel they might be labelled or stereotyped because of these disabilities”.
Parsuram said almost 1.5-million children annually are affected by attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
“It is technically considered a learning difficulty, but research does show that between 30% to 50% of children have both ADHD and a specific learning disorder.”
Commenting on whether teachers have been trained adequately to manage diversity, professor Elizabeth Henning from the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus said that as with all teacher preparation, “the content and methods can only go so far”.
“New teachers also do things intuitively, relying on their own ethics and worldview. How does one educate future teachers to be ready for the reality of the classrooms?”
What also tends to happen is the pupil whose home language isn’t the dominant language in school is often made to feel that their home language is a second-grade language and this often results in poor self-esteem.
— Natalie Donaldson, Sacap head of teaching and learning
She said her own teacher education studies did not prepare her for the school where she ended up teaching.
“I simply attended to the girls who were visibly uncared for and assigned independent work to the others.”
She said her university education “had no way of preparing me for the poor girls from Vrededorp”.
“The psychology textbooks did not help much.”
Professor Labby Ramrathan from the University of KwaZulu-Natal said there were about 460,000 teachers, many of whom were trained during apartheid and later.
Despite a new education policy coming into effect in 2015, which explicitly includes issues of diversity and inclusivity, “the effects of this policy on the education system is yet to be felt”.
“However, understanding diversity and inclusivity and developing oneself to be able to teach in diverse context define our professionalism as teachers.”
He said teachers need to take responsibility for their ongoing professional needs, adding: “Experiential learning is also a useful way of developing oneself.”
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