Professional services described as Davis™, including Davis Dyslexia Correction®, Davis™ Symbol Mastery, Davis™ Orientation Counseling, Davis™ Attention Mastery, Davis™ Math Mastery, and Davis™ Reading Program for Young Learners may only be provided by persons who are trained and licensed as Davis Facilitators or Specialists by Davis Dyslexia Association International.
In
2005 the South African Department of Education published a study
stating: “To avert an imminent shortage [of teachers], government
must embark on an intense drive to interest younger people into the
profession.” The same study stated that “... between 17,000 and
20,000 teachers [were] lost to the system each year.”
Five
years later (2010) the same department said it needed 20,000 new and
trained teachers every year but only about 8,000 teachers were being
produced.
A
study published in 2011 by Centre For Development And Enterprise
(CDE) states: “the teacher training system is producing about a
third of the country’s requirement of about 25 000 new teachers a
year... It is clear that South Africa cannot continue to rely solely
on current systems to train more and better teachers.”
This
suggests a shortfall in South Africa of at least 12,000 teachers each
year, or roughly 60% short of what is needed annually. This
shortfall is cumulative, pointing to the gap growing by 12,000
teachers every year, and it is clear that the existing teacher
training facilities can not even keep up, let alone close the growing
gap between the number of available teachers and the number needed.
This has been the case for years, and some have claimed that the shortfall is currently at more than 50.000 teachers.
UBUNTU SCHOOLING INITIATIVE Vision
To develop, research, and
offer a cutting edge educators' training proposition using the latest
thinking in education and personal development. The Ubuntu teaching
approach does not rely on proprietary materials or resources. All
that is needed for exceptionally successful literacy and numeracy
teaching is the skill of the Ubuntu trained teacher/facilitator, a
few sheets of paper and half a kilo of plasticine per learner.
Mission Ubuntu schooling is an
initiative with a short term mission and a long term mission. The short term mission is
to address the growing crisis around shortage of teachers in South
Africa by offering a fast-track training, providing basic
teaching skills to unqualified people wanting to facilitate efficient
learning of literacy and numeracy. Alongside this we wish to offer
existing teachers an effective upskilling route, addressing personal
literacy and numeracy issues within the teaching profession.
The long term mission is
to create a world-class, cost effective, sustainable fast-track
training for unqualified people interested in teaching the key
foundation skills of education (literacy and numeracy).
Proposition To develop a four week
course for training up Ubuntu learning facilitators with exceptional
skills for basic literacy and numeracy teaching.
Steps:
Secure funding for a
research pilot.
Sign up 20 people
interested in being trained through the Ubuntu schooling pilot, and
choose 20 teacher training graduates as a control group.
Train the Ubuntu
facilitators for 4 weeks.
Have them teach for 1
year and benchmark them against the control group of teacher
training graduates.
If they show equal or
better results compared with the control group, then we would seek
funding for nation-wide roll-out and start development of a
framework with all stakeholders for fitting the Ubuntu learning
facilitators into the workplace.
The key set of skills and
competencies provided in the four week Ubuntu training have been
shown not only to provide unparalleled efficiency in teaching basic literacy skills (reading), but they have also virtually eliminated
special needs referrals in schools where they have been diligently
applied. A bonus benefit is the fact that people trained in Ubuntu
schooling will have the basic skills needed to address learning
difficulties in both literacy and numeracy, which in most developed
countries demands on-going about 15% of the education budget. The
teaching and learning strategies at the core of the Ubuntu schooling
initiative, are also unique in how easily they can be deployed in
multi-lingual communities. See below a video interviewing parents, learners, and staff at Walsh Elementary School in Colorado, USA, which topped the charts in Colorado for literacy. All stakeholders in the school credit the system we intend to use.
Walsh Elementary School
Another issue within the
current South African education system, which the Ubuntu Schooling
initiative can address very efficiently, is when an individual has
the responsibility for teaching, but does not possess the required
literacy or numeracy skills needed to teach. The Ubuntu Schooling
initiative can improve both their literacy and numeracy skills by two
years in a two-week programme.
The Ubuntu Schooling structure
In only four weeks we aim
to provide an unqualified individual with the skills required to
facilitate mastery of literacy and numeracy to a standard comparable
to a fully qualified teacher training graduate.
In the first week we
provide training in literacy facilitation (reading), based on the
Davis Learning Strategies and The Gift of Dyslexia workshop. This
structured facilitation can through 30 hours of literacy work, get a
learner from total illiteracy to basic reading proficiency. In a
normal classroom environment this process would be expected to take
about two years, but we expect it would pretty much ENSURE proficient reading fluency for ALL learners.
In the second week we
provide training in numeracy facilitation (arithmetic/maths), based
on Ron Davis' procedures, outlined in the book The Gift of Learning.
These procedures have been shown to deliver a two year jump in
numeracy skills in 30 hour of facilitation.
The remaining two weeks
are dedicated to training in effective communication and relationship
skills required to manage a group of learners in a classroom. For
this we use life coaching, personal development training and
communication strategies inspired by the book How to Teach so Kids will Listen and how to Listen so Kids will Learn, along with latest
life coaching practices which have been developed and honed at
Synergy School over the past 7 years. On-site mentoring is also
provided for the first year.
Teacher
education should address ‘pre-service’ as well as ‘in-service’
development. Teachers learn implicitly during their own schooling
experiences, their pre-service training and through their own
experience in practice, which has a dramatic impact on how they
convey their subject matter knowledge.
Quote from Teacher Education
Review, a Contract Project by the Centre for
Evaluation and Assessment, Faculty of Education, University of
Pretoria for the Shuttleworth Foundation
Future
vision of the Ubuntu Schooling Initiative
Education worldwide is in crisis. Despite increasing
funds being committed to education, basic literacy and numeracy
standards are falling rather than rising. In agreement with leading
educationalist Sir Ken Robinson, we believe this calls for a
completely new approach to education. We need an all new paradigm in
schooling. See Sir Ken Robinson's video on www.gifteddyslexic.com.
If we can prove that the Ubuntu approach works as we
expect, we will have created genuine proposition for a simple and
very cost-effective solution to the short term teacher crisis in
South Africa, but we will also have created a genuine proposition; a
highly effective, low cost teacher training for any developing
country. As a bonus, this proposition has the potential to prevent
learning difficulties before they arise, saving at least 10% of
future education budget for special needs, and creating an
environment which produces immense work satisfaction for teachers,
reduces burn-out, and stems teacher attrition. Furthermore, we will
have created a a continuous professional development (CPD) training
proposition for improving existing teacher training in the developed
world. This can be offered as a CPD course for existing teachers and
it can be integrated into existing teacher training in order to
prepare future teachers for the new paradigm in teaching.
Benefits for the developed countries of the world
If the Ubuntu Schooling Initiative succeeds, we will not
only have improved literacy, numeracy, and therefore education as a
whole in the developing world, but we will have addressed a severe
crisis due to teacher shortages in South Africa, helped preventing
burn-out and attrition within the teaching profession, improved
cost-effectiveness of the SA education system, and created a teaching
culture which nurtures giftedness, producing greater numbers of
learners who will be the future's innovators and leaders in society
as a whole.
If the Ubuntu Schooling Initiative succeeds, the
developing world will have created an opportunity to lead the way in
forming the new paradigm of education. The developed world will have
no choice but to sit up and take note. Because we have greater room
for improvement, we can more clearly demonstrate the benefits of this
approach, while at the same time we are addressing urgent problems in
our own SA education system.
